{{Short description|English churchman and academic}} {{Use dmy dates|date=September 2019}} {{Infobox person | name = Joseph Dornford | image = | imagesize = | alt = | caption = | birth_name = | birth_date = {{birth date|1794|01|09|mf=y}} | birth_place = | death_date = {{death date and age|1868|01|18|1794|01|09|mf=y}} | death_place = Plymtree, Devon, England }} '''Joseph Dornford''' (1794–1868) was an English churchman and academic, senior tutor of Oriel College, Oxford before becoming rector of Plymtree in Devon.
==Early life== Born 9 January 1794, he was the son of Sir Josiah Dornford of Deptford, Kent, and the half-brother of the writer Josiah Dornford; his mother Esther Fawcett was a Cambridge lady and good friend of the evangelical leader Charles Simeon, and her son Thomas Truebody Thomason by her first marriage was father of James Thomason. He entered young at Trinity College, Cambridge, which in 1811 he suddenly left to serve as a volunteer in the Peninsular War.<ref name="DNB">{{cite DNB|wstitle=Dornford, Joseph|volume=15}}</ref><ref name="ODNB">{{cite ODNB|id=7841|title=Dornford, Joseph|first=M. C.|last=Curthoys}}</ref><ref>{{cite ODNB|id=27251|title=Thomason, James|first=David J.|last=Howlett}}</ref>
==In Oxford== After some military service, Dornford returned and entered Wadham College, Oxford in 1813, where he proceeded B.A. in 1816. In 1817 he was elected to a Michel fellowship at The Queen's College, and in 1819 to a fellowship at Oriel College, where he graduated M.A. 1820. In that year he joined the Russian physician Joseph Hamel on an ascent of Mont Blanc in which three guides were killed.<ref name="DNB"/><ref name="acad">{{acad|id=DNFT809J|name=Dornford, Joseph}}</ref>
Dornford was successively elected tutor and dean of Oriel;<ref name="DNB"/> he was ordained priest in the Church of England in 1822, and was a university proctor in 1830.<ref name="acad"/> He succeeded the very different John Keble in the tutorship, in 1823.<ref name="ODNB"/> In that role he played a part in the pre-history of the Oxford Movement, tentatively supporting innovations by John Henry Newman in college teaching. The senior of the four Oriel tutors in 1828 on the election as Provost of Edward Hawkins, Dornford with Newman, Hurrell Froude and Robert Wilberforce, he opposed as they did Robert Peel's 1829 candidacy for Oxford's seat in parliament, preferring Robert Inglis, against the background of Catholic Emancipation. The tutors innovated without consulting Hawkins, with a system that was more pastoral and clerical.<ref>{{cite book|last=Turner|first=Frank M|title=John Henry Newman: The Challenge to Evangelical Religion|year=2002|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=9780300173093|pages=68–9}}</ref> Hawkins, who initially had had time for Newman's views, was an Oriel Noetic and was alienated by the Peel issue. College politics became ever more divisive, as Hawkins objected to the changes in teaching.<ref>{{cite book|author=C. Brad Faught|title=Oxford Movement: A Thematic History of the Tractarians and Their Times|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ActQ_CZvk-EC&pg=PA12|date=1 November 2010|publisher=Penn State Press|isbn=978-0-271-04595-5|page=12}}</ref>
As the tutorial issue was resolved in 1829 and 1830, Dornford swung his support behind Hawkins.<ref>{{cite book|author=David Newsome|title=The Parting of Friends: The Wilberforces and Henry Manning|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WTT34mhMtC8C&pg=PA95|year=1966|publisher=Gracewing Publishing|isbn=978-0-8028-3714-1|page=95}}</ref> Edward Copleston, now a bishop but a past Noetic and Provost of Oriel, reported to Hawkins that Dornford had split from the other tutors, and gave a nuanced analysis of the teaching debate.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://archive.org/stream/a605676400rannuoft#page/200/mode/2up|title=Oriel College|last=Rannie|first=David Watson|year=1900|work=Internet Archive|page=201|accessdate=23 October 2014}}</ref> Froude, Newman and Wilberforce resigned as tutors in 1830.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Stewart J. Brown|author2=Peter B. Nockles|author3=Peter Benedict Nockles|title=The Oxford Movement: Europe and the Wider World 1830-1930|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=idjRHGWKjG4C&pg=PA18|date=28 June 2012|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-107-01644-6|page=18}}</ref>
==Later life== In 1832 Dornford was presented by his college to the rectory of Plymtree, and in 1847 he was collated by Henry Phillpotts a prebendary of Exeter Cathedral. He died at Plymtree on 18 January 1868, aged 74. Dornford's manner was taken to be more that of a soldier than a priest's.<ref name="DNB"/>
==Works== Dornford published sermons. One of these, "The Christian Sacraments", was included in a volume edited by Alexander Watson, ''Sermons for Sundays, Festivals, and Fasts, and other Liturgical Occasions, contributed by bishops and other clergy of the church'' (1845).<ref name="DNB"/> He wrote an account of the Mont Blanc climb for the ''New Monthly Magazine''.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://lordbyron.cath.lib.vt.edu/persRec.php?&selectPerson=JoDornf1868|title=Lord Byron and His Times, ''Joseph Dornford''|accessdate=23 October 2014}}</ref>
==Notes== {{reflist}} '''Attribution'''<!--Please do not reformat, for the sake of those using screen-readers--> {{DNB|wstitle=Dornford, Joseph|volume=15}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Dornford, Joseph}} Category:1794 births Category:1868 deaths Category:19th-century English Anglican priests Category:Fellows of Oriel College, Oxford Category:Fellows of the Queen's College, Oxford