Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 06.djvu/145

 lieutenant-governor. In 1788 appeared the first part of 'Sandwich,' and in 1789 Boys was appointed surgeon to the sick and wounded seamen at Deal. Over the second part of 'Sandwich' there was considerable delay and anxiety (Letter from Denne, 's Lit. Ill. vi. 613); but in 1792 the volume was issued at much pecuniary loss to Boys. In 1792 Boys also sent Dr. Simmons some 'Observations on Kit's Coity House,' which were read at the Society of Antiquaries, and appeared in vol. xi. of 'Archæologia.' In 1796 he gave up his Sandwich practice and went to reside at Walmer, but returned to Sandwich at the end of three years, in 1799. His health had now declined. He had apoplectic attacks in 1799, and died of apoplexy on 15 March 1803, aged 68.

Boys was buried in St. Clement's Church, Sandwich, where there is a Latin epitaph to his memory, a suggestion for a monument with some doggerel verses, from a correspondent to the 'Gentleman's Magazine' (lxxiii. pt. ii. 612), having fallen through. He was a member of the Linnean Society, and a contributor to the 'Gentleman's Magazine' (Index, vol. iii. preface, p. lxxiv). A new fern found by him at Sandwich was named Sterna Boysii, after him, by Latham in his 'Index Ornithologicus.'

 BOYSE, JOSEPH (1660–1728), presbyterian minister, born at Leeds on 14 Jan. 1660, was 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, Mass. He was admitted into the academy of Richard Frankland, M.A., at Natland, near Kendal, on 16 April 1675, and went thence in 1678 to the academy at Stepney under Edward Veal, B.D. (ejected from the senior fellowship at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1661; died 6 June 1708, aged 76). Boyse's first ministerial engagement was at Glassenbury, near Cranbrook, Kent, where he preached 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 Hickes) 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. On the death of his friend T. Haliday in 1683, he succeeded him at Dublin, and there pursued a popular ministry for forty-five years. His ordination sermon was preached by John Pinney, ejected from Broadwinsor, Dorsetshire. The presbyterianism of Dublin and the south of Ireland was of the English type; that of the north was chiefly Scottish in origin and discipline. But there was occasional co-operation, and there were from time to time congregations in Dublin adhering to the northern body. Boyse did his part in promoting a community of spirit between the northern and southern presbyterians of Ireland. Naturally he kept up a good deal of communication with English brethren. From May 1691 to June 1702 Boyse had Emlyn as his colleague at Wood Street. Meanwhile Boyse came forward as a controversialist on behalf of presbyterian dissent. In this capacity he proved himself cautious, candid, and powerful; ‘vindication,’ the leading word on many of his polemical title-pages, well describes his constant aim. First of his works is the ‘Vindiciæ Calvinisticæ,’ 1688, 4to, an able epistle (with the pseudo-signature W.B., D.D.), in reply to William King (1650–1712), then chancellor of St. Patrick's Cathedral, who had attacked the presbyterians in his ‘Answer’ to the ‘Considerations’ of Peter Manby (d 1697), 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 Dec. 1687) as ‘a spy of Tyrconnel,’ Boyse put forth a ‘Vindication,’ 1690, 4to, a tract of historical value. 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, likewise anonymous. Both prelates were against a legal toleration for Irish dissent. Boyse retorted on them in ‘The Case … Vindicated,’ 1695. But the day for a toleration was not yet come. The Irish parliament rejected bill after bill brought forward in the interest of dissenters. The harmony of Boyse's ministerial relations was broken in 1702 by the episode of his colleague's deposition, and subsequent trial, for a blasphemous libel on the ground