Bohun, Edmund

, a voluminous political and miscellaneous writer of the seventeenth century, was born at Ringsfield, in Suffolk, the only son of Baxter Bohun, who with his ancestors, had been lords of the manor of Westhall, in that county, from the 25th Henry VIII. In 1663, he was admitted fellow-commoner of Queen’s college, Cambridge, and continued there till the latter end of 1666, when the plague obliged him and others to leave the university. In 1675 he was made a justice of peace for Suffolk, and continued in that office till the second of James II. when he was discharged, but was restored to that office in the first of William and Mary. The time of his death is not mentioned, but he was alive in 1700. He wrote, 1. “An Address to the Freemen and Freeholders of the nation, in three parts, being the history of three sessions of parliament in 1678, 1682,and 1683,” 4to. 2. “A Defence of the Declaration of king Charles II. against a pamphlet styled, A just and modest Vindication of the proceedings of the two last Parliaments.” This was printed with and added to the Address. 3. “A Defence of Sir Robert Filmer, against the mistakes and representations of Algernon Sydney, esq. in a paper delivered by him to the sheriffs upon the scaffold on Tower-hill, on Friday, Dec. 7, 1683, before his execution there,” Lond. 1684. 4. “The Justice of Peace’s Calling, a moral essay,” Lond. 1684, 8vo. 5. “A Preface and Conclusion to Sir Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha,” ibid. 1685, 8vo. 6. “A Geographical Dictionary,” ibid. 1688, 8vo. 7. “The History of the Desertion; or an account of all the public affairs of England, | from the beginning of Sept. 1688 to Feb. 12 following,” ibid. 1689, 8vo. 8. “An Answer to a piece called The Desertion discussed (by Jeremy Collier),” printed at the end of the “History of the Desertion.” 9. “The Doctrine of Passive Obedience and Non-Resistance no way concerned in the controversies now depending between the Williamites and the Jacobites,” ibid. 1689, 4to. In page 24th is a passage respecting bishop Ken, which Mr. Bohun found to be untrue, and therefore requests that it may be cancelled. 10. “The Life of John Jewell, bishop of Salisbury,” prefixed to a translation of his Apology, 1685. 11. “Three Charges delivered at the general quarter sessions holden at Ipswich, for the county of Suffolk, in 1691, 1692, and 1693,” 4to. 12. “The great Historical, Geographical, and Poetical Dictionary,” Lond. 1694, fol. He also translated Sicurus’ origin of Atheism the Universal Bibliotheque, or account of books for Jan. Feb. and March 1687 Sleidan’s History of the Reformation Puffendorff’s Present State of Germany, and Degory Wheare’s Method of reading History, Lond. 1698, 8vo. 1

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Ath. Ox. vol. II.