Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 05.djvu/315

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Bohun
307
Bohun

Dale Hall, for which he was unable to find a tenant. To his horror, a second edition of his dictionary was brought out the same year without his knowledge. Some passages were afterwards used to support charges of Jacobitism, in refutation of which he published three charges delivered at the Ipswich quartersessions in 1691 and 1692, with a preface protesting against the injustice. In 1692 Moore, bishop of Norwich, procured for him the place of licenser, with 200l a year, with 25l. down to buy decent clothes. He was greatly distressed at this time by the loss of a son, and after five months' office fell into a trap laid for him by Charles Blount [see Blount, Charles, 1654-1693]. Blount sent him anonymously a tract in defence of his own peculiar political theory. Bohun read it ‘with incredible satisfaction,’ licensed it 9 Jan. 1693, and on its appearance was summoned before the House of Commons 20 Jan. 1693. At the same time Blount published a second tract with ‘a true character of E. Bohun, licenser of the press,’ in which he was bitterly attacked for his supposed Jacobitism. The House of Commons, indignant at Bohun's sanction of the doctrine of a conquest by William, sent him to prison, and voted that he should be dismissed his office. He retired to the country, but some time afterwards obtained (it does not appear how) the chief justiceship of Carolina, with a salary of 60l. a year. He sailed in midsummer, 1698, and found the colony suffering from piracy, hurricanes, and fevers. He had hardly time to get into difficulties with other officials, when he died of an epidemic fever on 5 Oct. 1699. His son, Edmund, was a merchant in Carolina, and collected plants for Hans Sloane and Petiver. Some of his letters are in the Sloane MSS. He afterwards settled at Westhall.

Bohun wrote various tracts, compilations, and translations. His original works are:

  1. ‘Address to the Freemen and Freeholders of the Nation,’ 1682.
  2. ‘Reflections on a Pamphlet entitled “A quiet and modest Vindication of the Proceedings of the last two Parliaments,”’ 1683.
  3. ‘The Justice of the Peace’ (a ‘moral essay’), 1684 and 1693.
  4. ‘Defence of Sir R. Filmer against Algernon Sidney, &c.,’1684.
  5. ‘History of the Desertion,’ 1689.
  6. ‘The Doctrine of Nonresistance … no way concerned in the controversies … between the Williamites and the Jacobites,’ 1689 (the last two are printed in the State Tracts, vol. i. 1705).
  7. ‘Three charges, &c.,’ 1693.
  8. ‘Character of Queen Elizabeth,’ 1693, chiefly from R. Johnstone's ‘Historia rerum Britannicarum,’ 1655 (French translation in 1694).

He also published the ‘Origin of Atheism,’ &c., translated from ‘Dorotheas Licureus;’ edited an edition of Filmer's ‘Patriarcha,’ and Jewel's ‘Apology,’ Degory Wheare's ‘Method and Order of Reading Histories,’ Sleidan's ‘Commentaries’ and ‘the present state of Germany,’ from Puffendorff. His chief work was the ‘Geographical Dictionary, representing the present and ancient names of all the countries, provinces, &c., of the whole world, their distances, longitudes, and latitudes, with a short historical account of the same, by Edmund Bohun, Esq.,’ 1688. The second edition appeared in 1691; the third, ‘continued, corrected, and enlarged’ by Mr. Barnard, in 1693 [see Barnard, John, fl. 1685-1693]; the ‘great historical, geographical, and poetical dictionary, founded on Moreri,’ wherein are inserted the last five years’ historical and geographical collections of E. B., ‘designed at first for his own geographical dictionary, and never extant till now,’ appeared in 1694.

[Diary and Autobiography of E. Bohun, edited with memoir, &c., by S. Wilton Rix, privately printed, Beccles, 1853; Woods Athenæ (Bliss), iii. 216, under ‘Degorie Whear;’ Macaulay's History, chap. xix. iv. 350.]

L. S.

BOHUN, HENRY de, first Earl of Hereford (1176–1220), constable of England, was the grandson of Humphrey III de Bohun [q. v.] and Margaret, daughter of Milo of Gloucester, earl of Hereford and constable, through whom the hereditary right to the office of constable passed to the family of de Bohun. He was born in 1176, and on the accession of John was created earl of Hereford by charter 28 April 1199. In 1200 he was sent with other nobles to summon his uncle, William the Lion of Scotland, to appear at Lincoln to do homage. In 1215 he joined the confederate barons who obtained the concession of Magna Charta, and was one of the twenty-five appointed to insure its observance. On John's death he still adhered to the party of Louis of France, and was taken prisoner in the battle of Lincoln 20 May 1217. He died on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land 1 June 1220. His wife was Maud, daughter of Geoffrey Fitz-Piers, earl of Essex, by whom he had a son Humphrey V [q. v.], who succeeded him.

[Chronicles of Rog. Hoveden, Gervase of Canterbury, and Matt. Paris; Dugdale's Baronage, i. 180.]

E. M. T.

BOHUN, HUMPHREY III de (d. 1187), baronial supporter of Henry II, was the third of his name in the family settled in England after the Norman conquest. The founder of the house, Humphrey de Bohun, surnamed ‘with the beard,’ was succeeded by his son Humphrey II, who married, at some