DODWELL, HENRY I), scholar, theologian and controversial writer, was born at Dublin. He became a fellow of Trinity college, Dublin, but having conscientious objections to taking orders he relinquished his fellowship in 1666. In 1688 he was elected Camden professor of history at Oxford, but in 1691 was deprived of his professorship for refusing to take the oath of allegiance to William and Mary. He retired to Shottesbrooke and devoted himself to the study of chronology and ecclesiastical polity. He was regarded as one of the greatest champions of the non-jurors; but afterwards promulgated the doctrine that the soul is naturally mortal, and that immortality could be enjoyed only by those who had been baptised by one set of regularly ordained clergy, being thus a privilege from which dissenters were hopelessly excluded.
His chief works on classical chronology are: A Discourse concerning Sanchoniathon's Phoenician History (1681), Annales Thucydidei et Xenophontei (1702) ; Chronologia Graeco-Romana pro hypothesibus Dion. Halicarnassei (1692) ; Annales Velleiani, Quintilianei, Statiani (1698) ; and a larger treatise entitled De veteribus Graecorum Roman orumque Cyclis (1701) .