Mapping Friendship and Dissent: The Letters from Joseph Boyse to Ralph Thoresby, 1680-1710*

This chapter displays the interaction of friends, information and ministries because both Joseph Boyse and Ralph Thoresby informed one another about family members, their personal lives and their environments. It shows that international nature of non-conformity in the seventeenth century: the travels of Boyse from England to the Netherlands and Ireland. The chapter also shows that Presbyterians sought to gain ground in Ireland, a place where Boyse believed the countryside could be described as being close to Hobbes's state of war. It demonstrates that the personal relationship between two Dissenters who had religious, family and personal interests in common a relationship which survived despite transnational migration and Thoresby's change of religious affiliation. The chapter shows Boyse's commitment to educating his congregation and Boyse's ministers, even declining the opportunity to take up a ministry at his birthplace Leeds because of Boyse's dedication to his post in Ireland.