He proceeded, while still in his teens, to the university of Edinburgh, and studied for the ministry; he received license as a preacher of the gospel, though never destined to excel as a pulpit orator, In 1771 he was in London as usher in an academy at Edmonton; he was afterwards in the same capacity at Hampstead, and later at Camberwell, with a Rev. Mr. Smith, whom he assisted also in his ministerial duties. He subsequently became minister of an independent or congregational chapel at Gosport. In 1780 he added to his clerical work a tutorship in an institution of the town for the education of young men destined for the independent ministry. There grew out of this his scheme of foreign missions, which led to the formation of the London Missionary Society. Among its missionaries were John Williams of Erromanga, Dr. Robert Moffat, and Dr. David Livingstone. Bogus also took an active part in founding the two kindred institutions—the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Religious Tract Society. To the latter he contributed the first of a series of long-popular tracts. In 1790 he published ‘Reasons for seeking it Repeal of the Test Acts. By a Dissenter.'
In 1796 he and the Rev. Greville Ewing of Glasgow and the Rev. William Innes of Edinburgh who like himself had left the church of Scotland and become the one an independent, and the othera baptist minister, agreed with Robert Haldane, of Airthrie—who sold his family estate in order to provide the funds—to go out to India that they might act as missionaries to the natives. The East India Company refused to sanction the scheme. It was afterwards noted that a massacre of Europeans took place on the very spot at which the three friends had intended to settle.
In 1801 Bogue published ‘An Essay on the Divine Authority of the New Testament;’ prepared at the request of the London Missionary Society, and quickly translated into French, German, Italian, and Spanish. In 1807 a peared his ‘Catechism for the Use of all the Churches in the French Empire. From the French.’ In 1808 he published a striking sermon ‘preached before the promoters of the Protestant Dissenters' Grammar School, Mill Hill.’ In 1809 he edited a volume of sermons by the Rev. Dr. Grasomer. In the same year was published the ‘History of Dissenters from the Revolution in 1689 to the year 1808’ (3 vols.), prepared in association with Dr. James Bennet [q. v.] A second edition, enlarged, was issue in 1812 (4 vols. 8vo), and another in 1833. It is a standard work the fruit of infinite research and painstaking zeal, although at times somewhat partisan and embittered. In 1815 the Senatus Academicus of Yale College, Connecticut, conferred upon Bogue the degree of D.D.
Bogue was well known in all the churches. He was wont to make an annual missionary preaching tour on behalf of the London Missionary Society. In one of these journeys he was seized with a sudden illness at Brighton. There he died on 25 Oct. 1825, in the seventy-fifth year of his age.
[History of Religious Tract Society (Jubilee); British and Foreign Bible Society Reports; Bogue's Works; Lives of the Haldanes; Anderson's Scottish Nation]
BOGUE, RICHARD (1783–1813), captain royal artillery, who fell before Leipzig in 1813, was son of John Bogue, M.D., of Fareham, Hampshire, and was born in 1783. He entered the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, as a cadet, 31 Jan. 1797, passing out as a second lieutenant in the royal artillery in July 1798, and becoming a second captain in that corps in March 1806. In June 1813 he went out to the north of Germany with some artillery detachments, which were united under his command as a rocket brigade, afterwards officially known as the (late) 2nd rocket troop, royal artillery. The troop, while attached to the army of the Prince Royal of Sweden (Bernadotte), rendered very important service in the memorable battles around Leipzig on 16-19 Oct. 1813. On 18 Oct., the second day of fighting, when supporting Bulow’s corps, which was on the extreme left of the prince royal, in an attack upon a retiring body of French near the village of Paunsdorf, Bogue was killed by a cannon-ball which struck him on the head, or, by some accounts, the breast. He lies buried in the village of Taucha,
some miles north-east of Leipzig.
[Gent. Mag. lxxxiii. ii. 507; Kane’s List of Officers R. Art. (revised ed. Woolrich, 1869; Duncan's Hist. R. Art. i. 394, 404, ii. 290; Marquis of Londonderry's Narrative of War in Germany, p. 172 (London, 1830); Alison's Hist. of Europe, xii. 246 (ed. 1849-50); Murray’s Handbook of N. Germany (name misspelt Bowyer), p. 2821]
BOHEMUS, MAURITIUS (fl. 1647–1662), ejected minister, was born at Colberg on the Pomeranian coast. His uncle, Dr. Johannes Bergius (Palmer has ‘Burgius’ incorrectly), was chaplain to the elector of Brandenburg; he was born at Stettin 24 Feb. 1587, and died at Berlin 27 Dec. 1658. Bohemus was rector of Hallaton, Leicestershire, and ejected thence in 1662, when he returned to Germany. He seems to have been thrice
