DOLBEN, JOHN, eldest son of William Dolben (elected Oxford 1603, qv); b. 24 Mar 1624/5; adm.; KS 1637; elected to Christ Church, Oxford 1640, matr. 3 Jul 1640, Westminster Student 1640 - 7 Jul 1648, when deprived for refusing to submit to the Parliamentary Visitors; BA and MA 9 Dec 1647; BD and DD 3 Oct 1660; joined royalist army as volunteer, wounded at Marston Moor and again during siege of York; promoted for his bravery to the ranks of Capt. and Major; returned to studies at Oxford 1646; ordained deacon (Chichester) 1656; with John Fell and Richard Allestree continued to hold the services of the prescribed Church of England in the house of Dr Thomas Willis in Oxford, an act of loyalty commemorated by Sir Peter Lely in his picture of the three divines in Christ Church Hall; Canon of Christ Church, Oxford 27 Jul 1660- Nov 1666; Rector of Newington cum Britwell, Oxfordshire 1660; Chaplain in Ordinary to Charles II; Prebendary of St. Paul’s 21 Apr 1661 – Nov 1666; Archdeacon of London 11 Oct 1662- May 1664; Vicar of St. Giles, Cripplegate, London, 15 Nov 1662 - res 18 Mar 1663/4; Dean of Westminster 3 Dec 1662 - Aug 1683; he and the Westminster Scholars assisted in saving St. Dunstan in the East from the Great Fire 3 Sep 1666 (Autobiography of William Taswell, Camden Soc. Pub. lv, 12); Clerk of the Closet 1664 - Dec 1667, deprived on Clarendon’s fall; consecrated Bishop of Rochester 25 Nov 1666; Lord High Almoner 21 Oct 1675 - Mar 1684; Archbishop of York from 16 Aug 1683; FRS 29 Mar 1665; a prelate of great presence and courage, and one of the most popular preachers of the day; the subject of lines 868-9 of John Dryden (qv)’s Absalom and Achitophel; m. 14 Jan 1657/8 Catherine, dau. of Ralph Sheldon, Stanton, Derbs. [check], and niece of Most Rev. Gilbert Sheldon DD, Archbishop of Canterbury; d. 11 Apr 1686. DNB.
DONELLAN, JOHN, son of Lieut. -Col. --- Donellan; b. 6 Nov 1737; adm. Jan 1750/1 (Porten's); in school list 1752; RMA Woolwich; Gent. Cadet 4 Mar 1753; Ensign, 39th Foot 13 Nov 1755; Capt. Company of Foot, EICS Bengal 15 Dec 1757; served on expedition to Golconda and wounded at Chumbole 14 Dec 1758; court-martialled and dismissed the service 28 Apr 1759; on return to England became known as “Diamond” Donellan from a stone which he brought back from India; Master of Ceremonies at Brighton, and at The Pantheon, Oxford Street, London; restored to rank of Capt, half-pay, 39th Foot, c. 1772; convicted at Warwick Assizes Mar 1781 of having poisoned his brother-in-law Sir Theodosius Edward Allesley Boughton, Bart., at Lawford Hall, Warwickshire, with a dose of laurel water; m. Jun 1777 Theodosia, only dau. of Sir Edward Boughton, Bart.; hanged at Warwick 2 Apr 1781. [Perhaps bapt. Saddleworth, Yorks., 3 Nov 1737 (sic), son of Richard Donellan and Mary Whitehead (IGI)]
DRYDEN, JOHN, son of Erasmus Dryden, Titchmarsh, Northants., and Mary, dau. of Rev. Henry Pickering, Rector of Aldwincle All Saints, Northants.; b. 19 Aug 1631; adm.; KS; wrote while a KS an elegy on the death of Lord Hastings, published by R. B. in Lachrymae Musarum, 1649; elected head to Trinity Coll. Cambridge 1650, adm. pens. 18 May 1650, scholar 2 Oct 1650; “walled” for a fortnight and not allowed to go outside the college “excepting for sermons” Jul 1652, for disobedience to the Vice-Master (W. W. Rouse Ball, Cambridge Papers, 218-9); forfeited scholarship by non-residence and thus ineligible for a Fellowship; BA 1653/4; MA Lambeth 17 Jun 1668; mourned Cromwell’s death in Heroic Stanzas 1658; celebrated the Restoration in Astraea Redux 1660, and Charles II’s Coronation in a Panegyric 1661; one of original Fellows of Royal Society 20 May 1663; author, Annus Mirabilis 1667; Poet Laureate and Historiographer 18 Aug 1670 - 11 Dec 1688; Sir Martin Mar-All, one of his most successful plays, was produced in 1667, Aurungzebe, his finest rhymed tragedy, in 1675, and All for Love, his finest play, in 1678; his Absalom and Achitophel was published in 1681; defended Anglicanism in Religio Laici, 1682; Collector of Customs, Port of London 17 Dec 1683; a Roman Catholic convert 1686; author, The Hind and the Panther, 1687; translations by him of Juvenal and Persius were published in 1693, and of Livy in 1697; wrote Alexander’s Feast 1697 [check] and Fables Ancient and Modern, 1700; his complete works, with a life by Sir Walter Scott, were published in 1808; in a note to the third satire of Persius Dryden wrote “I remember I translated this satire when I was a King’s Scholar at Westminster School, for a Thurday-night exercise; and believe, that it, and many others of my exercises of the nature in English verse, are still in the hands of my learned master the Rev. Dr. Busby” (Works, xiii, 230); Dryden refers to Busby’s excessive use of the rod in a letter to Charles Montagu (ibid., xviii, 159-60) and to the curious custom of “custos” in Hall in a letter to Busby (ibid., xviii, 98); Dryden’s “form” was long preserved up School; m. 1 Dec 1663 Lady Elizabeth Howard, eldest dau. of Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Effingham; d. 1 May 1700. His body lay in state at the College of Physicians for ten days, and he was buried in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey. DNB.