Joseph Boyse
Encyclopedia
Joseph Boyse was an English presbyterian minister in Ireland, and controversialist.
, England
on 14 January 1660, one of 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
of Richard Frankland
, then at Natland
near Kendal
, on 16 April 1675; and went on in 1678 to the academy at Stepney
under Edward Veal.
Boyse's first ministerial engagement was at Glassenbury, near Cranbrook
, Kent
, 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
. For six months in 1682 he ministered to the Brownist
church at Amsterdam
, 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.
. From May 1691 to June 1702 Boyse had Thomas Emlyn
as his colleague at Wood Street.
Emlyn's deposition, and subsequent trial, for a blasphemous libel on the ground of an anti-trinitarian publication, did not initially involve Boyse (who had himself been under some suspicion of Pelagianism
). 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; 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 intented 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
, 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
(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
in 1730.
, 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, bishop of Dromore
, wrote an anonymous answer, and Anthony Dopping, 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
, ‘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
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 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:
Of his separate publications an incomplete list is furnished by Thomas Witherow. 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
.
Early life
Boyse was born at LeedsLeeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
on 14 January 1660, one of 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
Rathmell Academy was a Dissenting academy set up at Rathmell, North Yorkshire, in the north of England by Richard Frankland from 1670.-Preparations:...
of Richard Frankland
Richard Frankland (tutor)
Richard Frankland was an English nonconformist, notable for founding the Rathmell Academy, a dissenting academy in the north of England.-Biography:...
, then at Natland
Natland
Natland is village and civil parish about two miles south of Kendal in the South Lakeland district of Cumbria, close to the village of Oxenholme. At the time of the 2001 census the population was 747....
near Kendal
Kendal
Kendal, anciently known as Kirkby in Kendal or Kirkby Kendal, is a market town and civil parish within the South Lakeland District of Cumbria, England...
, on 16 April 1675; and went on in 1678 to the academy at Stepney
Stepney
Stepney is a district of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in London's East End that grew out of a medieval village around St Dunstan's church and the 15th century ribbon development of Mile End Road...
under Edward Veal.
Boyse's first ministerial engagement was at Glassenbury, near Cranbrook
Cranbrook
-People:* Earl of Cranbrook, title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom** Gathorne Gathorne-Hardy, 1st Earl of Cranbrook , British Conservative politician** John Stewart Gathorne-Hardy, 2nd Earl of Cranbrook , Conservative Member of Parliament...
, Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
, 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
Sir William Hicks, 1st Baronet
Sir William Hicks, 1st Baronet , of Beverston, in Gloucestershire, and of Ruckholt, in Essex, was an English Member of Parliament.-Life:...
) in Lincoln's Inn Fields
Lincoln's Inn Fields
Lincoln's Inn Fields is the largest public square in London, UK. 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 developing London", as Sir Nikolaus Pevsner observes...
. For six months in 1682 he ministered to the Brownist
Brownist
The Brownists were English Dissenters and followers of Robert Browne who was born at Tolethorpe Hall in Rutland, England in about 1550.-Origins:...
church at Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban 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, and was a minister there for 45 years. His ordination sermon was preached by John Pinney, ejected from Broadwinsor, DorsetDorset
Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...
. From May 1691 to June 1702 Boyse had Thomas Emlyn
Thomas Emlyn
Thomas Emlyn , English nonconformist divine.-Life:Emlyn was born at Stamford, Lincolnshire and served as chaplain to the presbyterian Letitia, countess of Donegal, and then to Sir Robert Rich, afterwards becoming colleague to Joseph Boyse, presbyterian minister in Dublin...
as his colleague at Wood Street.
Emlyn's deposition, and subsequent trial, for a blasphemous libel on the ground of an anti-trinitarian publication, did not initially involve Boyse (who had himself been under some suspicion of Pelagianism
Pelagianism
Pelagianism is a theological theory named after Pelagius , although he denied, at least at some point in his life, many of the doctrines associated with his name. It is the belief that original sin did not taint human nature and that mortal will is still capable of choosing good or evil without...
). 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
Thomas Dixon (nonconformist)
Thomas Dixon, M.D. was an English nonconformist minister and tutor.-Life:Dixon was probably the son of Thomas Dixon, ‘Anglus e Northumbria,’ who graduated M.A. at Edinburgh on 19 July 1660, and was ejected from the vicarage of Kelloe, County Durham, as a nonconformist. Dixon studied at Manchester...
, M.D., and when it close he was involved with the settlement in Dublin of Francis Hutcheson
Francis Hutcheson
Francis Hutcheson may refer to:*Francis Hutcheson *Francis Hutcheson -See also:*Frank Hutchison, blues musician*Francis Hutchinson, British clergyman...
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; 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
Regium Donum
The Regium Donum was an annual grant formerly voted by Parliament to augment the stipends of the Presbyterian clergy in Ireland. The Regium Donum originally began in 1673 during the reign of Charles II. The grant was then renewed and increased by King William III in 1690 as a reward for the loyalty...
, viz. that it would be distributed by a body of trustees in London, with the intented 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
Dromore
- Places :* Dromore, Ontario, Canada* Dromore , a crater in the Lunae Palus quadrangle of Mars- Other :* Bishop of Dromore, named for the town in County Down; the pre-Reformation antecedent of:** Roman Catholic Diocese of Dromore...
, County Down
County Down
-Cities:*Belfast *Newry -Large towns:*Dundonald*Newtownards*Bangor-Medium towns:...
, 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
Samuel Boyse 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:...
(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 (minister)
Reverend John Abernethy was an Irish Presbyterian church leader, the grandfather of the surgeon John Abernethy.He was born at Coleraine, County Londonderry, where his father was a Nonconformist minister...
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 KingWilliam King (archbishop)
William King, D.D. was an Anglican divine in the Church of Ireland, who was Archbishop of Dublin from 1703 to 1729. He was an author and supported the Glorious Revolution.-Early life:...
, 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, bishop of Dromore
Bishop of Dromore
The Bishop of Dromore is an episcopal title which takes its name after the market town 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 Ireland it has been united with other bishoprics.-History:The...
, wrote an anonymous answer, and Anthony Dopping, 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
Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...
, ‘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
Derry or Londonderry is the second-biggest city in Northern Ireland and the fourth-biggest city on the island of Ireland. The name Derry is an anglicisation of the Irish name Doire or Doire Cholmcille meaning "oak-wood of Colmcille"...
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 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
Edmund Calamy (historian)
Edmund Calamy was an English Nonconformist churchman, divine and historian.-Life:A grandson of Edmund Calamy the Elder, he was born in the City of London, in the parish of St Mary Aldermanbury. He was sent to various schools, including Merchant Taylors', and in 1688 proceeded to the university of...
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. 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
College Green is a three-sided "square" in the centre of Dublin. On its northern side is a building known today as the Bank of Ireland which until 1800 was Ireland's Parliament House. To its east stands Trinity College Dublin, the only constituent college of the University of Dublin. To its south...
.