William Binnington BOYCE

BOYCE, WILLIAM BINNINGTON (b. Beverley, Yorkshire, England, 9 Nov 1804; d. Toxteth, Sydney, 8 March 1889). Wesleyan missionary, statesman and scholar.

After training in commerce at Hull, Boyce entered the ministry in 1829 and from 1830 to 1843 was appointed Wesleyan missionary to the Albany district in South Africa. In November 1830 he founded the Buntingville mission, where he remained for two years, subsequently working at Mount Coke, Wesleyville, Newtondale and Grahamstown. Boyce was a distinguished philologist. He established that the prefix of the subject noun in the Xhosa language determined the prefixes of related adjectives and verbs. The 'euphonic concord', as he called it, provided the key to the etymological structure of the language and the basis for the study of other South African languages. With fellow missionary, William Shaw, he completed a Xhosa translation of the gospel of Luke, I-Gospel, ezindaba ezilungileyo: ebalwe-Gu-Luke (1833), published the first printed grammar of the Xhosa language, A Grammar of the Kafir Language(1834) and then Notes on South African Affairs (1839).

In 1843 Boyce returned to England, serving at Bolton, Lancashire, for two years before being sent to Sydney as general superintendent of the Wesleyan missions from 1846 to 1855. He prepared the ground for the Australasian Conference and presided over the first two sessions in 1855 and 1856. With sagacity and persistence he laid the foundation of the Wesleyan Methodist Church of Australia. Boyce had an abiding interest in professional and lay education. In August 1847 he edited and published the Gleaner, a weekly paper for Methodists which covered colonial, English and foreign news, and in addition to religious matters, embraced such topics as emigration, exploration, new settlements, mineral discoveries, and squatting interests. He also published several textbooks for the use of schools. He was one of the sixteen original fellows of the Senate of the University of Sydney appointed in December 1850, taking an active interest in the library committee headed by Sir Charles Nicholson. As president of Conference, Boyce fought strenuously for the rights of Methodism in educational matters.

From 1858 and 1876 he was a general secretary of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society in London. His Australian experience and administrative gifts helped in the formation of the first Conference of Eastern British America and the first South African Conference. During this period his missionary interests included the editing of a Memoir of the Rev William Shaw(1874), his life-long friend and the general superintendent of the Wesleyan Missions in South-Eastern Africa.

After his retirement to Sydney in 1876, he gave his time and prodigious talents mainly to literary pursuits which extended in range from a Blue Mountains guide book to scholarly works of apologetics. In 1878 he printed for private circulation among students Six Lectures on the Higher Criticism upon The Old Testament which was to be soon followed by his major work the Higher Criticism and the Bible. Both books challenge the anti-supernaturalistic trends in biblical studies emanating from the Tübingen School in Germany. His other major work, an Introduction to the Study of History revealed Boyce's encyclopaedic knowledge and monumental diligence.

Though fiercely anti-Romanist and convinced of the 'blessings' of British colonisation, it is unfortunate that no biography exists of this 'scholarly missionary', who, next to Samuel Leigh, remains the most outstanding figure in nineteenth century Australian Methodism.

ADB 3; Australian Methodist Ministerial General Index (1908); Dictionary of South African Biography; J E Carruthers, Lights in the Southern Sky: Pen Portraits of Early Preachers and Worthies of Australian Methodism With some Sketches from Life of Humbler Workers (Sydney, 1924); J Colwell, The Illustrated History of Methodism (Sydney, 1904); G G Findlay and W W Holdsworth, Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society 3 (London, 1922)

See also Peter M. Gunnar, Here am I, Lord, send me: the life of missionary leader Rev. William Binnington Boyce, Annandale, N.S.W. : Desert Pea Press, 2003.

WILLIAM W EMILSEN