Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 05.djvu/432

 rendered his catalogue still more complete by additions from Hugh of St. Victor, Cassiodorus, Burchard of Worms, and other authorities. This work, which was unknown to Leland and even to Bale when drawing up the first edition of his ‘Scriptores Britanniæ’ (Ipswich, 1548), appears to have been much used by the latter in the enlarged edition of his great work published some nine years later at Busle. Pits also declares that he had been unable to find this work. Tanner adduces arguments to show that there must have been two forms of Boston`s ‘Catalogue' -a longer one and a shorter. One of these appears to have been in the possession of Archbishop Ussher (Hist. Dogmatica, 124), from whose hands it passed into those of Thomas Gale. Fragments of the same work are to be found in the British Museum (Addit. MSS. 4787, ff 133-5), and extracts in the Lambeth Library (No. 594). The Catalogue itself has been printed, with some omissions, in Tanner’s ‘Bibliotheca' (ed. 1748), pp. xviii-xliii.

Besides the above mentioned work, John Boston is credited with having written a book entitled ‘Speculum Cœnobitarum,' being an account of the origin of the monastic life, with a long list of the great names that have illustrated the monastic annals and of the various works written by the fathers from Origen and earlier down to St. Bernard. This has been published by Anthony Hall at the end of his edition of Adam of Murimuth (Oxford, 1722).

The Catalogue is dedicated in six Latin verses to some English king, said by Fuller to have been Henry IV, in which statement he seems to he supported by Pits, who assigns our author to the year 1410.



BOSTON, THOMAS, the elder (1677–1732), Scottish divine, was born at Danse on 17 March, and baptised on 21 March, 1676-1677. He was the youngest of seven children of John Boston and Alison Trotter (d. 1 Feb. 1691, aged 56). His grandfather, Andrew Boston, came to Danse from Ayr. His father was a presbyterian, but, after the murder of Archbishop Sharp in 1679, attended episcopal worship till 1687. He was at the grammar school under James Bullerwall from 1684 or 1685 till 1689, and then was employed for a short time in the office of Alexander Cockburn, a writer to the signet. He entered Edinburgh University 1 Dec. 1691, and took his M.A. degree 9 July 1694. He was a good scholar, and had a fine memory; he says himself that he remembered every material passage in the Roman historians, From 1690 to 1701 he studied theology under George Campbell, professor of divinity, a strong presbyterian. His whole expenses at college amounted to 10l. 14s. 7⅔d. sterling, in money; but we must remember that the Scottish student in those days received his regular supplies of simple food and clothing from home. Early in 1696 he became parish schoolmaster of Glencairn, boarding' with Boyd, the minister; but he resigned this situation, after a month's trial, on 8 Feb. 1696. He then became successively tutor in the family of Andrew Fletcher of Aberlady, and chaplain to Colonel James Bruce of Kinnet. He was licensed by the Roxburgh presbytery on 15 June 1697, preached with acceptance in the counties of Stirling and Perth (where he found his wife), was called to the parish of Simprin, Berwickshire, 11 Aug. 1699, and ordained there on 21 Sept. 1699. In Oct. 1701 he became clerk of Synod. On 24 Jun. 1707 he was called to the parish of Ettrick, in Selkirkshire, released from the charge of Simprin 6 March 1707, and admitted to that of Ettrick on 1 May 1707, the day of the legislative union between England and Scotland. In 1712 he refused the oath of abjuration. He received a call to the parish of Closebarn, but the commission of the general assembly refused on 15 Aug. 1717 to sanction his removal thither, and he remained minister of Ettrick to the end of his days. Boston was at variance with the majority of the assembly on doctrinal grounds. while visiting one of his Simprin Bock, a Scottish soldier, Boston saw and borrowed a couple of pieces of English divinity which the man had brought home with him from the Commonwealth wars. One was a treatise by Saltmarsh, for which he did not care; the other was part first of ‘The Marrow of Modern Divinity. Touching both the Covenant of Works and the Covenant of Grace,’ &c., by E. F,, 1645. The work is it series of dialogues, and largely consists of excerpts from standard writers. The author was an English puritan, and has been described as ‘an illiterate barber.’ Tanner's edition of Wood’s ‘Athenæ’ (1721) identifies him with Edward Fisher, M.A., son of Sir Edward Fisher, of Mickleton, Gloucestershire, and a gentleman commoner of Brasenose. Grub disputes the identification, on the ground that the Oxford Fisher was a royalist, who wrote ‘A Christian Caveat to the old and new Sabbatarians, or a vindication of