the end of the year he was appointed on the commission for revising the civil affairs of the navy [see Briggs, Sir John Thomas], and in the spring of 1808 to a seat at the board of admiralty, which he retained till the summer of 1813, when he was appointed commander-in-chief at Plymouth. He was advanced to be vice-admiral on 25 Oct. 1809, and admiral on 12 Aug. 1819. In Jan. 1815 he was nominated K.C.B., and G.C.B. on 16 May 1820. He died 19 May 1828. His nephew, Lieutenant Domett, was lost in the Vigilant schooner in February 1804: ‘a promising young officer,’ wrote Commodore Hood in reporting the event, ‘who was succeeding fast to the skill of his gallant uncle, the captain of the Channel fleet.’
[Marshall's Royal Naval Biography, i. 243.]
DOMINICUS À ROSARIO. [See Daly, Daniel or Dominic, 1595–1662.]
DOMINIS, MARCO ANTONIO de (1566–1624), divine, was born in 1566 in the island of Arbe, on the Dalmatian coast. He was educated, as he tells us, by the jesuits, and was at first a most ardent disciple of their system. But as he advanced in theology he began to have doubts, arising from the rigid way in which prohibited books were kept, even from priests and bishops. The fathers of the order were proud of his mathematical and physical attainments, and obtained for him the post of professor of mathematics at Padua, and of logic and rhetoric at Brescia. Upon his ordination De Dominis became a popular preacher. After a time he was promoted to the bishopric of Segni, in the state of Venice, much to the annoyance of the jesuits, who wished to keep him in their order. He records in his account of this part of his life his utter disgust at the character of the theology then prevailing, the ignorance of scripture, and the abuses which were rife among the clergy. Being advanced to the archbishopric of Spalatro, De Dominis was necessarily involved in the great quarrel between the republic of Venice and the see of Rome in the early part of the seventeenth century. There was thus much ill-will between him and the pope, and all the more because the pope had imposed on him a yearly pension of five hundred crowns, to be paid out of the revenues of the see of Spalatro to the Bishop of Segni. Angered at this, and (according to his own account) horrified at the abuses prevalent in the Romish church, the archbishop began to entertain the notion of quitting his position. He had at this time composed a part of his great work, ‘De Republicâ Ecclesiasticâ,’ which dealt severely with Rome, and he was anxious to get facilities for publishing it. At Venice the archbishop had the opportunity of taking counsel with the able Englishmen then resident there—Sir Henry Wotton [q. v.] and his chaplain, William Bedell [q. v.] He ascertained from them that he would be well received in England, and he determined to migrate thither. In the tract which he published to explain his conduct (Consilium Profectionis, London, 1616) he says: ‘This my departure, my exit or flight from Babylon—I desire to be clear of all suspicion of schism. I fly from errors and abuses; I fly that I may not be partaker of their sins, and their punishment. But I will never separate myself from the charity which I owe to the holy catholic church, and to all who are in communion with her.’ Before quitting Venice the archbishop had obtained, surreptitiously, a copy of the manuscript of Father Paul's ‘History of the Council of Trent,’ which he afterwards published in London without the author's permission. He repaired first of all to Chur in Switzerland, and then to Heidelberg. At this place he published the most violent of all his attacks upon Rome in a little book called ‘Scogli del Christiano naufragio,’ which was afterwards republished in England. He arrived in this country in 1616, and was very well received by James I, who handed him over to the Archbishop of Canterbury (Abbot) to be entertained at Lambeth until some provision could be made for him. Soon after his arrival in England De Dominis preached a sermon in Italian (afterwards printed) in which he inveighed with great violence against the abuses of the Roman church. Regarded as a convert to Anglicanism the king conferred upon him (May 1618) the deanery of Windsor and the mastership of the Savoy. He presented himself to the living of West Ilsley, Berkshire, having made a shift to read the articles in English (Goodman, Court of King James). The writers of that period (Fuller, Wilson, Hacket, Goodman, Crakanthorpe) are full of details as to the archbishop. He was corpulent, irascible, pretentious, and exceedingly avaricious. His principal employment in his preferment seems to have been to endeavour to find flaws in the leases, that the tenants might be again subjected to a fine. His whole life, indeed, seems to have been one of dishonesty. But that he was a very able and an extremely learned man there can be no question. In 1617 was published in London the first part of his great work ‘De Republicâ Ecclesiasticâ.’ The printing of the remainder was afterwards carried on at Frankfort. The whole work occupies three folio volumes. It
