DODDRIDGE, John (c.1555-1628), of Serjeants’ Inn, Chancery Lane, London; Mount Radford, Devon and Fosters, Egham, Surr.

Doddridge’s ancestors were living in South Molton in Devon by the end of the fifteenth century, and he himself was born there, although his father subsequently moved his business to Barnstaple, ten and-a-half miles away. Dodderidge and Shaddick, 6; Barnstaple Recs. ii. 198. Doddridge profited from an expensive and somewhat protracted education. Writing after his death, Thomas Fuller stated that it was ‘hard to say whether he was better artist, divine, civil or common lawyer, though he fixed on the last for his public profession’. T. Fuller, Worthies, i. 412. A founder member of the Society of Antiquaries, he drew up a tract in which he argued that Parliament predated the Roman Conquest, and that there was nowhere ‘that have a greater, more binding, and yet more free Council’. P. Croft, ‘Sir John Doddridge, King James I, and the antiquity of Parliament’, PER, xii. 100-103. However, his respect for Parliament did not stop him from advocating a strong royal prerogative. In the late Elizabethan period he drafted an outline of a proposed tract on the powers of the monarchy. The tract was apparently never completed, but he stated his intention to describe the ‘fullness and plenartie’ of the Crown’s ‘absolute’ powers, in addition to its ordinary, legal, functions. M.A. Judson, Crisis of the Constitution, 112.

Shortly before the death of Elizabeth, Sir Robert Cecil† recommended Doddridge for the coif as ‘a very great learned man’. Cecil’s favour ensured that the accession of James I did not block his advancement, even though Doddridge had previously acted as counsel for Sir Walter Ralegh†, who was soon to be disgraced for his part in the Main Plot. Doddridge received his call, together with appointment as Prince Henry’s serjeant, on the eve of his return to Parliament for Horsham in 1604. The borough was still under Crown control, having previously formed part of the attainted 4th duke of Norfolk’s estates, and it is likely that, like his colleague Michael Hicks, he owed his nomination to Cecil, who may have acted through lord treasurer Buckhurst (Thomas Sackville), lord lieutenant of Sussex. CSP Dom. 1601-3, p. 285; E. Edwards, Ralegh, i. 468-9.

Doddridge was appointed to 99 committees, and made some 30 recorded speeches in the first Jacobean Parliament. The first of his 18 committees in the opening session, on 13 Mar. 1604, was to consider the grievances put forward on behalf of Cecil by Sir Robert Wroth I, and he was subsequently among those named to the sub-committee to examine the text of the revised Prayer Book. CJ, i. 151a, 153b. He was also appointed, on 26 Mar., to manage the conference with the Lords about wardship, which subject had formed part of Wroth’s motion, and to attend another conference on the same matter on 22 May. As a consequence of the last appointment, he was among those instructed to draw up the Form of Apology on 1 June. Ibid. 154a, 222b, 230b. On 7 May he was named as one of the Members who were said to be able, ‘either by experience in their own particular, or by the testimony of their country neighbours’, to provide evidence to substantiate the articles which had been drawn up by the Commons against purveyance, which had also formed part of Wroth’s motion, at a forthcoming conference with the Lords. Ibid. 202a.

On 24 Mar. Doddridge moved that the statute passed by the first Elizabethan Parliament recognizing the queen’s title should be revived for James, and the Commons agreed that a bill should be drafted for this purpose. Three days later, in the debate on the imprisonment of Sir Thomas Shirley I*, he opined that Shirley’s release from prison by order of the Commons would have the unwanted effect of discharging his debt, but ‘wished that conference might be had with the judges’ to settle the matter. CD 1604-7, 25, 28. Doddridge was also appointed to prepare the House’s justification of its proceedings in the Buckinghamshire election case on 27 Mar. and to deliver it to the king the following day. On 31 Mar he was among those instructed to consider the bill to disable debtors outlawed or taken in execution from future Membership, and was named to confer with the judges about the Buckinghamshire election dispute on 5 April. CJ, i. 156b, 157a, 166b, 940b.

