Joseph Boyse (14 January 1660 – 22 November 1728) was an English presbyterian minister in Ireland, and controversialist.
Early life
Boyse was born at
Leeds
Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by populati ...
,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
, one of the sixteen children of Matthew Boyse, a Puritan, formerly elder of the church at
Rowley, New England, and afterwards a resident for about eighteen years at
Boston, Massachusetts. He was admitted to the
Rathmell Academy
Rathmell Academy was a Dissenting academy set up at Rathmell, North Yorkshire, and was the oldest non-conformist seat of learning in the north of England. The academy was established in 1670 by Richard Frankland M.A. (Christ's College,Cambridge) ...
of
Richard Frankland
Richard Joseph Frankland is an Australian playwright, scriptwriter and musician. He is an Aboriginal Australian of Gunditjmara origin from Victoria. He has worked significantly for the Aboriginal Australian cause.
Biography
Richard J. Frank ...
, then at
Natland
Natland is a village and civil parish about two miles (3 km) south of Kendal in the South Lakeland district of Cumbria, England, close to the village of Oxenholme. In the United Kingdom Census 2001, 2001 census the parish had a population o ...
near
Kendal
Kendal, once Kirkby in Kendal or Kirkby Kendal, is a market town and civil parish in the South Lakeland district of Cumbria, England, south-east of Windermere and north of Lancaster. Historically in Westmorland, it lies within the dale of th ...
, on 16 April 1675; and went on in 1678 to the academy at
Stepney
Stepney is a district in the East End of London in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The district is no longer officially defined, and is usually used to refer to a relatively small area. However, for much of its history the place name appl ...
under
Edward Veal.
Boyse's first ministerial engagement was at
Glassenbury, near
Cranbrook,
Kent
Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...
, where he preached for nearly a year from the autumn of 1679. He was next domestic chaplain, during the latter half of 1681 and spring of 1682, to the Dowager Countess of Donegal (Letitia, daughter of
Sir William Hicks) in
Lincoln's Inn Fields
Lincoln's Inn Fields is the largest public square in London. It was laid out in the 1630s under the initiative of the speculative builder and contractor William Newton, "the first in a long series of entrepreneurs who took a hand in develo ...
. For six months in 1682 he ministered to the
Brownist
The Brownists were a group of English Dissenters or early Separatists from the Church of England. They were named after Robert Browne, who was born at Tolethorpe Hall in Rutland, England, in the 1550s. A majority of the Separatists aboard the ' ...
church at
Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...
, in the absence of the regular minister, but he did not swerve from his presbyterianism. He would have settled in England but for the penal laws against dissent.
In Ireland
On the death of his friend T. Haliday in 1683, he succeeded him at
Dublin
Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...
, and was a minister there for 45 years. His ordination sermon was preached by John Pinney, ejected from
Broadwinsor,
Dorset
Dorset ( ; archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the unitary authority areas of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole and Dorset (unitary authority), Dors ...
. From May 1691 to June 1702 Boyse had
Thomas Emlyn
Thomas Emlyn (1663–1741) was an English nonconformist divine.
Life
Emlyn was born at Stamford, Lincolnshire. He served as chaplain to the presbyterian Letitia, countess of Donegal, the daughter of Sir William Hicks, 1st Baronet who married (1 ...
as his colleague at Wood Street.
Emlyn's deposition, and subsequent trial, for a blasphemous libel on the ground of an
anti-trinitarian
Nontrinitarianism is a form of Christianity that rejects the mainstream Christian doctrine of the Trinity—the belief that God is three distinct hypostases or persons who are coeternal, coequal, and indivisibly united in one being, or essence ...
publication, did not initially involve Boyse (who had himself been under some suspicion of
Pelagianism
Pelagianism is a Christian theological position that holds that the original sin did not taint human nature and that humans by divine grace have free will to achieve human perfection. Pelagius ( – AD), an ascetic and philosopher from th ...
). In the end Boyse was successful in efforts to free Emlyn from incarceration. Emlyn's place as Boyse's colleague was filled by Richard Choppin, a Dublin man (licensed 1702, ordained 1704, died 1741).
Boyse had been one of the patroni of the academy at Whitehaven (1708–19), under
Thomas Dixon, M.D., and when it close he was involved with the settlement in Dublin of
Francis Hutcheson as head (till 1729) of a similar institution, in which Boyse taught divinity. He also became caught up in the nonsubscription controversy. At the synod in Belfast, 1721, he was present as a commissioner from Dublin; protested with his colleague, in the name of the Dublin presbytery, against the vote allowing a voluntary subscription to the
Westminster Confession
The Westminster Confession of Faith is a Reformed confession of faith. Drawn up by the 1646 Westminster Assembly as part of the Westminster Standards to be a confession of the Church of England, it became and remains the " subordinate standard" ...
