John Dod

John Dod (c.1549-1645), known as “Decalogue Dod”, was a non-conforming English clergyman, taking his nickname for his emphasis on the Ten Commandments. He is known for his widely circulated writings. Although he lost one living because of Puritan beliefs, he had important support from sympathetic members of the Puritan gentry throughout a long career.

Contents

Life

He was born in Malpas, Cheshire, and was educated at Jesus College, Cambridge.[1][2]

He was vicar of Hanwell, Oxfordshire, from 1585, in the gift of Anthony Cope, also preaching at Banbury. Robert Cleaver, his co-author, was in a neighbouring parish, Drayton.[3][4]

Dod was ejected from his parish at Hanwell in 1607. From 1608 he was at Canons Ashby and then rector of Fawsley, where his patron was Richard Knightley.[5]

Writings

A Godly Form of Household Government, a leading conduct book for decades, developed from a 1598 pamphlet by his co-author Robert Cleaver. It took material from a sermon published in 1591, A Preparative for Marriage by Henry Smith.[6] Dod knew Henry Smith from Dry Drayton,[7] and he helped expand the work in its many later editions. It is based on the family as unit.[8]

Works

Family

He married first Anne Bownde, stepdaughter of Richard Greenham, daughter of the physician Robert Bownde, and sister of Nicholas Bownde the Sabbatarian. They had 12 children; he remarried after her death.[1]

John Wilkins was a grandson, and succeeded him at Fawsley in 1637.[10][11] Timothy Dod (d. 1665), an ejected minister in 1662, was a son.[12]

Notes

  1. ^ a b Decalogue Dod and his Seventeenth Century Bestseller
  2. ^ Dod, John in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
  3. ^ http://www.hanwellvillage.com/church_history.htm
  4. ^ http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=63795
  5. ^ Felicity Heal, Clive Holmes, The Gentry in England and Wales, 1500-1700 (1994), p. 344.
  6. ^ Anthony Fletcher, The Protestant Idea of Marriage, in Anthony Fletcher, Peter Roberts (editors), Religion, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain: Essays in Honour of Patrick Collinson (2006), p. 63.
  7. ^ R. B. Jenkins, Henry Smith: England’s Silver-Tongued Preacher (1983), p. 15.
  8. ^ Leonard Tennenhouse, Power on Display: The Politics of Shakespeare's Genres (2005), p. 172.
  9. ^ Excerpt on the duties of husband and wife http://www.apuritansmind.com/TheChristianFamily/DodJohnDutiesHusbandWife.htm
  10. ^ http://galileo.rice.edu/Catalog/NewFiles/wilkins.html
  11. ^ http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/rhatch/pages/03-Sci-Rev/SCI-REV-Home/resource-ref-read/major-minor-ind/westfall-dsb/SAM-V-Z.htm
  12. ^ Concise Dictionary of National Biography, article on Timothy Dod.