Doddridge was one of the hundred Members ordered to attend the joint conference of 14 Apr. on the Union with Scotland. On 27 Apr. he was among those instructed to deal with the ‘matter of estate inward, and of law’ at a further conference on this subject, and on 24 May he defended the provisions of the Union commission. Ibid. 172a, 188b, 979a. He was subsequently to write a brief treatise, partly at least at the request of the Cecilian Sir Walter Cope*, ostensibly in favour of a federal union. However, his argument that the Union must include Church discipline, ‘and that discipline must alone be embraced of either which is farthest off from popular faction, most obedient to the ecclesiastical and civil magistrate, and least subject to mutability and fantastical opinions’, was probably a coded attack on the Scottish reformation, which would not have found favour north of the border. Jacobean Union ed. B.R. Galloway and B.P. Levack (Scot. Hist. Soc. ser. 4. xxi), pp. lxiv, lxvi, 149; B. Galloway, Union of Eng. and Scotland, 41.

Doddridge spoke in the debate on the third reading of the bill concerning assart lands, which had formerly been part of royal forests. He stated that although he ‘liketh well’ the preamble, ‘by the body [of the bill], the subject hath no estate’. Nevertheless the measure was passed on division. CJ, i. 980b. His last recorded speech of the session was in the debate of 6 June on the bill to prevent the import of popish books, which measure he supported on the grounds that similar control of the printing press was to be found ‘in all places and kingdoms’. Ibid. 986b.

Some three months after the close of the session, Doddridge was appointed solicitor general, and as such he played a leading role in the second session. On 5 Nov. 1605 he was named to the committee for privileges. He was subsequently re-appointed on 18 Feb. 1606, and again on 26 Mar., his colleagues having perhaps forgotten he was already a member because he failed to attend its meetings. Ibid. 256b, 270a, 290a. Following the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, Doddridge supported Sir George More’s motion on 21 Jan. 1606 for a committee ‘to consider of some course for the timely and severe proceeding against Jesuits, seminaries, and all other popish agents and practices’, to which he was appointed. He took the opportunity to attack what he described as the ‘new divinity of state monks’, who argued that it was ‘lawful to equivocate, to lie, to dissemble before a magistrate, to kill an heretic’. Ibid. 257b; T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, i. 45.

On 23 Jan. Doddridge was named to the committee to consider the bill for a public thanksgiving, which he successfully reported the following day. CJ, i. 258b, 259a. On the same day he successfully opposed moves to petition the king to have the plotters tried in Parliament, arguing that it was against precedent that ‘after one commission and court have heard the allegations, [for] another to interpose themselves’. Ibid. 259b; Bowyer Diary, 7. On 8 May he reported the bill to attaint the Gunpowder plotters, when he successfully recommended a joint conference, whose conclusions he reported two days later. CJ, i. 306b, 308a.

Doddridge played a key part in drawing up fresh anti-Catholic legislation. On 25 Jan. he reported articles that had been drawn up by a sub-committee, presumably of the committee appointed on 21 January. These articles were then referred by the Commons to the original committee, which, on Doddridge’s motion, was ordered to meet on 28 January. Two days later, just before the end of the day’s business, he brought the results of their deliberations to the Commons. However, as he had to appear before the lord chief justice on Crown business that afternoon, he asked for permission to deliver the articles to Nicholas Fuller, Sir Francis Bacon or Sir Henry Montagu, who had been members of the committee. However, Bacon and Montagu were not present and Fuller was reluctant to accept them. Consequently, it was Doddridge who delivered the articles to the Speaker on 1 Feb., at which time they were read, although a further article, concerning Englishmen serving as soldiers abroad, had not been ‘perfected’. Ibid. 260a; Bowyer Diary, 7, 13, 19, 21. The articles were debated two days later, when Doddridge spoke three times in their defence. He argued that Sir Thomas Beaumont’s proposed addition, against allowing recusants to keep house, was impractical. He defended a proposal to compel a conforming recusant to take communion within a year, stating that it would enable them to ‘discover a counterfeit’ and asserting that receiving communion twice was ‘a true token of conversion’. Finally, he defended the resolution of the committee that husbands should not be financially liable for their wives’ recusancy. CJ, i. 263a-b.

