DODD, Dr William (1729-1777), an unfortunate English divine, eldest son of the Rev. William Dodd, many years vicar of Bourne, in Lincolnshire was born there in May 1729. He was sent, at the age of sixteen, to the university of Cambridge, where he was admitted a sizar of Clare Hall in 1745. He took the degree of B.A. in 1750, being in the list of wranglers. On leaving the university, he married a young woman of the name of Perkins, the daughter of a verger. She had a more than questionable reputation, and her extravagant habits contributed in no small degree to her husband’s disgrace and ruin. In 1751 he was ordained deacon, and in 1753 priest, and he soon became a popular and celebrated preacher. His first preferment was the lectureship of West-Ham and Bow. In 1754 he was also chosen lecturer of St Olave’s, Hart Street; and in 1757 he took the degree of Μ. A. at Cambridge. He was a strenuous supporter of the Magdalen Hospital, which was founded in 1758, and soon afterwards became preacher at the chapel of that charity. In 1763 he obtained a prebend at Brecon, and in the same year he was appointed one of the king’s chaplains,—soon after which the education of Philip Stanhope, afterwards earl of Chesterfield, was committed to his care. In 1766 he went to Cambridge, and took the degree of LL.D. At this period he was held in high estimation; but eager for further advancement, he unhappily entered on courses which in the end proved the occasion of his ruin. On the living of St George’s, Hanover Square, becoming vacant, he wrote an anonymous letter to the wife of the lord chancellor offering three thousand guineas if, by her assistance, he was promoted to the benefice. This letter having been traced to him, a complaint was immediately made to the king, and he was ...

DODDER (Frisian dodd, a bunch; Dutch dot, ravelled thread), the popular name of the annual, leafless, twining, epiphytic plants forming the genus Cuscuta and natural order Cuscutaceae or, according to some botanists, the tribe Cuscuteae of the Convolvulaceae. All the species are natives of temperate regions, and all have strong acrid properties. The flowers, which grow in clusters, have a quinque-partite, coloured calyx; scales alternating with the corolline lobes; carpels forming a syncarpous ovary; the albumen of the seeds fleshy; and the embryo spiral, filiform, and acotyledonous. On coming in contact with the living stem of some other plant the seedling dodder throws out a sucker, by which it attaches itself and commences to absorb the sap of its foster-parent; it then soon ceases to have any connection with the ground. As it grows, it throws out fresh suckers, establishing itself firmly on its victim. After making a few turns round one stem the dodder finds its way to another, and thus it continues twining and branching till it resembles “fine, closely-tangled, wet catgut.” The injury done to flax, clover, hop, and bean crops by species of dodder is often very great. C. europaea, the Greater Dodder, is found parasitic on nettles, thistles, vetches, and the hop; C. Epilinum, on flax; G . Epithymum, on furze, ling, and thyme. C. Trifolii, the Clover Dodder, is perhaps a sub-species of the last-mentioned. For a figure of C. verrucosa, the Warty Dodder, see vol. iv. pl. x.

DODDRIDGE, Philip (1702-1751), a celebrated nonconformist divine, was born in 1702. His father, Daniel Doddridge, was a London merchant, and his mother the orphan daughter of the Rev. John Bauman, a Bohemian clergyman who had fled to England to escape religious persecution, and had held for some time the mastership of the grammar school at Kingston-upon-Thames. He was the youngest of a family of twenty, of whom there was at his birth only one other child, a daughter, surviving. It is also remarkable that he himself at his birth was put aside as actually dead, and was only preserved alive owing to the accidental glance of one of the attendants, who fancied she perceived a feeble heaving of the infant’s chest, and was successful in rekindling the almost extinguished vital spark. Before he could read, his mother taught him the history-of the Old and New Testament by the assistance of some blue Dutch tiles; and these stories, he says, were the means of enforcing such good impressions on his heart as never afterwards wore out. When sufficiently old to leave the paternal roof he was placed under the tuition of the Rev. Mr Scott, who taught a private school in London, and on attaining his tenth year he was sent to the grammar school at Kingston-upon-Thames. About 1715 he was removed to a private school at St Albans, where he began to keep an exact account of his time in order the better to improve himself by private meditation and study, and was in the habit during his walks of entering the neighbouring cottages to read to the inmates a few pages from the Bible or from some religious book. Through the interest of friends a proposal was made to him, in 1719, which would have enabled him to enter the English bar; but receiving at the same time an invitation to study for the ...