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Isaac Watts and Philip Doddridge: Letters, Lectures and Lives in Eighteenth-Century Dissenting Culture

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Isaac Watts and Philip Doddridge: Letters, Lectures and Lives in Eighteenth-Century Dissenting Culture Isaac Watts and Philip Doddridge: Letters, Lectures and Lives in Eighteenth-Century Dissenting Culture Marie Therese Whitehouse Department of English, Queen Mary, University of London and Dr Williams’s Centre for Dissenting Studies A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 2011 I confirm that this is my own work and that use of material from other sources has been fully acknowledged. 2 Abstract Isaac Watts (1674-1748) and Philip Doddridge (1702-1751) were among the most frequently published religious writers of the eighteenth century and each man’s identity as a Protestant dissenter was an important aspect of his intellectual reputation. This thesis draws on letters, lecture notes, manuscript accounts of academies, and a range of printed texts and paratexts to explore the connections between dissent, education and publishing in the eighteenth century. It emphasises the importance Watts, Doddridge and their associates attached to personal relationships in their private interactions and in print. The first chapter describes how Doddridge developed the educational scheme of his own tutor, John Jennings, and it examines the use of lectures attributed to Doddridge at other academies in order to determine how his methods were adapted by later tutors. Chapter two provides publishing histories of Doddridge’s three major posthumous works, The Family Expositor, A Course of Lectures and ‘Lectures on Preaching’. It emphasises the collaborative nature of these editing projects, and contains completely new information on relations between booksellers and copyright holders in the eighteenth century. Chapter three describes the content and rhetoric of Isaac Watts’s educational writings, his editorial roles, and the process of publishing his collected Works after his death in order to examine the creation of a place for dissenting modes of learning in eighteenth-century culture. The final chapter surveys published biographies of Watts and Doddridge. The difficulties of smoothing over the more controversial elements of each man’s activities are explored and competing claims over the memory of Watts are investigated. The chapter examines biographical compendia and denominational magazines to consider the uses of print by dissenters into the nineteenth century. 3 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 6 List of abbreviations 7 Notes on transcription, letters and dates 9 Introduction 11 1. Defining dissent, describing academies 2. Watts and Doddridge in scholarship 3. Religion and eighteenth-century studies 4. Dissent and book history 5. Letters and friendship networks 6. Contours and content Chapter One 38 Dissenting academy teaching in the tradition of John Jennings and Philip Doddridge 1. John Jennings’s academy course 2. Doddridge’s ‘Account of Mr Jennings’s Method’ 3. A sample of Doddridge’s changes: pneumatology, ethics and divinity 4. The circulation and use of Doddridge’s lectures i) Pneumatology, ethics, and divinity ii) Lectures on preaching 5. The dissemination of Doddridge’s views on education Chapter Two 82 The posthumous publication of Philip Doddridge’s works 1. The Family Expositor in Doddridge’s lifetime 2. Subscribing to The Family Expositor 3. Publishing volumes IV-VI of The Family Expositor (1752-56) 4. The Family Expositor after 1756 5. Publishing Doddridge’s academy lectures 6. A Course of Lectures: editorial statements and presentation of material 7. The ‘Lectures on Preaching’: anxieties about publication 8. The ‘Lectures on Preaching’ in print 9. Manuscript, print and reputation Chapter Three 136 Education, publishing and dissent: Isaac Watts’s works 1. Watts’s prefaces and recommendations 2. Watts’s educational writings: methods and audiences 3. Watts’s Works 1748-53: editorial negotiations 4. The published Works (1753) 5. Reactions to Watts 6. Watts in the Republic of Letters 4 Chapter Four 184 Biography and the construction of dissent in print 1748-1820 1. Representations of Isaac Watts: biography and controversy 2. Job Orton’s Memoirs 3. Andrew Kippis, print and national culture 4. Biography in denominational magazines 5. Collections of lives 6. Dissenters’ lives in a national community Conclusion 235 Appendix 241 I. Dissenting academy manuscript materials II. Letter extracts from Benjamin Sowden to Mercy Doddridge III. Invitation to Isaac Watts’s funeral Bibliography 247 5 Acknowledgements I am delighted to thank all the individuals and institutions who have given me support during this project. Without the resources and staff of Dr Williams’s Library, this project would have been impossible. The staff there helped me immeasurably and always shared their expertise with great cheerfulness, for which I thank them all. My thanks also to librarians and archivists at the British Library, the John Rylands University Library, University of Manchester, the libraries of Harris Manchester and Brasenose Colleges, Oxford, the library of the Bristol Baptist College, the Library and Archives of the Society of Jesus, the Roderic