Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/541

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Doyle
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Doyle

organ, 'Leaves of Healing,' were translated into German and French, some of them into Danish, Norwegian, and Dutch, and some even into Chinese and Japanese. Dowie twice visited England, where a congregation of disciples had been formed in London; in 1903 he was not well received in London and Manchester; in 1904 some disrespectful allusions to King Edward, uttered in Australia, caused an uproar at the Zionist tabernacle in Euston road, London. In April 1906, while Dowie was in Mexico for his health, came a revolt in Zion against his sway. He was charged with having advocated polygamy in private, and was deposed by the officers of his church, who, with the concurrence of his wife and son, put Deacon Granger in possession, not only of the church property, but even of Dowie's private belongings. Dowie instituted a suit in the United States District Court for reinstatement, estimating the property at two millions sterling. The court decided that, as the property had been made by contributions to Dowie in his representative capacity, it passed to his successor in the office of general overseer. In the course of the suit it was stated that Dowie's account in Zion City bank was overdrawn more than 480,000 dollars, that he had been drawing for his personal use at the rate of 84,000 dollars a year, and had lost 1,200,000 dollars in Wall Street in the 1903-4 'slump.' Dowie was now a broken man. He was afflicted with partial paralysis, and with strange illusions as to the importance of his intervention in international politics. He died on 9 March 1907 at Shiloh House, Zion City, Illinois.

Dowie was an attractive personality, a man of fine build, though obese and bow-legged, with brilliant, sparkling eyes and a flowing white beard; a turban veiled his baldness, and his fancy dress was tasteful and picturesque. He did not shine as a speaker, being long-winded and dull. After his death a rival fanatic, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, 'the promised Messiah,' published a pamphlet (n.d., but written in April 1907), in which the fate of Dowie was treated as a 'divine judgment' on his opposition to Islam.

[R. Harlan, J. A. Dowie, and the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church in Zion, 1906 (three portraits); The Times, 11 March 1907; Annual Register, 1907; sundry pamphlets and leaflets emanating from Zion city.]

A. G.


DOYLE, JOHN ANDREW (1844–1907), historian, born on 14 May 1844, was son of Andrew Doyle (d. 1888), for some time editor of the 'Morning Chronicle,' and afterwards a poor law inspector. His mother (d. Dec. 1896) was the youngest of three daughters of Sir John Easthope, baronet [q. v.], through whom he inherited property which made him independent of a profession. At Eton from 1853 to 1862, Doyle, after a year of private tuition, matriculated at Balliol College, Oxford, in October 1863. He graduated B.A. in 1867, with a first class in the school of literæ humaniores, but continued to reside in Oxford for several terms in order to study history. In the spring of 1869 he obtained the Arnold prize for an essay on 'The English Colonies in America before the Declaration of Independence'; and in November of the same year he was elected to a fellowship at All Souls, which he retained until his death. Though he was not a continuous resident in Oxford, he spent much time in the college, and took a large part in college affairs, helping in the framing of the statutes made by the commissioners of 1887, in the management of the college library, of which he was librarian from 1881 to 1888, and in the work of general administration.

His home was with his parents at Plas-dulas in Denbighshire until 1880, when they moved to a property on which they built a house at Pendarren near Crickhowell in Breconshire. There Doyle continued to live after his parents' death. He took an active interest in local affairs, more especially in what concerned the higher education in Wales. He served as high sheriff of Breconshire in 1892-3, and was an alderman of the county council from 1889 until his last illness. He was a member of the joint committee for Breconshire under the Welsh Intermediate Education Act, 1889, of the Breconshire education committee under the Act of 1902, and of the council and agricultural committee of Aberystwyth College. He paid much attention to the development of agriculture in his own neighbourhood, which profited from his knowledge and interest in the breeding of stock and poultry.

The main literary work of his life was the 'History of the American Colonies down to the War of Independence,' an outcome of his studies for the Arnold essay. His aim was 'to describe and explain the process, by which a few scattered colonies along the Atlantic seaboard grew into that vast confederate republic, the United States of America.' After publishing in 1875 a 'Summary History of America' ('Historical Course for Schools') there followed the