General Notes

II. The Rev. Robert D'Oyly,[429] A.M., the pious and beneficent Rector of Fryerning in Essex, who settled 3000l. by his will, upon the "Society for the Relief of Clergymen's Children and Widows." This learned and excellent person was educated at Wadham College, Oxford, of which he became a Fellow; and took his A.M. degree, June 1682.[430] After this he seems to have been private chaplain to the celebrated Lady Elizabeth Hastings, foundress of a church at Leeds, and of five scholarships at Queen's College, Oxford; and in 1711 published a sermon preached by him on 17th Sept. 1710, in her Ladyship's private chapel at Bath, intituled, "Providence vindicated, as permitting wickedness and mischief." The dedicatory address discloses his great enmity to the Pretender, and his anxiety to enlist all good Protestants against the Pope; his adulation of Queen Anne is absolutely ridiculous,[431] After this he became rector of Ginge Hospital in Essex; and while there, published in 1728 his "Four Dissertations," in answer to a blasphemous letter sent to him in June 1722, signed S. T. — This book extends over 500 octavo pages, and treats of the Fall of Adam, the Assistance to the Publishers of the Gospel, Prophetic Revelation, and the Resurrection.[432] Soon afterwards he obtained Fryerning Rectory in Essex, but resigned his Oxford fellowship before his death. He made his will 3d March 1731; desires burial at South-rope beside his father, and a quiet, economical funeral. He then settles 3000l. on the Society incorporated temp. 2 Car. I. for the Relief of Clergymen's Children and Widows. He leaves to Theophilus Earl of Huntingdon portraits of the Hastings family, one of which was that of the late Earl; and to his honoured kinsman Sir John D'Oyly of Chislehampton, Bart., two portraits, one of which was that of Whitelock. He died at an advanced age, 10 April 1733, s.p., and his will was proved 16 April 1733, in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, by John Markham, one of the Treasurers of the Society for Relief of Clergymen's Children and Widows.[433]