Philip Doddridge

(26 June 1702 – 26 October 1751) was an English Nonconformist (specifically, Congregationalist) minister, educator, and hymnwriter.

He was born in London the last of the twenty children of Daniel Doddridge (d 1715), a dealer in oils and pickles. His father was a son of John Doddridge (1621–1689), rector of Shepperton, Middlesex, who was ejected from his living following the Act of Uniformity of 1662 and became a Nonconformist minister, and a great-nephew of the judge and MP Sir John Doddridge (1555–1628). Philip's mother, Elizabeth, considered to have been the greater influence on him, was the orphan daughter of the Rev John Bauman (d. 1675), a Lutheran clergyman who had fled from Prague to escape religious persecution, during the unsettled period following the flight of the Elector Palatine. In England, the Rev John Bauman (sometimes written Bowerman) was appointed master of the grammar school at Kingston upon Thames.