John Doget

Who was John Doget?

John Doget was an English diplomat, scholar and Renaissance humanist. He was the nephew of Cardinal Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury. He was born in Sherborne, Dorset, and was probably educated in Bourchier's household before being admitted to Eton College as a king's scholar about 1447. From Eton he passed to King's College, Cambridge, in 1451, and became a fellow there in 1454.

In 1460 Doget was ordained, and gained his Master of Theology in 1464. In the same year he left Cambridge and went to Bologna, where he studied Canon law and earned his doctorate in 1469. He returned to Cambridge in 1463.

Doget was sent to Rome to help arrange a peace between Pope Sixtus IV and Florence in 1479, dealing also with the princes of Sicily and Hungary. He was then appointed to an embassy to Christian I of Denmark. He was appointed domestic chaplain to Richard III in 1483.

At some time between 1473 and 1486, he presented his Examinatorium in Phaedonem Platonis, the first philosophical work by an English humanist, to Cardinal Bourchier. The text of the Phaedo on which Doget comments is the translation of Leonardo Bruni.