Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 13.djvu/394

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Dalgairns
388
Dalgairns

siastical at the deprivation of Cawdrey on 30 May 1587.

In February 1587–8 Dale, Henry, earl of Derby, William, lord Cobham, Sir James Crofts, and John Rogers, LL.D., were sent as ambassadors to the Prince of Parma to treat for a league between England and Spain. The negotiations were broken off on account of the fitting out of the Spanish armada for the invasion of England. To the parliament of 4 Feb. 1588–9 Dale was once more returned for Chichester. He was present as a commissioner at the trial, on 18 April 1580, of Philip Howard, earl of Arundel, for high treason. It has been stated that he went on an embassy to Portugal. He died on 17 Nov. 1589, at his house near St. Paul's, London, and was buried at St. Gregory's in that city. It appears that he also had a residence in Hampshire, and that he was a justice of the peace for that county. His daughter Dorothy was the wife of Sir John North, knight, eldest son of Roger, lord North.

On account of his great professional skill and experience, he was consulted by Sir Christopher Hatton, when lord chancellor, in all cases of importance or difficulty. When he was employed as a diplomatist abroad a question arose as to the language in which the discussions should be conducted, and the Spanish ambassador sarcastically suggested that French would be the most proper because Dale's royal mistress entitled herself queen of France. ‘Nay, then,’ retorted Dale, ‘let us treat in Hebrew, for your master calls himself king of Jerusalem’ (Howell, Letters, ed. 1705, iv. 432, 433).

[Addit. MS. 12504 f. 119; Calendars of State Papers, Dom. (1547–80) pp. 204, 298, 314, 328, 386, 417, 457, 590, 640, 645, 655, 656, (1581–90) pp. 35, 63, 224, 237, 257, 381; Wright's Queen Elizabeth, i. 155, 449–51, 479, 494, 500, 510, 512; Lloyd's State Worthies, pp. 564–7; Cooper's Athenæ Cantab. ii. 62; Lodge's Illustrations (1838), ii. 351; Lists of Members of Parliament (official return), i. 398, 411, 415, 416, 420, 425.]

T. C.

DALGAIRNS, JOHN DOBREE, in religion BERNARD (1818–1876), priest of the Oratory, was born in the island of Guernsey on 21 Oct. 1818, being the son of William Dalgairns, who had done gallant service as an officer of Fusileers in the Peninsular war. Of Scottish descent on the father's side, on the mother's he came from the Dobrees, one of the old Norman families of Guernsey. He went very early to Oxford, became a scholar of Exeter College, and graduated B.A. (second class in literis humanioribus) in 1839, and M.A. in 1842 (Cat. of Oxford Graduates, ed. 1851, p. 168). While still a youth he was conspicuous among the catholicising party in the Anglican church, and he became a marked man from a letter written by him to the Paris ‘Univers’ on ‘Anglican Church Parties.’ The Rev. Thomas Mozley, referring to this period, remarks that ‘Dalgairns was a man whose very looks assured success in whatever he undertook, if only the inner heat which seemed to burn through his eyes could be well regulated’ (Reminiscences, ed. 1882, ii. 13). He was engaged with others in translating the ‘Catena Aurea,’ a commentary on the gospels, collected out of the works of the fathers by St. Thomas Aquinas, and published with a preface by John Henry Newman (4 vols. Oxford, 1841–5). To the ‘Lives of the English Saints,’ edited by Newman, while yet an Anglican, Dalgairns contributed biographies of St. Stephen Harding, St. Helier, St. Gilbert, and St. Aelred. The first of these was translated into French (Tours, 1848), and German (Mainz, 1865). Dalgairns joined Newman's band of disciples at Littlemore, and to the austerities of his life there was probably due the failing health of his later years.

On Michaelmas day 1845 he was received into the Roman catholic church by Father Dominic the Passionist, who on the 9th of the following month performed the same office for Dr. Newman (Oliver, Catholic Religion in Cornwall, p. 166; Browne, Annals of the Tractarian Movement, 3rd edit. p. 101). He then proceeded to France, and resided for some time at Langres in the house of a celebrated ecclesiastic, the Abbé Lorain, and there he was admitted to holy orders in 1846. The following year he joined Father Newman in Rome, where he resided at Santa Croce, and learned the Oratorian institute under Padre Rossi. After a brief sojourn at Maryvale and at St. Wilfrid's in Staffordshire, he settled with the London Oratory in King William Street, Strand, in May 1849, and laboured with great zeal as a preacher and confessor. For three years (October 1853 to October 1856) he stayed at Birmingham, by permission of the London Oratory, to assist that branch of the congregation, but he resumed his labours in the metropolis in 1856, became superior of the London Oratory (then removed to Brompton) in 1863, and held that office till 1865 (Gillow, Bibl. Dict. of the English Catholics, ii. 3). During this period he published ‘The Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus; with an introduction on the History of Jansenism,’ Lond. 1853, 8vo, frequently reprinted; ‘The German Mystics of the Fourteenth Century,’ Lond. 1858, 8vo, reprinted from the ‘Dublin Review;’ and ‘The Holy