; and succeeded in carrying a ‘charitable declaration,’ freeing nonsubscribers from censure and recommending mutual forbearance. Next year, being absent through illness, he printed a sermon; at this synod (1723) a letter was received from him announcing a proposed change in the management of the ''
regium donum'', viz. that it would be distributed by a body of trustees in London, with the intended of checking the high-handed party in the synod. The rupture between the southern and northern presbyterians was completed by the installation of a nonsubscriber, Alexander Colville, M.D., on 25 October 1725 at
Dromore,
County Down
County Down () is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the traditional thirty-two counties of Ireland. It covers an area of and has a population of 531,665. It borders County Antrim to the ...
, by the Dublin presbytery; Boyse was not one of the installers.
He died in straitened circumstances on 22 November 1728, leaving a son,
Samuel Boyse
Samuel Boyse (1702/3? – May 1749) was an Irish poet and writer who worked for Sir Robert Walpole and whose religious verses in particular were prized and reprinted in his time.
Life
Born in Dublin, Boyse was the son of Joseph Boyse, a Pre ...
(the biographers of this son have not usually mentioned that he was one of the deputation to present the address from the general synod of Ulster on the accession of George I), and a daughter, married to Mr. Waddington. He was succeeded in his ministry at Wood Street by
John Abernethy John Abernethy may refer to:
* John Abernethy (bishop), Scottish bishop, died 1639
* John Abernethy (judge) (born 1947), Australian judge
*John Abernethy (minister) (1680–1740), Presbyterian minister in Ireland
*John Abernethy (surgeon) (1764–18 ...
in 1730.
Works
Boyse came forward as a controversialist on behalf of presbyterian dissent. First of his works is the ‘Vindiciæ Calvinisticæ,’ 1688, an able epistle (with the pseudo-signature W.B., D.D.), in reply to
William King, then chancellor of
St Patrick's Cathedral, who had attacked the presbyterians in his ‘Answer’ to the ‘Considerations’ of
Peter Manby, ex-dean of Derry, who had turned Catholic. Again, when Governor Walker of Derry described Alexander Osborne (a presbyterian minister, originally from co. Tyrone, who had been called to Newmarket, Dublin, 6 December 1687) as ‘a spy of Tyrconnel,’ Boyse put forth a ‘Vindication,’ 1690, He was a second time in the field against King, now bishop of Derry (who had fulminated against presbyterian forms of worship), in ‘Remarks,’ 1694, and ‘Vindication of the Remarks,’ 1695. Early in the latter year he had printed anonymously a folio tract, ‘The Case of the Protestant Dissenters in Ireland in reference to a Bill of Indulgence,’ &c., to which
Tobias Pullen
Tobias Pullen (1648 – 22 January 1713), or Tobias Pullein, was an Irish bishop.
Biography
Pullen was Anglican bishop of Cloyne and of Dromore, born at Middleham, Yorkshire in 1648, was, according to Cotton, grandson of Samuel Pullein (1598– ...
,
bishop of Dromore
The Bishop of Dromore is an episcopal title which takes its name after the original monastery of Dromore in County Down, Northern Ireland. In the Roman Catholic Church the title still continues as a separate bishopric, but in the Church of Irela ...
, wrote an anonymous answer, and
Anthony Dopping
Anthony Dopping (born Dublin, 28 March 1643 – 25 April 1697) was the Anglican Bishop of Meath, Ireland.
He was born in Dublin, the son of Anthony Dopping, Clerk of the Privy Council of Ireland, who originally came from Frampton in Gloucesters ...
, bishop of Meath, another reply, also anonymous. Both prelates were against a legal toleration for Irish dissent. Boyse retorted on them in ‘The Case … Vindicated,’ 1695.
In Emlyn's case, Boyse drew up ‘The Difference between Mr. E. and the Dissenting Ministers of D. truly represented;’ and published ‘A Vindication of the True Deity of our Blessed Saviour,’ 1703, (2nd ed. 1710), in answer to Emlyn's ‘Humble Inquiry.’ Boyse takes note that ‘the unitarians are coming over to the deists in point of doctrine.’
In 1708 Boyse issued a volume of fifteen sermons, of which the last was an ordination discourse on ‘The Office of a Scriptural Bishop,’ with a polemical appendix. This received answers from Edward Drury and Matthew French, curates in Dublin, and the discourse itself was, without Boyse's consent, reprinted separately in 1709. He had, however, the opportunity of adding a postscript, in which he replied to the above answers, and he continued the controversy in ‘A Clear Account of the Ancient Episcopacy,’ 1712. Meantime the reprint of his sermon, with postscript, was burned by the common hangman, by order of the Irish House of Lords, in November 1711. This was King's last argument against Boyse; now the archbishop of Dublin writes to
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish Satire, satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whig (British political party), Whigs, then for the Tories (British political party), Tories), poe ...
