Dodd, WILLIAM,

Dodd, WILLIAM, clergyman and forger, was born, 29th May 1729, at Bourn in Lincolnshire; entered Clare College, Cambridge, as a sizar, in 1746, and graduated as fifteenth in the mathematical tripos, 1749-50. Shortly after, he removed to London, married, took orders, and ere long became a popular preacher. His sermons in behalf of public charities were particularly successful; those preached as chaplain of the Magdalen Hospital attracted all the fashionable ladies of London. Dodd next published a series of edifying books, edited the Christian Magazine, and became in 1763 one of the king's chaplains, and soon after LL.D., and tutor to Philip Stanhope, nephew to Lord Chesterfield. His habits had always been very expensive, and his large income as a successful preacher and writer did not save him from drifting hopelessly into debt. He purchased Charlotte Chapel in Pimlico, and had all his wonted success, but an anonymous letter of his wife to the Lord Chancellor's wife, offering a large sum for the rich living of St George's, Hanover Square, led to Dr Dodd's name being struck off the list of chaplains (1774), and his wife's being taken off by Foote in a farce as 'Mrs Simony.' Dodd left England for a time, and was well received by his pupil, now Lord Chesterfield, at Geneva, and presented to the living of Wing in Buckinghamshire. After his return he sunk deeper and deeper into financial difficulties. He sold his chapel in 1776, and in the February of the following year offered a stockbroker a bond for £4200 signed by Lord Chesterfield. It was discovered that the signature was a forgery, and Dr Dodd was at once arrested. He refunded great part of the money, but was nevertheless sent to trial, convicted, and sentenced to death. Extraordinary efforts were made to secure a pardon; petitions and pamphlets appeared in profusion, and even Dr Johnson, the most rigid of moralists, if the kindest of men, lent the unhappy man the great influence of his support. The sermon preached to his fellow-prisoners in Newgate and his final appeal to the king were both composed by Johnson, whose final letter to Dr Dodd, when his awful doom was certain, thrills throughout its grave phrases with profoundest pity. The king refused to pardon his former chaplain, and Dr Dodd was hanged, 27th July 1777. Of his numerous writings the Beauties of Shakespeare (1752) was long popular, and Thoughts in Prison is still interesting. See A Famous Forgery, by Percy Fitzgerald (1865).