DUNSTER, a market town in the Western parliamentary division of Somersetshire, England, 1½ m. from the shore of the Bristol Channel, on the Minehead branch of the Great Western railway. Pop. (1901) 1182. Its streets, sloping sharply, contain many old houses. On an eminence stands the ancient castle, entered by a gateway of the 13th century. There are portions of later date, but still ancient, in the main building, but it has been considerably modernized as a residence. The church of St George has Norman portions, but the building is in the main Perpendicular. The fine tower in this style is characteristic of this part of England. There are traces of monastic buildings near the church, for it belonged to a Benedictine house of early Norman foundation. The church is cruciform and the altar stands beneath the eastern lantern arch, a fine rood screen separating off the choir, which was devoted to monastic use, while the nave was kept for the parishioners, in consequence of a dispute between the vicar and the monastery in 1499. The Yarn Market, a picturesque octagonal building with deep sloping roof, in the main street, dates from c. 1600, and is a memorial of Dunster’s former important manufacture of cloth.
There were British, Roman and Saxon settlements at Dunster (Torre Dunestorre, Dunester), fortified against the piracies of the Irish Northmen. The Saxon fort of Alaric was replaced by a Norman castle built by William de Mohun, first lord of Dunster, who founded the priory of St George. Before 1183, Dunster had become a mesne borough, owned by the de Mohuns until the 14th century when it passed to the Luttrells, the present owners. Reginald de Mohun granted the first charter between 1245 and 1247, which diminished fines and tolls, limited the lord’s “mercy,” and provided that the burgesses should not against their will be made bailiffs or farmers of the seaport. John de Mohun granted other charters in 1301 and 1307. Dunster was only represented in parliament in conjunction with Minehead, one of its tithings being part of that borough. Representation began in 1562, and was lost in 1832. Feudal in origin, Dunster’s later importance was commercial, and the port had a considerable wool, corn and cattle trade with Ireland. During the middle ages the Friday market and fair in Whit week, granted by the first charter, were centres for the sale of yarn and cloth called “Dunsters,” made in the town. The market day is still Friday. The manufacture of cloth had disappeared, the harbour is silted up, and there is no special local industry.
See Sir H.C. Maxwell Lyte, Dunster and its Lords (1882); Victoria County History, Somerset, vol. ii.
DUNTOCHER (Gaelic, “The Fort of ill hap”), a town on Dalmuir Burn, Dumbartonshire, Scotland, 9 m. from Glasgow. Pop. (1901) 2122. The district contains coal, limestone and ironstone, but there is not much mining. Many of the inhabitants are employed at the Singer factory in Kilbowie and at the Clyde Trust yards in Dalmuir. There are considerable Roman remains in the neighbourhood. Antoninus’ Wall passed immediately to the south; the burn is crossed by a bridge alleged to be of Roman origin (which at least is doubtful); subterranean remains indicate a Roman structure; a Roman camp has been traced, and the vicinity has yielded a number of altars, urns, vases, coins and tablets, which are now in the custody of Glasgow University.
DUNTON, JOHN (1659-1733), English bookseller and author, was born at Graffham, in Huntingdonshire, on the 4th of May 1659. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather had all been clergymen. At the age of fifteen he was apprenticed to Thomas Parkhurst, bookseller, at the sign of the Bible and Three Crowns, Cheapside, London. Dunton ran away at once, but was soon brought back, and began to “love books.” During the struggle which led to the Revolution, Dunton was the treasurer of the Whig apprentices. He became a bookseller at the sign of the Raven, near the Royal Exchange, and married Elizabeth Annesley, whose sister married Samuel Wesley. His wife managed his business, so that he was left free in a great measure to follow his own eccentric devices. In 1686, probably because he was concerned in the Monmouth rising, he visited New England, where he stayed eight months selling books and observing with interest the new country and its inhabitants. Dunton had become security for his brother’s debts, and to escape the creditors he made a short excursion to Holland. On his return to England, he opened a new shop in the Poultry in the hope of better times. Here he published weekly the Athenian Mercury which professed to answer all questions on history, philosophy, love, marriage and things in general. His wife died in 1697, and he married a second time; but a quarrel about property led to a separation; and being incapable of managing his own affairs, he spent the last years of his life in great poverty. He died in 1733. He wrote a great many books and a number of political squibs on the Whig side, but only his Life and Errors of John Dunton (1705), on account of its naïveté, its pictures of bygone times, and of the literary history of the period, is remembered. His letters from New England were published in America in 1867.
DÜNTZER, JOHANN HEINRICH JOSEPH (1813-1901), German philologist and historian of literature, was born at Cologne on the 12th of July 1813. After studying philology and especially ancient classics and Sanskrit at Bonn and Berlin (1830-1835), he took the degree of doctor of philosophy and established himself in 1837 at Bonn as Privat docent for classical literature. He had already, in his Goethes Faust in seiner Einheit und Ganzheit (1836) and Goethe als Dramatiker (1837), advocated a new critical method in interpreting the German classics, which he wished to see treated like the ancient classics. He subsequently turned his attention almost exclusively to the poets of the German classical period, notably Goethe and Schiller. Düntzer’s method met with much opposition and he consequently failed to obtain the professorship he coveted. In 1846 he accepted the post of librarian at the Roman Catholic gymnasium in Cologne, where he died on the 16th of December 1901. Düntzer was a painstaking and accurate critic, but lacking in inspiration and finer literary taste; consequently his work as a biographer and commentator has, to a great extent, been superseded and discredited.