Doughty, John

, an English divine, was born about 1598 at Martley near Worcester, and educated at Worcester, whence at the age of sixteen he became a student at Oxford. After he had taken his bachelor’s degree, he was one of those excellent scholars who were candidates for a fellowship in Merton college, and after a severe examination by the then warden, sir Henry Savile, Mr. Doughty gained the election. He there completed his degree of M. A. and entering into orders, became a very popular and edifying preacher. In 1631 he served the office of proctor only for four months, the proctors being removed by the king; but about that time he became chaplain to the earl of Northumberland, and his college bestowed on him the rectory of Lapworth in Warwickshire. On the commencement of the rebellion, he left Lapworth, to avoid sequestration and imprisonment, and joined the king at Oxford. Soon after Dr. Duppa, bishop of Salisbury, gave him the lectureship of St. Edmund’s in that city, where he continued about two years; but, on the defeat of the royal army in the West, he went to London, and found an asylum in the house of sir Nathaniel Brent, in Little Britain. After the restoration, his loyalty and public services were rewarded with a prebend in Westminster, and the rectory of Cheam in Surrey, and about the same time he was created doctor of divinity. He died at Westminster, after he had lived, says Wood, “to be twice a child,” December 25, 1672, and was buried in the abbey.

He published, 1. “Two Sermons,” on the abstruseness of divine mysteries, and on church schisms, 1628, 4to. 2. “The King’s Cause rationally, briefly, and plainly debated, as it stands de facto, against the irrational misprision of a deceived people,” Oxford, 1644, 4to. 3. “Velitationes polemicae; or polemical short discussions of certain particular and select questions,” Lond. 1651 and 1652, 8vo. 4. “Analecta sacra; sive excursus philologici, &c.” Lond. 1658 and 1660, 8vo. ²

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