Edmund Bohun

[4] In reply to Jeremy Collier's The Desertion discuss'd in a Letter to a Country Gentleman (1688), Bohun wrote The History of the Desertion (1690), bringing forward an argument influential for Tories who (unlike Collier) were prepared to swear allegiance after the Glorious Revolution; this work was the first history written of the events in which James II of England left the throne.

He drew on the work of Grotius, in De Jure Belli ac Pacis, for the idea of conquest after a just war as applicable to the contemporary United Kingdom, as was also done by William King.

Thomas Babington Macaulay claimed that the Whig Blount in writing it deliberately set out to entrap the unpopular Bohun, but this is no longer accepted.

In a House of Commons debate in 1693, Tories defending Bohun pointed out that the bishops Gilbert Burnet and William Lloyd had published similar arguments.

The outcome was that Bohun lost the position, which was shortly abolished, and Burnet's Pastoral Letter of 1689 was included in a suppression order covering William and Queen Mary Conquerors.