Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/D'Oylie, Thomas
D'OYLIE or D'OYLY, THOMAS, M.D. (1548?–1603), Spanish scholar, third son of John D'Oyly of Greenland House in the parish of Hambleden, Buckinghamshire, by his wife Frances, daughter of Andrew Edmonds of Cressing Temple, Essex, and formerly a maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth, was born in Oxfordshire in or about 1548. Elected fellow probationer of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1563, he took his degrees in arts, B.A. 24 July 1564, M.A. 21 Oct. 1569, and supplicated for the bachelorship of medicine in 1571, but unsuccessfully (Reg. of the Univ. of Oxford, Oxford Hist. Soc., p. 253). He therefore left Oxford with a resolve to study at some foreign university, when, happening to attract the notice of Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, he came to be employed abroad in a civil as well as a medical capacity. He also became intimate with Francis Bacon, and, on going abroad, travelled for some time with the latter's brother, Anthony Bacon, as appears by a letter dated 11 July 1580 from Francis, then a student at Gray's Inn, to D'Oylie at Paris, in which he signs himself ‘your very friend’ (Addit. MS. 4109, f. 122, copy of letter by Dr. T. Birch). The Bacon and D'Oylie families were connected, D'Oylie's eldest brother, Sir Robert D'Oylie, having married Elizabeth Bacon, half-sister to Francis (Strype, Annals, 8vo edit. vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 210). About 1581 D'Oylie proceeded M.D. at Basle; he was certainly doctor in 1582, for he is thus described in an endorsement by the Earl of Leicester on one of his letters to his lordship, dated ‘from Antwerp ye 28 of Maye 1582’ (Cotton MS. Galba, C. vii. f. 233). In this letter he gives particulars of the siege of Oudenarde, and would appear to have then held a medical appointment in the army at Antwerp. He continued some time abroad; and there are further letters from him to the Earl of Leicester, dated at Calais, 12 Nov. 1585 and 14 Nov. 1585, and at Flushing, 23 Nov. 1585. In the first he gives a highly diverting account of an adventure that befell him and his ‘companie,’ who, having ‘put out from Grauelinge the 13 of October, the 14 of the same weare taken not farr from Dunkerk … and wear rifled of al their goods and apparrel unto their dubletts and hose,’ ‘with daggers at our throts,’ adds D'Oylie; he mentions, however, that they had found nothing in his chest but ‘phisick and astronomie books,’ he having ‘drowned all his lordship's letters out of a porthole.’ From the ‘hel hounds of Dunkerk, as he calls them, he had then just escaped to Calais (ib. viii. ff. 206–8). On his return to England D'Oylie settled in London, where, having been previously admitted a licentiate on 21 May 1585, he became a candidate of the College of Physicians on 28 Sept. 1586, and a fellow on the last day of February 1588. He was incorporated at Oxford on his doctor's degree 18 Dec. 1592. The following year he was appointed censor, and was re-elected in 1596 and 1598. At the beginning of the last-named year, as he himself informs us, he accompanied Sir Robert Cecil into France. D'Oylie, who was physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, died in March 1602–3, and was buried on the 11th of that month in the hospital church, St. Bartholomew the Less, in Smithfield (Malcolm, Lond. Rediviv. i. 308). His will, dated 7 March 1602–3, was proved on 25 June following (Reg. in P. C. C. 46, Bolein). He married Anne, daughter of Simon Perrott, M.A., of North Leigh, Oxfordshire, and fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. By this lady, who died before him, and was buried in St. Bartholomew the Less, he had issue three sons: 1, Norris D'Oylie (Bloxam, Reg. of Magd. Coll. Oxford, iv. 233; marriages in Chester, London Marriage Licenses, ed. Foster, p. 417); 2, Michael D'Oylie, who was a captain in the army and afterwards settled in Ireland (his marriage is given in Chester, loc. cit.); 3, Francis D'Oylie, ‘my litle sonne borne 18th Feb. 1597[–8] at my going with Sir Robert Cicill, knight, into Fraunce’ (will); and three daughters: 1, Frances D'Oylie; 2, Margery D'Oylie, who married Hugh Cressy, barrister-at-law, of Lincoln's Inn, and of Wakefield, Yorkshire, and became the mother of Hugh Paulinus Cressy [q. v.]; 3, Katharine D'Oylie.
D'Oylie, whose knowledge of languages was very considerable, had a share in the compilation of ‘Bibliotheca Hispanica. Containing a Grammar, with a Dictionarie in Spanish, English, and Latine, gathered out of diuers good Authors: very profitable for the studious of the Spanish toong. By Richard Percyuall Gent. The Dictionarie being inlarged with the Latine, by the aduise and conference of Master Thomas Doyley Doctor in Physicke,’ 2 pts., 4to, ‘imprinted at London, by Iohn Iackson, for Richard Watkins, 1591.’ D'Oylie, as Percyvall informs the reader, ‘had begunne a dictionary in Spanish, English, and Latine; and seeing mee to bee more foreward to the presse then himselfe, very friendly gaue his consent to the publishing of mine, wishing me to adde the Latine to it as hee had begunne in his, which I performed.’ The book, ‘enlarged and amplified with many thousand words’ by John Minsheu, was reissued, fol., London, 1599, and fol., London, 1623. D'Oylie's own abortive undertaking had been licensed to John Wolf on 19 Oct. 1590, with the title, ‘A Spanish Grammer conformed to our Englishe Accydence. With a large Dictionarye conteyninge Spanish, Latyn, and Englishe wordes, with a multitude of Spanishe wordes more then are conteyned in the Calapine of x: languages or Neobrecensis Dictionare. Set forth by Thomas D'Oyley, Doctor in phisick, with the cōfirence of Natyve Spaniardes’ (Arber, Transcript of the Stationers' Registers, ii. 266).
Before his death D'Oylie would appear to have had his revenge on the governor of Dunkirk, for by a letter to Sir Robert Sydney from Rowland Whyte, his court agent, dated St. Stephen's day, 1597, we find that the governor was then prisoner in D'Oylie's house in London (Collins, Letters and Memorials of State, ii. 78). D'Oylie's name is spelt Doyley in the records of St. Bartholomew's Hospital.
[Bayley's Account of the House of D'Oyly, pp. 24, 48–51; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), i. 737; Wood's Fasti Oxon. (Bliss), i. 164, 184, 187, 260; Bloxam's Reg. of Magd. Coll. Oxford, ii. lxxiv, lxxv, iv. 233; Munk's Coll. of Phys. (1878), i. 95–6; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1601–1603, p. 190.]