On 7 Feb. Doddridge reported the previous day’s conference with the Lords, at which the articles were presented to the upper House. However, he apparently failed to perform the task to the satisfaction of his rival Bacon, who followed immediately ‘with a repetition of that which Mr. Solicitor reported’. Ibid. 265a. Doddridge subsequently reported a further series of conferences at which the differences between the Lords and Commons over the proposed legislation were hammered out, although some of his colleagues may have thought him insufficiently independent for the task: according to the diarist Robert Bowyer, Doddridge started his report on 14 May by repeating ‘the preface used by the great earl (as he termed him, meaning the earl of Salisbury)’. Ibid. 269b, 284b, 310a, 311a; Bowyer Diary, 160-3.

Speaking in the supply debate on 10 Feb., Doddridge defended the proposed grant as ‘usual, dutiful, opportune’, and declared that it would ‘prevent the higher House’ from criticizing the lower for lack of generosity. He successfully moved for a committee to draft a subsidy bill, to which he himself was then appointed. CJ, i. 266a-b. In the debate on 20 Feb., following the previous day’s conference about supply and grievances, he made an extended defence of the Crown’s need for money, stating that the ‘treasure of a king, [was] the safety of our kingdom’. He sought to excuse the rapid escalation of royal expenditure under James, citing factors such as Elizabeth’s funeral, the coronation, and the ‘augmentation of charge’ as a result of a larger royal family. He also defended James’ ‘gracious gifts’, which he said were ‘due in equity’ and also the result of ‘incessant importunity’. Moreover, he argued that peace would bring prosperity ‘though [they did] not feel [it] presently’. Ibid. 271b-272a. On 25 Feb. he spoke in favour of composition for purveyance, calling for a temporary bill to that effect. Ibid. 274b

On 14 Mar. Doddridge clashed with William Noye in the debate following Sir Robert Hitcham’s motion for an additional vote of taxation. Noye spoke against a further vote, provoking, in the words of the diarist Robert Bowyer, ‘bitter words’ from Doddridge. In particular, Doddridge took exception to Noye’s argument that an over-generous grant would enable Catholics to link high taxation with Protestantism. Doddridge, perhaps deliberately misinterpreting Noye, said that the latter ‘imputeth the taxes to religion’, which lead him to ‘doubt of his [Noye’s] loyalty’. This was too much for the House and Doddridge was called to the bar. When the Speaker tried to defend him, ‘the House called out let him excuse himself’. Doddridge, however, was unrepentant, declaring that he had ‘spoken out of a good conscience and I care not where I answer it’. Astonishingly, he escaped punishment, and further debate about his misconduct was deferred. A decade later Richard Martin* recalled having come to Doddridge’s rescue, giving ‘some probable reason to deliver him’, but while Martin certainly spoke in the debate there is no contemporary evidence that he mentioned Doddridge. Bowyer Diary, 80-1; Harl. 1581, f. 226; CJ, i. 284b-5b.

Doddridge brought in the subsidy bill on 10 Apr., which received a second reading and commitment six days later and was successfully reported by Doddridge on the 18th. CJ, i. 296a, 299b, 300b. On 5 Apr. Doddridge was sent to the Lords to ask for a conference on proposed church reforms, but on being nominated later that day to carry a second explanatory message he excused himself ‘for divers causes known to himself’, adding ‘that the Lords might conceive this House to be slenderly furnished if they shall send one man twice together’. Sir Henry Neville I was substituted in his place, despite Martin’s protest ‘that it is against the order and custom that any Member shall refuse any service committed to him’. Martin evidently suspected that Doddridge was unsympathetic to the grievances, as he added that ‘the Lords ... know that a messenger sent from hence saith nothing of himself, but merely by direction’. Ibid. 294a; Bowyer Diary, 103-5. Nevertheless, at the conference on 14 Apr., Doddridge ‘made an excellent speech’ according to Sir Roger Wilbraham*, when he condemned excommunication for ‘trivial causes, for non-appearance the first day, for a bundle of leeks’. ‘Journal of Sir Roger Wilbraham’ ed. H.S. Scott, Cam. Misc. X. (Cam. Soc. ser. 3. iv), 82. On 13 May Doddridge reported a further conference with the Lords, at which the lord chancellor (Thomas Egerton†), speaking on behalf of the upper House, had comprehensively rejected the proposed reforms. Bowyer Diary, 158-9.