, ‘we burned Mr. Boyse's book of a scriptural bishop.’ Once more Boyse came forward in defence of dissent, in ‘Remarks,’ 1716, on a pamphlet by William Tisdall, D.D., vicar of Belfast, respecting the sacramental test.
The preface to Abernethy's ‘Seasonable Advice,’ 1722, and the postscript to his ‘Defence’ of the same, 1724, are included among Boyse's collected works, though signed also by his Dublin brethren, Nathaniel Weld and Choppin. In the same year he preached (24 June) at
Derry
Derry, officially Londonderry (), is the second-largest city in Northern Ireland and the fifth-largest city on the island of Ireland. The name ''Derry'' is an anglicisation of the Old Irish name (modern Irish: ) meaning 'oak grove'. The ...
during the sitting of the general synod of Ulster. His text was John viii. 34, 35, and the publication of the discourse, which strongly deprecated disunion threatened by the different northern and southern Presbyterian traditions, was urged by those on both sides
He published in 1726 a lengthy letter to the presbyterian ministers of the north, in ‘vindication’ of a private communication on their disputes, which had been printed without his knowledge. Writing to the Rev.
Thomas Steward of
Bury St Edmunds
Bury St Edmunds (), commonly referred to locally as Bury, is a historic market town, market, cathedral town and civil parish in Suffolk, England.OS Explorer map 211: Bury St.Edmunds and Stowmarket Scale: 1:25 000. Publisher:Ordnance Survey – ...
on 1 November 1726, Boyse speaks of the exclusion of the nonsubscribers as ‘the late shameful rupture,’ and gives an account of the new presbytery which the general synod, in pursuance of its separative policy, had erected for Dublin. Controversies crowded thickly on Boyse, but he wrote calmly. He published several sermons against Romanists, and a letter (with appendix) ‘Concerning the Pretended Infallibility of the Romish Church,’ addressed to a Protestant divine who had written against Rome. His ‘Some Queries offered to the Consideration of the People called Quakers, &c.,’ called forth, shortly before Boyse's death, a reply by Samuel Fuller, a Dublin schoolmaster.
Boyse's works were collected by himself in two huge folios, London, 1728 (usually bound in one; they are the earliest folios published by a presbyterian minister of Ireland). Prefixed is a recommendation (dated 23 April 1728) signed by
Edmund Calamy and five other London ministers. The first volume contains seventy-one sermons (several being funeral, ordination, and anniversary discourses; many had already been collected in two volumes, 1708–10), and several tracts on justification. Embedded among the sermons (at p. 326) is a piece of autobiography, ‘Some Remarkable Passages in the Life and Death of Mr. Edmund Trench.’ The second volume is wholly controversial. Not included in these volumes are:
*‘Vindication of Osborne’ (see above).
*‘Sacramental Hymns collected (chiefly) out of such Passages of the New Testament as contain the most suitable matter of Divine Praises in the Celebration of the Lord's Supper, &c.,’ Dublin, 1693, with another title-page, London, 1693.
*‘Case of the Protestant Dissenters’ (see above).
*‘Family Hymns for Morning and Evening Worship. With some for the Lord's Days. … All taken out of the Psalms of David,’ Dublin, 1701.
*‘The Difference between Mr. E. and the Dissenting Ministers of D., &c.’ (See above. Emlyn reprints it in the appendix to his ‘Narrative,’ 1719, and says Boyse drew it up).
Of his separate publications an incomplete list is furnished by
Thomas Witherow
Thomas Witherow (1824–1890) was an Irish Presbyterian minister and historian.
Life
The son of Hugh Witherow, a farmer at Aughlish, near Dungiven, County Londonderry, and his wife Elizabeth Martin, he was born at Ballycastle on 29 May 1824. He r ...
. The bibliography of the earlier ones is also given in Reid. Boyse wrote the Latin inscription on the original pedestal (1701) of the equestrian statue of William III in
College Green, Dublin
College Green () is a three-sided plaza in the centre of Dublin, Ireland. On its northern side is the Bank of Ireland building, which until 1800 was Ireland's Parliament House. To its east stands Trinity College Dublin. To its south stands a se ...
.
External links
Letter from Rev. Joseph Boyseto
Ralph Thoresby
Ralph Thoresby (16 August 1658 – 16 October 1725) was an antiquarian, who was born in Leeds and is widely credited with being the first historian of that city. Besides being a merchant, he was a nonconformist, fellow of the Royal Society, diar ...
, 1697
References
Vestiges of Protestant Dissent, PP287-8
/ref>
{{DEFAULTSORT:Boyse, Joseph
1660 births
1728 deaths
English Presbyterian ministers
Clergy from Leeds
Irish non-subscribing Presbyterian ministers