Bowen Library, University of Wales, Trinity St David’s, Northampton Public Library and Castle Hill United Reformed Church, Northampton. I would like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council, for funding the Collaborative Doctoral Award which allowed me to pursue this research, and the Trustees of Dr Williams’s Library for the financial support they have provided. I am deeply grateful to both my supervisors. Isabel Rivers has been unfailingly generous with her time, knowledge and attention, and her questions and guidance have opened up new paths for investigation and have enriched my understanding. David Wykes has shared his extensive knowledge of dissent in general and the holdings of Dr Williams’s Library in particular, and his wise questions prompted much thought. Many thanks to Stephen Burley, Rose Dixon, Kyle Roberts and Olivia Smith, who all helped by reading and commenting on draft chapters and a great deal more. Mark Burden, Simon Mills, Simon Dixon and Inga Jones, all members of the Centre for Dissenting Studies, have been delightful and generous colleagues. Françoise Deconinck-Brossard, Maurice Whitehead and Christopher Reid have all shared their knowledge with me, for which I thank them. Finally, thanks so much to my family and to Steve, Gillian, Rosie, Steph, Tom and Andy for encouragement, companionship and stimulating conversations. 6 Abbreviations Add. MS Additional manuscript BBC Bristol Baptist College Biographia Biographia Britannica: or, the Lives of the Most Eminent Britannica Persons who have Flourished . from the Earliest Ages, to the Present Times, 2nd edn, ed. A. Kippis, 6 vols. (London, 1778-95) BL British Library Cal. G. F. Nuttall, A Calendar of the Correspondence of Philip Doddridge (London, 1979) CHCN Castle Hill United Reformed Church, Northampton CHBB, V The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain Volume V: 1695-1830, ed. Michael F. Suarez S.J. and Michael L. Turner (Cambridge, 2009) Course of Philip Doddridge, A Course of Lectures on the Principal Lectures (1763) Subjects of Pneumatology, Ethics and Divinity, ed. S. Clark (London, 1763) Course of Philip Doddridge, A Course of Lectures on the Principal Lectures (1794) Subjects of Pneumatology, Ethics and Divinity, ed. A. Kippis, 2 vols. (London, 1794) Doddridge, The Works of the Rev. P. Doddridge, D.D., ed. E. Works Williams and E. Parsons, 10 vols. (Leeds, 1802-05) DWL Dr Williams’s Library, London Humphreys Philip Doddridge, The Correspondence and Diary of Philip Doddridge, ed. J. D. Humphreys, 5 vols. (London, 1829-31) 7 HMCO Harris Manchester College, Oxford JRUL The John Rylands University Library, the University of Manchester MHS Massachusetts Historical Society Monthly The Monthly Repository of Theology and General Repository Literature NCL New College, London. The collection is now at Dr Williams’s Library ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography OED Oxford English Dictionary Orton, Job Orton, Memoirs of the Life, Character and Writings of Memoirs the Late Philip Doddridge, D.D. (Shrewsbury, 1766) TNA: PRO The National Archives: Public Records Office Watts, Works The Works of the Late Reverend and Learned Isaac Watts, D.D., ed. P. Doddridge and D. Jennings, 6 vols. (London, 1753) 8 Notes on transcription, letters and dates A note on transcription This thesis contains many quotations from manuscripts. These have been transcribed in such a way as to correspond to the original as closely as is feasible in the medium of type. Original spelling and punctuation, and crossings out as they appear in the manuscripts have been retained throughout. Words added as an afterthought above the original line of text have been given between carats in the form: ^word^. Words and letters missing through a tear or obscured by a blot are given in angle brackets. Contractions remain unexpanded, unless the meaning is unclear. In such cases, the missing letters in other contracted words are supplied in square brackets, as are explanatory words. A note on letters References to Doddridge’s correspondence appear throughout this thesis. There are three printed sources: a selection of his letters, edited by Thomas Stedman and published in 1793; an edition of his correspondence published between 1829 and 1831 by his great-grandson, John Doddridge Humphreys; and a calendar of his correspondence produced by G. F. Nuttall in 1979 (Cal.). The last of these is the most reliable source, and contains letters which do not appear in either of the earlier editions. Both Stedman’s and Humphreys’s editions conform to different editorial standards from those expected today; in particular, Humphreys sometimes changes dates of letters or merges two letters into one. For a study of Humphreys’s changes to manuscript letters, see Cal., Appendix I: ‘Examples of variation in transcribing’. This thesis refers to manuscript letters whenever possible, but sometimes a printed edition of correspondence is the only extant source for a particular letter. In such cases, all available printed versions of the letter have been compared. In references, the letter number from Cal. is always given. If the quotation given is from either of the printed correspondence editions, an abbreviated reference to that work is provided.
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