Great, Anselm, Bernard, Bonaventura and Thomas Aquinas. To these St Alphonso dei Liguori was added by Pope Pius IX.
DOCTORS’ COMMONS, the name formerly applied to a society of ecclesiastical lawyers in London, forming a distinct profession for the practice of the civil and canon laws. Some members of the profession purchased in 1567 a site near St Paul’s, on which at their own expense they erected houses (destroyed in the great fire, but rebuilt in 1672) for the residence of the judges and advocates, and proper buildings for holding the ecclesiastical and admiralty courts. In 1768 a royal charter was obtained by virtue of which the then members of the society and their successors were incorporated under the name and title of “The College of Doctors of Law exercent in the Ecclesiastical and Admiralty Courts.” The college consisted of a president (the dean of Arches for the time being) and of those doctors of law who, having regularly taken that degree in either of the universities of Oxford or Cambridge, and having been admitted advocates in pursuance of the rescript of the archbishop of Canterbury, were elected fellows in the manner prescribed by the charter. There were also attached to the college thirty-four proctors, whose duties were analogous to those of solicitors. The judges of the archiepiscopal courts were always selected from this college. By the Court of Probate Act 1857 the college was empowered to sell its real and personal estate and to surrender its charter, and it was enacted that on such surrender the college should be dissolved and the property thereof belong to the then existing members as tenants in common for their own use and benefit. The college was accordingly dissolved, and the various ecclesiastical courts which sat at Doctors’ Commons (the Court of Arches, the Prerogative Court, the Faculty Court and the Court of Delegates) are now open to the whole bar.
DOCTRINAIRES, the name given to the leaders of the moderate and constitutional Royalists in France after the second restoration of Louis XVIII. in 1815. The name, as has often been the case with party designations, was at first given in derision, and by an enemy. In 1816 the Nain jaune réfugié, a French paper published at Brussels by Bonapartist and Liberal exiles, began to speak of M. Royer-Collard as the “doctrinaire” and also as le père Royer-Collard de la doctrine chrétienne. The pères de la doctrine chrétienne, popularly known as the “doctrinaires,” were a French religious order founded in 1592 by César de Bus. The choice of a nickname for M. Royer-Collard does credit to the journalistic insight of the contributors to the Nain jaune réfugié, for he was emphatically a man who made it his business to preach a doctrine and an orthodoxy. The popularity of the name and its rapid extension to M. Royer-Collard’s colleagues is the sufficient proof that it was well chosen and had more than a personal application. These colleagues came, it is true, from various quarters. The duc de Richelieu and M. de Serre had been Royalist émigrés during the revolutionary and imperial epoch. MM. Royer-Collard himself, Lainé, and Maine de Biran had sat in the revolutionary Assemblies. MM. Pasquier, Beugnot, de Barante, Cuvier, Mounier, Guizot and Decazes had been imperial officials. But they were closely united by political principle, and also by a certain similarity of method. Some of them, notably Guizot and Maine de Biran, were theorists and commentators on the principles of government. M. de Barante was an eminent man of letters. All were noted for the doctrinal coherence of their principles and the dialectical rigidity of their arguments. The object of the party as defined by M. (afterwards the duc) Decazes was to “nationalize the monarchy and to royalize France.” The means by which they hoped to attain this end were a loyal application of the charter granted by Louis XVIII., and the steady co-operation of the king with the moderate Royalists to defeat the extreme party known as the Ultras, who aimed at the complete undoing of the political and social work of the Revolution. The Doctrinaires were ready to allow the king a large discretion in the choice of his ministers and the direction of national policy. They refused to allow that ministers should be removed in obedience to a hostile vote in the chamber. Their ideal in fact was a combination of a king who frankly accepted the results of the Revolution, and who governed in a liberal spirit, with the advice of a chamber elected by a very limited constituency, in which men of property and education formed, if not the whole, at least the very great majority of the voters. Their views were set forth by Guizot in 1816 in his treatise Du gouvernement représentatif et de l’état actuel de la France. The chief organs of the party in the press were the Indépendent, renamed the Constitutionnel in 1817, and the Journal des débats. The supporters of the Doctrinaires in the country were chiefly ex-officials of the empire,—who believed in the necessity for monarchical government but had a lively memory of Napoleon’s tyranny and a no less lively hatred of the ancien régime—merchants, manufacturers and members of the liberal professions, particularly the lawyers. The history of the Doctrinaires as a separate political party began in 1816 and ended in 1830. In 1816 they obtained the co-operation of Louis XVIII., who had been frightened by the violence of the Ultras in the Chambre introuvable of 1815. In 1830 they were destroyed by Charles X. when he took the Ultra prince de Polignac as his minister and entered on the conflict with Liberalism in France which ended in his overthrow. During the revolution of 1830 the Doctrinaires became absorbed in the Orleanists, from whom they had never been separated on any ground of principle (see France: History).
The word “doctrinaire” has become naturalized in English terminology, as applied, in a slightly contemptuous sense, to a theorist, as distinguished from a practical man of affairs.
See Duvergier de Hauranne, Histoire du gouvernement parlementaire en France (Paris, 1857–1871), vol. iii.
DOCUMENT, strictly, in law, that which can serve as evidence or proof, and is written or printed, or has an inscription or any significance that can be “read”; thus a picture, authenticated photograph, seal or the like would furnish “documentary evidence.” More generally the word is used for written or printed papers that provide information or evidence on a subject. The Latin documentum, from which the word is derived, meant, in classical times, a lesson, example or proof (docere, to teach), and only in medieval Latin came to be applied to an instrumentum, or record in writing. The classical Latin use is found in English; thus Jeremy Taylor (Works, ed. 1835, i. 815) speaks of punishment being a “single and sudden document if instantly inflicted” (see Diplomatic; and Evidence).
DODD, WILLIAM (1729–1777), English divine, was born at Bourne in Lincolnshire in May 1729. He was admitted a sizar of Clare Hall, Cambridge, in 1745, and took the degree of B.A. in 1750, being fifteenth wrangler. On leaving the university he married a young woman of a more than questionable reputation, whose extravagant habits helped to ruin him. 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 M.A. at Cambridge, subsequently becoming LL.D. He was a strenuous supporter of the Magdalen hospital, 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 1768 he had a fashionable congregation and was held in high esteem, but indiscreet ambition led to his ruin. On the living of St George’s, Hanover Square, becoming vacant in 1774, Mrs Dodd wrote an anonymous letter to the wife of the lord chancellor, offering three thousand guineas if, by her assistance, Dodd were promoted to the benefice. This letter having been traced, a complaint was immediately made to the king, and Dodd was dismissed from his office as chaplain. After residing for some time at Geneva and Paris, he returned to England in 1776. He still continued to exercise his clerical functions, but his extravagant habits soon involved him in difficulties. To meet his creditors he forged a bond on his former pupil Lord Chesterfield for £4200, and actually received the money. He was detected, committed to prison, tried at the Old Bailey, found guilty, and sentenced to
