one in Dublin. In 1797 appeared, at the Minerva Press, ‘Bungay Castle,’ 2 vols., a novel which Mrs. Bonhote was permitted to dedicate to the Duke of Norfolk. In 1804, during a residence at Bury, her husband died (Gent. Mag. vol. lxxiv. part ii. p. 1246). In 1810 she published ‘Feeling, or Sketches from Life; a Desultory Poem,’ Edinburgh. This was anonymous, and was Mrs. Bonhote’s last production. She died at Bungay in July 1818, aged 74 (Gent. Mag. vol. lxxxviii. part ii. p. 88).
[Watt’s Bibl. Brit.; Gent. Mag. vol. lxxiv. part ii. p. 1246,vol. imviii. part ii. p. 88.]
BONIFACE, Saint (680–755), the apostle of Germany, was an Englishman, whose original name was Winfrid or Winfrith, born at Kirton, or Crediton, in Devonshire, in the year 680. The name of Boniface has been said to have been given to him by Pope Gregory II at his consecration as bishop; but as it occurs earlier it was more probably assumed when he became a monk. When quite a child, influenced by the discourse of some monks who visited his father‘s house, he expressed an earnest desire to devote himself to a monastic life, and, the opposition of his father being at length withdrawn, he entered a monastery at Exeter. He then removed to the house of Nutshalling, or Nursling (which was afterwards destroyed by the Danes), near Winchester, where he had the advantage of better teaching. Here he learned grammar, history, poetry, and rhetoric, and biblical interpretation, and himself became famous as a preacher and expounder of Scripture. At the age of thirty he was ordained priest. The honour in which he was already held is indicated by the fact of his having been sent, at some period between the years 710 and 716, by the Synod of Wessex to Brihtwald, archbishop of Canterbury, on a mission the purport of which is unknown, but which was probably intended to draw closer the ties between the clergy of Wessex and the see of Canterbury. Boniface might have taken advantage of such an opportunity to push his fortunes in the church of his own country; but he was imbued with the zeal of the missionary, and his whole mind was bent upon continuing the work of preaching the gospel in Frisia, the country in which the Englishman Willibrord had already been labottring since 692, and had established his see at Wittaburg, or Utrecht.
In 716 Boniface crossed the sea, accompanied by only two monks, but he found the Frisians in no condition to receive his teaching. War had broken out. The pagan chief Radbod—the same who had at first consented to be baptised, but who, on learning that the souls of his unbelieving forefathers must necessarily he among the damned, drew back, preferring ‘to be there with his ancestors, rather than in heaven with a handful of beggars’—was in the midst of one of those struggles with the Franks in which his life was passed. He had commenced an active persecution of the Christians, had destroyed churches and rebuilt heathen temples. He consented, however, to an interview with Boniface, but refused him leave to preach in his dominions. Boniface could only return to England to his monastery of Nursling. Here he might now have settled down into a quiet path of life, for, on the death of their abbot, the brethren would have elected Boniface to his place. But, eager for a more active career, he refused the order, and in 718, provided with a letter from his bishop, Daniel of Winchester, and supported by Archbishop Brihtwald, he set out for Rome to seek papal sanction for his missionary enterprise. The pope (Gregory II) readily entered into his views, and on 16 May 719 formally laid upon him the work of converting the heathen tribes of Germany.
Armed with Gregory's letters of authority and a supply of relics, Boniface set out for Bavaria and Thuringia. These districts were already partly christian, and Boniface was proceeding with a survey of the state of the church there, when news arrived of the death of Radbod. At once he embarked on the Rhine and joined Willibrord in Frisia, and there he laboured with success for the next three years. Willibrord, now growing old, looked to Boniface to succeed him, but the declaration of this wish was the signal for Boniface to retire. He excused himself from accepting the proposed honour; he was not yet fifty, and therefore unfit for so high an office; finally he pleaded the task which had been laid on him by the pope of propagating the gospel in Germany—a duty which had been already too long delayed. Taking leave, then, of Willibrord, Boniface journeyed into Hessia. Here two local chiefs gave him leave to settle at Amanaburg (Amöneburg) on the river Ohm, and in a short time he ad converted them and their followers and baptised many thousands of Hessians.
On hearing the news of his success Pope Gregory summoned the missionary to Rome, A.D. 722, and, after exacting from him a profession of faith in the Trinity, he consecrated him a bishop on 30 Nov. 723, and at the same time bound him by oath ever to respect the authority of the papal see. The imposition of such an oath on a missionary was an innovation, although it had been required of bishops within the proper patri-
