John Dowden

John Dowden DD LLD (29 June 1840 – 30 January 1910) was an Irish-born bishop and ecclesiastical historian. He served in the Scottish Episcopal Church as the Bishop of Edinburgh.

The Right Reverend

John Dowden

DD, LLD
Bishop of Edinburgh
ChurchScottish Episcopal Church
DioceseEdinburgh
Elected1886
In office1886-1910
PredecessorHenry Cotterill
SuccessorSomerset Walpole
Orders
Ordination1865
Consecration1886
Personal details
Born(1840-06-29)June 29, 1840
Cork, Ireland
DiedJanuary 30, 1910(1910-01-30) (aged 69)
Edinburgh, Scotland
BuriedDean Cemetery
NationalityIrish
DenominationAnglican
SpouseLouisa Jones
Children6
Alma materTrinity College Dublin

Life

He was born in Cork on 29 June 1840, as the fifth of five children of John Wheeler Dowden and Alicia Bennett. His famous brother was the poet, professor and literary critic Edward Dowden. Although his father was Presbyterian, John followed his mother by becoming an Anglican, although he attended both churches in his youth. When he was sixteen he became a student at Queen's College, Cork as a medical student. John began encountering health problems, problems which made it difficult to pursue his original career. In 1858, while contemplating a religious career, he enrolled at Trinity College, Dublin. He graduated in 1864 and was ordained as a deacon, moving to Sligo. In the same year he married, wedding a woman named Louisa Jones, by whom he would eventually father six children. John was ordained as a priest in 1865, and moved through a variety of positions slowly rising in prestige. John continued his studies and received a Bachelor of Divinity (BD) degree from Trinity College.

13 Learmonth Terrace, Edinburgh
The grave of Bishop John Dowden, Dean Cemetery, Edinburgh

In 1886, he was consecrated as the Episcopalian bishop of Edinburgh and served in St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral in Edinburgh's West End and served this role until death.[1] In the late 19th century he lived at 10 Gillsland Road in the Merchiston district of Edinburgh[2] but in his later years he lived at 13 Learmonth Terrace, a substantial Victorian terraced house, west of the cathedral.[3]

He died in Edinburgh on 30 January 1910 and is buried in the Victorian north extension of Dean Cemetery in western Edinburgh. He is buried with his wife Louisa and son John Wheeler Dowden LLD, FRCSEd (1866-1936) who was president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.[4]

His memorial in St Marys Cathedral was designed by Sir Robert Lorimer in 1911.[5]

Scholarly work

As a scholar, he was author of many works of thorough scholarship, including The Medieval Church in Scotland: its constitution, organisation and law (1910) and The Bishops of Scotland: being notes on the lives of all the bishops, under each of the sees, prior to the Reformation (1912). Both were published posthumously by James Maclehose and Sons, Glasgow. The former, although extremely dated, is still regarded as one of the main starting points in medieval Scottish ecclesiastical history, and the latter remains to this day one of the most comprehensive guides to medieval Scottish episcopal prosopography. An earlier work, The Workmanship of the Prayer Book: In Its Literary and Liturgical Aspects, (London: Methuen, 1899) remains an indispensable analysis of the background to and ethos of the Book of Common Prayer.

Dowden gave the Rhind lectures in 1901, on "The Constitution, Organisation, and Law of the Mediaeval Church in Scotland".

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References
  1. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
  2. Edinburgh and Leith Post Office Directory 1894-95
  3. Edinburgh and Leith Post Office Directory, 1908-9
  4. "John Wheeler Dowden". Edinburgh Medical Journal. 43 (5): 334–335. 1936. ISSN 0367-1038. PMC 5306741.
  5. Dictionary of Scottish Architects: Robert Lorimer

Further reading
  • Dowden, Alice (1910) "Biographical sketch" in: Dowden, John: The Medieval Church in Scotland
  • Strong, Rowan. "Dowden, John (1840–1910)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/32883. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  • Watt, D. E. R., "Scotland: Religion and Piety", in Steve Rigby (ed.), A Companion to Britain in the Later Middle Ages, (Oxford, 2003), pp. 396–410 (info on p. 396)
Religious titles
Preceded by
Henry Cotterill		 Bishop of Edinburgh
1886–1910		 Succeeded by
Somerset Walpole
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