Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 05.djvu/297

Bocland widow applied for relief to the Society of Artists in 1769. Heinecken mentions amongst his portraits those of 'Thomas Chubb the Deist,' of 'Thomas Holles, duke of Newcastle,' of 'Charles, Lord Talbot,' and of 'William Walker.'

 BOCLAND, GEOFFREY (fl. 1195–1224), justice, was both a lawyer and a churchman. He was a justiciar in the years 1195–7, 1201-4, and 1218, in all which years fines were levied before him on the feast of St. Margaret at Westminster. As early as the beginning of John's reign he was connected with the exchequer, and as late as 1220 he was a justice itinerant in the county of Hereford. His ecclesiastical career begins in 1200, when he was archdeacon of Norfolk (not, Norwich, as, Norwich, i. 642). Between 1200 and 1216 the churches of Tenham and Pageham were granted him, and in the latter year, 25 March, he is found dean of St. Martin's-le-Grand, preferment which he obtained from the crown. He was concerned in the revolt of the barons in 1216, and twice in the year time and a safe-conduct were given him to appear before the king. In this year also his manor of Tacheworth in Herefordshire was forfeited and granted to Nicholas de Jelland. On Henry III's accession he was restored to his judicial position, and in 1224 he was still alive. In that year a claim was made against him by the archdeacon of Colchester for Newport, an important portion of his deanery, and he obtained a prohibition by writ against the archdeacon. Shortly before there had also been a dispute as to a vicarage in Colchester archdeaconry, that of Wytham, between Bocland and the canons of St. Martin's. The dean at last resigned whatever right he had to Eustace de Fauconbergh, bishop of London, who granted it to the canons of St. Martin's, ordaining a perpetual vicarage there; and the grant was confirmed in 1222 under the seals of the bishop, dean, and chapter of St. Paul's, and dean and canons of St. Martin's (, Repert. ii. 675). But by February 1231 he was dead, and had been succeeded by Walter de Maitland as dean of St. Martin's. Maitland was appointed 14 Sept. 1225. An elder brother of his, William de Bocland, married a daughter of one Geoffrey de Say, and sister-in-law of Geoffrey FitzPeter, and on the latter's death in 1214 Geoffrey de Bocland was ordered to sell to the king, at the market price, the corn and stock on Fitz Peter's estate at Berkhampstead. About the middle of the fourteenth century Maud, widow of William de Bocland, confirmed to the monastery of Walden the grant of the advowson of Essenham vicarage in the archdeaconry of Colchester (, ii. 245).

 BOCLAND, HUGH, or HUGH BUCKLAND (d. 1119?), sheriff of Berkshire and several other counties, received his surname from the manor of Buckland, near Faringdon, of which he was tenant under the monastery of Abingdon. Before the death of William Rufus he was already sheriff of Berkshire, and he is stated in the Abingdon history to have been one of the persons who profited by the unjust transactions of Modbert, whom the king appointed to administer the affairs of the monastery in the interest of the royal revenues, during the period when the office of abbot was vacant. He was ordered by Henry I to restore to the abbey the possessions which he had in this manner wrongfully obtained. Notwithstanding this, the Abingdon historian gives Hugh a high character for uprightness and wisdom. The same authority states that he was held in great esteem by Henry I, and that he was sheriff of eight counties. Six of these the evidence of charters enables us to identify, viz. Berkshire, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex, and Middlesex. It is sometimes stated that Hugh de Bocland was justiciar of England, but this assertion is extremely questionable. It is true that he is so described in the copy of Henry I's charter of liberties, which Matthew Paris quotes as having been read to the barons in 1213; but in the obviously more accurate copy of this charter given by the same historian under the date 1100, the designation of justiciar is wanting. The Abingdon chronicle also speaks of Hugh as 'justiciarius publicarum compellationum;' the precise import of this expression, however, is not clear. The statement in Foss's 'Lives of the Judges' that he was canon of St. Paul's is probably erroneous, although his name occurs (without date or reference to any authority) in the list of prebendaries of Harleston in Newcourt's 'Repertorium,' i. 151. He witnessed a St. Albans charter dated 1116, and also another charter of the same abbey, which Mr. Luard assigns, apparently on good grounds, to the year 1119. As we find from the Abingdon history that William de Bochelande (presumably a son of Hugh) was sheriff of Berkshire in 1120, it may be inferred that Hugh de Bocland died in 1119.