Douglas, JOHN

Douglas, JOHN, Bishop of Salisbury, the son of a shopkeeper of Pittenweem, Fife, was born 14th July 1721. He was educated at Dunbar and Oxford, ordained deacon in 1744, and as an army chaplain was at the battle of Fontenoy (1745). His after-life is little more than a chronicle of his very numerous preferments, which ended in his translation to the see of Salisbury in 1791. He died 18th May 1807. Douglas only occasionally resided on his livings. He generally spent the winter months in London, and the summer months at the fashionable watering-places, in the society of the Earl of Bath, who was his great patron. He wrote much, mainly controversial: defending Milton from Lander's charge of plagiarism (1750), writing the famous Letter on the Criterion of Miracles (1754) against Hume, ironical attacks on the Hutchinsonians, and political pamphlets. He edited Captain Cook's journals. See his Miscellaneous Works, with Life by Macdonald (1820).