Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 15.djvu/194

 have felt a woman's pride in carrying to a conclusion a scheme in which Margaret had exhibited so much interest, and which had naturally spread to the ladies of her household. Elizabeth described herself as ‘vera fundatrix jure successionis,’ and though there is no documentary evidence of her having helped it with money, the prosperity of the college was due to her influence with her husband, and she gave it the first code of statutes in 1475. As owing its existence to two queens-consort, the college was henceforth known as ‘Queens' College,’ in the plural. Doket's policy in steering his young foundation so successfully through the waves of contending factions fully warrants Fuller's character of him as ‘a good and discreet man, who, with no sordid but prudential compliance, so poised himself in those dangerous times betwixt the successive kings of Lancaster and York that he procured the favour of both, and so prevailed with Queen Elizabeth, wife to King Edward IV, that she perfected what her professed enemy had begun’ (Hist. of Univ. of Cambr. ed. 1840, p. 162). Doket also succeeded in ingratiating himself with the king's brother, Richard, and obtained his patronage and liberal aid. As Duke of Gloucester, he founded four fellowships, and during his short tenure of the throne largely increased the emoluments of the college by grants of lands belonging (in right of her mother) to his Queen Anne, who had accepted the position of foundress and patroness of this college. These estates were lost to the college on the accession of Henry VII. The endowments were also augmented by Doket's offer to place the names of deceased persons on the bede-roll of the college in return for a gift of money. Doket governed his college prudently and successfully for thirty-eight years, having lived long enough to see his small foundation of four fellows grow into a flourishing society of seventeen, and his college richly endowed and prosperous under the patronage of three successive sovereigns. He died 4 Nov. 1484. His age is not stated, but he was probably about seventy-four. His will, dated 2 Nov. of the same year, is printed by Mr. Searle in his history of the college (p. 56). He was buried by his desire in the choir of his college chapel, ‘where the lessons are read.’ His gravestone with the matrix of his incised effigy existed in Cole's time (c. 1777), but it has now disappeared (Cole MSS. ii. 17, viii. 124). As he is styled ‘magister’ to the last, he was probably not doctor either in divinity or in any other faculty. Mr. Mullinger writes of him: ‘We have evidence which would lead us to conclude that he was a hard student of the canon law, but nothing to indicate that he was in any way a promoter of the new learning, which already before his death was beginning to be heard of at Cambridge’ (Univ. of Cambr. i. 317). In spite of the great names which add dignity and ornament to the foundation of the college, there can be no doubt that Doket must be regarded as the true founder of Queens' College, and that the words of Caius express the simple truth, that ‘his labour in building the college and procuring money was so great that there are those who esteem the magnificent work to have been his alone’ (Hist. Acad. Cant. 70), so that he is justly styled in the history of benefactors ‘primus presidens ac dignissimus fundator hujus collegii.’ He made a catalogue of the library of his college, consisting of 299 volumes, in 1472, and also an inventory of the chapel furniture in the same year.

[Searle's Hist. of the Queens' College of St. Margaret and St. Bernard, pp. 2–104, issued by the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, 1867; Mullinger's Univ. of Cambr. vol. i; Fuller's Hist. of Univ. of Cambr. pp. 161–3; Willis and Clark's Architectural Hist. of Univ. of Cambr. i. lxii–v, ii. 1–11, iii. 438.]  DOLBEN, DAVID (1581–1633), bishop of Bangor, born in 1581 at Segrwyd, near Denbigh, was of a respectable family of some position, whose names constantly occur in the municipal and commercial records of that town. His father's name was Robert Wynn Dolben. In 1602 he was admitted into St. John's College, Cambridge, where he still remained in 1606, when he wrote some verses on the death of a former fellow, Sir Edward Lewknor. In 1609 he proceeded master of arts. On 18 Jan. 1618 he was appointed vicar of Hackney in Middlesex, which benefice he held until May 1633. In 1621 he was made vicar of Llangerniew in his native county. In 1625 he became prebendary of Vaynol, or the golden prebend, in the cathedral of St. Asaph, a post he held until 1633, just before his death. In 1626 he was sworn capital burgess of Denbigh. In 1627 he became doctor of divinity. Towards the end of 1631 he was appointed bishop of Bangor. He was elected on 18 Nov., and the temporalities restored on the same day. He was consecrated on 4 March 1631-2 by Archbishop Abbot at Lambeth, on which occasion he distributed four pounds to the archbishop's servants. A Mr. Austin preached the sermon. Dolben was, however, in failing health. In June 1633 hunters after bishoprics declared that he was 'crazy and very sickly,' and intrigued for the succession to his post. In the autumn of the same year he was seized with a mortal sickness at the town house of his see in Shoe Lane, Holborn, where he died on 27 Nov. He was buried