He had been taught how to write; he now stood before a signature he had never penned. The Earl of Chesterfield looked upon a bond bearing his name and denied having subscribed to it. For the gentleman presenting the instrument, the difficulty instantly altered in nature. It was no longer a question of securing a payment or remedying an overlooked formality. It had become necessary to discover who had introduced into commerce an act of will that the Earl had never expressed.
The name of William Dodd came with the paper. Dodd had been tutor to the young nobleman; he was likewise a renowned preacher, a man whose voice had filled fashionable chapels and drawn forth abundant alms. That he should have spoken on behalf of his former pupil had seemed natural enough. Men now perceived what that intimacy had permitted: an old reliance had advanced so far as to take the place reserved for consent.
The Preacher Men Flocked to Hear
An imaginary flower-woman, established hard by a chapel where Dodd preached, recognized the carriages before she knew the faces. She knew on which days the ladies alighted lingeringly, which conversations prolonged themselves beside the carriage doors, and at what precise moment a nosegay might be offered with profit. She caught scarcely a word of the sermon. Yet, when a patroness dried her eyes while feeling for her coin, she knew the preacher had prevailed. Dodd’s renown thus reached her stall, mingled with the small silver the faithful had kept back from the alms-dish.
He possessed in truth that gift of moving the heart. Sprung from a clerical house, trained at Cambridge and seasoned by literary toil, Dodd had become an admired divine. At the Magdalen House, a charitable asylum whose beginnings he championed in 1758, his sermons drew an auditory of the highest distinction. The contributions gathered were no mere ornament about his person: they sustained a charity to which he had devoted time, labor, and zeal.
Patronage followed. Dodd obtained preferments, livings, and a place among the King’s chaplains. He received into his house youths of good family, among them Philip Stanhope, destined to succeed as Earl of Chesterfield. To instruct such youths required keeping up a figure before their parents quite as much as opening books before them. He maintained a town residence, another in the country, schemes for proprietary chapels, and numerous publications. His consequence demanded money even before his habits demanded still more.
Debts accumulated. In 1774, an attempt to secure an ecclesiastical living by means of an offer of money addressed to the Lord Chancellor’s lady turned to open scandal. Dodd was struck from the list of royal chaplains. His former pupil did not abandon him on that account: having become Lord Chesterfield, he still received him and procured for him the living of Wing. A measure of favor thus survived his disgrace. It did not, however, restore balance to his accounts.
The Paper Meant to Wait
Early in February 1777, Dodd caused a bond of four thousand two hundred pounds, bearing Chesterfield’s name, to be negotiated. He gave out that he acted for the young lord and desired that the affair be conducted with privacy. The broker Lewis Robertson undertook to raise the funds. The lenders might well have hesitated before an engagement whose apparent principal did not appear to confirm the covenants; the divine’s name served to bridge that distance.
The instrument bore a counterfeit signature. Dodd’s own name stood upon it as an attesting witness. Robertson added his own without having witnessed the Earl’s subscription, according to the narrative of the Newgate Calendar. The bond was delivered to the attorneys charged with examining its validity; one of them waited upon Chesterfield. The moment the Earl disowned the paper, the transaction could no longer remain confined between the broker and the divine.
In the counting-house we imagine around this discovery, an entering clerk draws toward him the ledger of maturities. Chesterfield’s name has not been inscribed there long. He pauses before drawing a line through it: he has been informed that the bond is forged, not that the business is ended. His master bids him leave the leaf open and seek out Dodd’s lodgings. The young man rises with a sense of relief he would be at a loss to explain. An errand in the street appears to him far simpler than keeping that paper before his eyes.
Dodd was taken into custody. He immediately surrendered a considerable portion of the monies received and offered to make full restitution of the remainder. The press of the moment brought him back to an assertion he was ever to repeat: he had believed he could discharge the debt in good time; he had never intended to work an ultimate loss. He pleaded that regard be had to his declared design, to the satisfaction tendered, and to the ties uniting him to his noble pupil. He would have had the restored gold carry away with it the fatal parchment and all that had just been set in motion.
Yet restitution could not extinguish the felony. The parties concerned might well have desired a private accommodation; the magistrate felt bound to prosecute. The name usurped belonged to the Earl, but the confidence breached affected every man who relied upon the faith of a signature. Dodd had sought only to gain time. The law made him understand that the offense did not wait, for its completion, upon the day when he might have failed to pay.
The Names Beneath the Petitions
The trial took place at the Old Bailey in February. The defense raised an objection touching the testimony of Robertson, who was himself privy to the transaction. The point was reserved for the opinion of the judges; it did not avail to save Dodd. Found guilty, and formally condemned to death in May after the legal argument had been determined, he lay in a prison where his gift of speech might still serve some turn, but no longer that of turning the key in his cell door.
He took up his pen. He sued for succor. Dr. Samuel Johnson exerted himself on his behalf, composing several papers intended to second his applications, together with a sermon addressed to his fellow convicts. That eminent writer needed not to deem the forgery harmless in order to desire that a man should not be hanged for having committed it. Around Dodd, the prayer for mercy drew together those who remembered his good works, those who were moved by his fall, and those who shrank from the severity of the capital sentence.
Petitions were handed about and received thousands of signatures. After the counterfeit name that had undone him, legions of authentic names were set in rank to entreat that his life might be spared. Appeals were made to congregation, parish, and public bodies; charitable foundations recalled what they owed to his past eloquence. His old reputation became once more a resource. It carried into Newgate hopes whose solidity it was impossible to gauge, for many of those who promised their interest possessed no voice in the royal prerogative.
Our flower-woman watched a sheet being carried through the street for signatures. She recognized the clergyman’s name before she understood the prayer of the petition. She inquired whether the money had been restored; the person bearing the parchment began an explanation, when another passer-by broke in upon him. She waited. Behind her, the cut blooms stood in need of water. By the time they returned to her question, she had already determined to give her mark or name, without being certain that an answer had been rendered.
The Voice That Would Not Return
The royal clemency was withheld. On the 27th of June 1777, Dodd was conveyed to Tyburn alongside John Harris, a youth condemned for another crime. The way was thronged with spectators. The narrative of the Ordinary, John Villette, preserved in the ancient collections, represents him in prayer, conferring with his fellow sufferer, and recovering beside that wretched youth something of the sacred ministry he had exercised through so many years. Yet he did not thereby become again the courtly divine for whose carriage ladies waited before the chapel doors.
Dodd was turned off. The expressions of repentance, the restitution, the powerful recommendations, and the multitude of signatures had not stayed the execution of the law. He left behind him books, readers, an afflicted widow, and an event whose pathos no longer hung upon his living voice. His sermons might still be printed; he who had delivered them would never return to expound their passages before his auditory.
At our flower-woman’s stall, a customer some few days later brought a printed broadside recounting the doctor’s end. He laid it between two earthen pots while he sought his pence. She moved to shift the paper lest the water spoil it, caught sight of Dodd’s name, and let it lie for a moment where it was. Then she lifted the pots, one by one. She knew not yet what she would do with the leaf; for the present, she only wished it kept dry.