Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 06.djvu/86

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Bownas
74
Bownde

how he was put into the Jedburgh tolbooth as a precautionary measure, the officer remarking, 'I ken very weel that you'll preach, by your looks.' In March 1702 he sailed for America, arriving in Potuxant river, Maryland, at the end of May. Preaching here, he soon received a written challenge from George Keith,who had left the quakers in 1692. After leading a sect of his own, Keith had received Anglican orders in May 1700, and was now an ardent (and not unsuccessful) advocate of episcopacy. Bownas wrote declining ' to take any notice of one that hath been so very mutable in his pretences to religion;' but he distributed a tract (whether original or not does not appear) in answer to one by Keith. Keith got him prosecuted for his preaching, and on 30 Sept. 1702 he was put into the county gaol of Queen's County, Long Island, as he would not give bail, ' if as small a sum as three-halfpence would do.' On 28 Dec. the grand jury threw out the indictment, but Bownas was held in prison, where he learned to make shoes, and had a visit from an 'Indian king, as he styled himself,' who discoursed with him about the good Monettay, or God, and the bad Monettay, or Devil. A seventh-day baptist, John Rogers, also came to confer with him. On 3 Sept. 1703 he was set at liberty. After further travels in America he returned home, reaching Portsmouth in October 1706. He was married in the spring of 1707; his wife's name is not given; she died in September 1719. He visited Ireland in 1708, and was put into Bristol gaol for tithes by the Rev. William Ray, of Lymington, in 1712, but was soon let out; after all, the parson outwitted Mrs. Bownas, and got 101. for tithe, a sore subject with the poor woman on her death-bed.

In February 1722 Bownas married his second wife, a widow named Nichols, of Bridport, where he henceforth resided, though he still travelled much. Visiting America again in 1726, he met Elizabeth Hanson, of 'Knoxmarsh, in Kecheachy, in Dover township,' New England, from whom he obtained particulars of her captivity (with her children) among the Indians in 1724. The substance of the story was afterwards printed. The London reprint of this 'Account of the Captivity, &c.,' 1760, 8vo (2nd edition, same year; 3rd edition, 1782; 4th edition, 1787), purports to be 'by Samuel Bownas,' but it is a mere reissue, with a new title, of an American publication, 'God's mercy surmounting Man's Cruelty, &c.,' which Bownas expressly says that he first saw in Dublin. He got home again on 2 Aug. 1728, travelled in the north and in Ireland; lost his second wife on 6 March 1746; and continued to travel at intervals till within a few years of his death, which took place at Bridport on 2 April 1753. He was a tall man, with a great voice, ready in retort, more given to scriptural argument than some of the earlier Friends. He wrote:

  1. Preface (dated Lymington, 2 June 1715) prefixed to Daniel Taylor's 'Remains,' 1715, 8vo (edited by Bownas).
  2. 'Considerations on a Pamphlet entituled, The Duty of Consulting a Spiritual Guide, &c.,' 1724, 8vo (in reply to a Lincolnshire clergyman named Bowyer).
  3. 'A Description of the Qualifications necessary to a Gospel Minister, &c.,'1750, 8vo; 2nd edition, 1767, 8vo (with appendix); 3rd edition, 1853, 16mo (with new appendix).
  4. 'Account of the Life, Travels, … of Samuel Bownas,' 1756, 8vo (this is an autobiography to 2 Sept. 1749, with preface by Joseph Besse, and testimony of the Bridport monthly meeting), reprinted 1761, 8vo; 1795, 12mo; Stamford, 1805, 12mo; 1836, 16mo; Philadelphia, 1839: 1846, 8vo.

[Life, ed. of 1846; Smith's Cat. of Friends' Books, 1867, i. 308, 912, ii. 703; Smith's Bibliotheca Anti-Quak. 1872, p. 82.]

BOWNDE or BOUND, NICHOLAS, D.D. (d. 1613), divine, was son of Richard Bound, M.D., physician to the Duke of Norfolk. He received his academical education at Peterhouse, Cambridge, of which college he was elected a fellow in 1570 (Addit. MS. 5843, f. 41 b). He graduated B.A. in 1571 and M.A. in 1575. On 19 July 1577 he was incorporated in the latter degree at Oxford, and on 3 Sept. 1585 he was instituted to the rectory of Norton in Suffolk, a living in the gift of his college. He was created D.D. at Cambridge in 1594.

In 1595 Bownde published the first edition of his famous treatise on the Sabbath. In it he maintained that the seventh part of our time ought to be devoted to the service of God; that Christians are bound to rest on the seventh day of the week as much as the Jews were on the Mosaical sabbath. He contended that the 'sabbath' was profaned by interludes, May-games, morris dances, shooting, bowling, and similar sports; and he would not allow any feasting on that day, though an exception was made in favour of 'noblemen and great personages' (Sabbathvm veteris et novi Testamenti, 211). The observance of the Lord's day immediately became a question between the high-church party and the puritans, and it is worthy of notice that this was the first disagreement between them upon any point of doctrine. The sabbatarian question, as it was henceforth called, soon became the sign by which, above all