Doddridge spoke at the second reading of the bill for the better assurance of copyhold lands, which he said he was both ‘pro et contra’, and he was appointed to the committee. CJ, i. 260b. He also spoke on the bill concerning ecclesiastical fees on 14 Feb., declaiming that ‘Parliament [is] a Council of wisdom, a Court of justice’. He acknowledged that ‘fees grow greater’, but stated that some were ‘ancient, not grievous’ and ‘answerable to his [the officials] pains’. Again he was appointed to the committee. Ibid. 268b. On 9 Apr., in a debate on grievances, he defended the pre-emption of tin. Six days later he contributed to the debate about Sir Roger Aston’s* greenwax patent, but to what effect is not known, and he was also one of those listed as contributing the debate about the clothing bill on 19 May. Ibid. 295b, 298b, 310b.

Doddridge was appointed to 23 committees in the third session and made seven speeches. On 19 Nov. 1606 he was again put on the privileges committee, and five days later he was named to attend a conference with the Lords over the Union. He was among those instructed to prepare for another such meeting with the peers on 11 December.Ibid. 316a, 324b, 329b. On 16 Feb. he moved unsuccessfully for Sir Christopher Pigott’s anti-Scottish outburst to be referred to a committee. Ibid. 1014a. On 18 Feb. he made a long speech on the naturalization of Scots born before the accession of James to the English throne, covering British and Continental precedents, and concluding that opposition was pointless as, ‘we do but prevent the operation of time. After a short time all will be as now is desired’. Ibid. 1016a. At the conference of 25 Feb., however, he joined four other common lawyers in putting forward nine reasons ‘that those born since His Majesty came to the Crown of England within Scotland should not be naturalized in England’. Ibid. 340a; Lansd. 216, f. 64v.

On 1 May Doddridge opposed Sir Edwin Sandys’ motion for a ‘perfect Union’, which was designed to sabotage the entire project, arguing that there was ‘nothing perfect which hath not had his time to begin and grow to fullness’. Although he admitted that a perfect Union was the ultimate objective, he observed that ‘we are diversely distracted in the course’. He defended the existing proposals, arguing that abolishing the hostile laws was of benefit to the English as well as the Scots because, ‘as the law now standeth, we lost life for carrying a horse into Scotland’. Denying, despite his family connections, any knowledge of commerce, he nevertheless argued that the differences between the customs rates in England and Scotland were ‘great disadvantages, whether we speak of an Union, or no’. He argued that it was pointless for the Commons to try to place restrictions on trade with Scotland because the monarch could dispense with any penal law. However, when turning to the question of naturalization, he argued that the Commons could trust the restrictions that had been included on the employment of Scots in English government, arguing that ‘the king’s prerogative may be bound by an Act of Parliament’. Consequently he appears to have argued both that the prerogative could abrogate statute and that statute could constrain the prerogative. CJ, i. 1039a; Bowyer Diary, 284-6.

According to Thomas Wilson*, when the House went into committee on 8 May to consider the bill to repeal the hostile laws, Doddridge and Bacon were nominated for the chair, but it was ‘reclaimed by the populars, it being secretly alleged amongst them that their hands were in penning the bill’. Letters and Life of Francis Bacon ed. J. Spedding, iii. 343. Doddridge was among those ordered on 11 June to prepare for a conference with the Lords on the bill. CJ, i. 382a. He spoke in the debate concerning Nicholas Fuller’s proposal concerning defence witnesses in border trials on 5 June, arguing for a ‘mean course’, proposing that ‘such witnesses, as the jury shall think, upon their oaths, to be competent and fit’ should be admitted. Ibid. 1049b. The following day he carried the bill to enable Salisbury to exchange Theobalds for various Crown properties up to the Lords. Ibid. 380a. On 25 June he resigned the solicitorship in favour of Bacon, and on resuming the coif was appointed a king’s serjeant. A week later he attended the committee for continuance of the Marian statute against unlawful assemblies, which he supported. He moved for the question to be put and was one of those who unsuccessfully argued that in the division those who opposed the measure should ‘draw themselves to the nether end of the room’. Bowyer Diary, 366,

