Henry, a learned controversial writer, was born at Dublin in 1641. He was descended from an Irish family who had once been possessed of considerable property in Connaught, but who having lost it at the rebellion had settled at York in 1648. By the death of his parents Dodwell was reduced in early life to the greatest poverty. In 1654 he was sent by his uncle to Trinity College, Dublin, of which he was soon afterwards chosen scholar and fellow. To avoid taking orders he relinquished his fellowship in 1666, and resided for some time at Oxford, Dublin, and London successively. In 1688 he was elected Camden professor of history at Oxford, but was deprived of his professorship in 1691 for refusing to take the oaths of allegiance to William and Mary. Retiring to Shotterbrooke in Berkshire, and living on the produce of a small estate in Ireland, which he had at first generously relinquished in favour of a near relation, he devoted himself to those literary labours in chronology and church politics on which his fame now rests. In the former department he published—Discourse on the Phoenician History of Sanchoniathon; Annales Thucydidei et Xenophonae; Chronologia Graeco-Romana pro Hypothesebus Dion. Halicarnassii; Annales Velliciani, Quintiliani, Stationai; and a larger treatise entitled De Veteribus Graecorum Romanorumque Cyclic, obiterque de Cyclo Iudaeorum ac Etate Christi, Dissertationes. All of these obtained considerable reputation, and were frequently reprinted. In the latter department his works are more numerous and fragmentary. In his earlier writings he was regarded as one of the greatest champions of the non-jurors; but the absurd doctrine which he afterwards promulgated, that immortality could be enjoyed only by those who had received baptism from the hands of one set of regularly ordained clergy, and was therefore a privilege from which Dissenters were hopelessly excluded, justly deprived him of the confidence even of his friends. Dodwell died at Shotterbrooke, 7th June 1711. His eldest son Henry is known as the author of a pamphlet entitled Christianity not founded in Argument, to which a reply was published by his brother William, who was besides engaged in a controversy with Dr Conyers Middleton on the subject of miracles.