Mercy Doddridge

Mercy Doddridge (1709-1790) was born at Worcester, the daughter of Richard Maris (d. 1752) and Elizabeth Brindley (d. c. 1743). Her relation, William Hankin (d. 1723), was the first Baptist minister at Upton upon Severn. She went to live there with her Hankin relations because of various issues in her family in Worcester. She met Doddridge in the home of her great-aunt, Mrs Edward Owen, in Coventry in July 1730, and they were married at Upton on 22 December 1730. They lived first in Marefair, Northampton, where the Academy was also situated, and then in 1740 to a large town house in Sheep Street rented from Lord Halifax of Horton. Letters in this collection note that they lived in a third residence in Mary Street after the removal of the Academy to Daventry and remained in that residence until their removal to Tewkesbury by the early 1770s. Her chief claim to fame is her status as the wife of Philip Doddridge and her work in preserving his writings and continuing their publication after his death. As W. N. Terry notes in the ODNB entry on Mercy, she was an educated woman and able to discuss theological and secular matters with her husband. She often apologized for her poor spelling and grammar, yet she and her husband were friends with many noblemen and their wives, including the Prince of Wales. She oversaw the posthumous publication of many of her husband’s works and managed to create a substantial living endowment through the sale of the copyrights and subscriptions, as well as an annuity that had been established for her by the Northampton church after his death in 1751. She died at Tewkesbury in 1790.