In the autumn of 1608 Sir Edward Coke* and Sir Henry Hobart* unsuccessfully recommended Doddridge to Salisbury as most suitable for the attorneyship of the Court of Wards and the most likely to appreciate the appointment ‘in respect he loves so well his ease and lives chiefly about London’. HMC Hatfield, xx. 238. However, he lost out to Sir James Ley*, and consequently was still king’s serjeant when Parliament resumed in 1610. The first of his 14 committee appointments was to report from the supply conference of 15 Feb., at which Salisbury first sketched out the Great Contract, although in the event the duty was performed by others. Procs. 1610 ed. E.R. Foster, ii. 28. On 27 Feb. he was named to prepare for a conference with the Lords on the absolutist statements made by Dr. Cowell’s law dictionary the Interpreter, and on 2 Mar. it was resolved that he and the other Crown lawyers were ‘to be employed’ in the matter. CJ, i. 400b, 404a. On 4 May he spoke in favour of the bill to encourage the use of sea-sand as fertilizer in Devon and Cornwall. Ibid. 424b. He also spoke in support of the king’s message on supply when it was debated on 14 June, pleading ‘a present and urgent necessity’. Ibid. 439a.

Doddridge’s major contribution to the proceedings of the fourth session concerned impositions. As solicitor general he had participated in the prosecution of John Bate for failing to pay the imposition on currants in 1606, when, according to Lord Treasurer Buckhurst, by then 1st earl of Dorset, he ‘satisfied the court but also, in my conscience, even the merchants themselves’, as to the king’s right to the levy. HMC Hatfield, xviii. 396. The precedent that Bate’s case established enabled the Crown to expand impositions rapidly, so that by 1610 they were a major grievance. On 25 May Doddridge was among those instructed to search the records in the Tower for precedents, and on 29 June he delivered a lengthy speech, widely circulated in manuscript, in defence of the levies. Speaking in a committee of the whole House, he began by making a series of concessions to the opponents of the levies, which, he conceded, were excessive. He admitted that the Crown had no right to levy taxes unilaterally, just as it had no right to deprive someone of their livelihood or to change the law. However, he asserted that customs duties had been collected by the Crown before any recorded grant by Parliament, and that consequently they were ‘an ancient inheritance to the Crown by the Common Law’. After again asserting his ignorance of trade, he continued by arguing that the king had to have the power to retaliate in case a foreign power placed impositions on trade with England. He proceeded to discuss the various precedents which had been cited during the debate, but entered a caution that ‘old statutes are obscure ... for that we are so far removed from the times wherein they were made. And therefore, there are two excellent expositions to be admitted of them, the histories of the time and the present practice pursuant’. He then proceeded to argue in detail that none of the precedents that had been produced related to the Crown’s right to the impositions. He concluded by calling for the Commons to compose a ‘humble petition’ calling on James to reduce the number of impositions. Procs. 1610, ii. 118, 201-21.

Doddridge was appointed to king’s bench in 1612, where, according to Fuller, he earned the sobriquet of ‘the sleeping judge’ because of his preference for hearing legal arguments with his eyes shut. Fuller, i. 412. He was sufficiently independent that when the 4th earl of Dorset (Sir Edward Sackville*) wrote to him to ask for a stay in a suit against two of his servants, Doddridge gave the letter to an officer ‘to read in public; which being done, the judge, like a true Roman, ordered the suit should proceed’. T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, i. 192. He was markedly more subservient to the Crown, however, giving judgment against the defendants in the Five Knights’ case in 1627. Justifying his conduct before the Lords the following April, he said he had ‘one foot in the grave’. Historical Collections ed. J. Rushworth, i. 507.

Doddridge drew up his will on 1 Aug. 1628 and died the following month at his Surrey home in his 73rd year. He left the place of his burial to the discretion of his executors, who followed his ‘wish it might be in the cathedral church of St. Peter at Exeter near the tomb of Dorothy my wife’. His epitaph reads

Learning adieu! for Doddridge is gone To fix his earthly to an heavenly throne. Rich urn of learned dust, scarce can be found More worth enshrined in six feet of ground.

In a final display of judicial impartiality he left the Annals of Cardinal Baronius and the very different ‘ecclesiastical histories composed by certain divines of Magdeburg’ to Exeter College, Oxford. Having always ‘esteemed books as the best of my treasures’ and lacking surviving children, he left most of the contents of his three libraries, at Serjeants’ Inn, Fosters and Mount Radford, to his nephew John Doddridge†, who was later responsible for the publication of some of his writings and was elected for Barnstaple in 1646. PROB 11/154, f. 249; Dodderidge and Shaddick, 16-17; R. Izacke, Antiqs. of City of Exeter (1677), p. 152.