Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 05.djvu/327

  of Cambridge, where he was admitted to a fellowship of Pembroke Hall on 4 Feb. 1631, and took the degree of M.A. He became curate of St. Lawrence, Ipswich, in 1643. Soon after the establishment of the Commonwealth he was ejected from his fellowship and sent in captivity to London, where he was 'detained under a long and chargeable confinement.' He suffered much in the royalist cause in England, and in Scotland under the Marquis of Montrose, and it is said that he narrowly escaped hanging. On the Restoration he was created D.D. at Cambridge by royal mandate. Bishop Wren of Ely, to whom he was chaplain, presented him to the rectory of Glemsford, Suffolk, on 15 Feb. 1661–2, and also to the rectories of Westerfield and Harkstead in the same county. The same prelate nominated him master of Jesus College, Cambridge, to which office he was admitted on 26 April 1663, and presented him to the rectory of Snailwell, Cambridgeshire, on 13 July in the same year. Boldero was vice-chancellor of the university in 1668 and 1674. He died at Cambridge on 5 July 1679, and was buried in Jesus College chapel.

 BOLEYN, ANNE. [See, 1507–1536.]

BOLEYN, GEORGE, (d. 1536), was the son of Sir Thomas Boleyn, earl of Wiltshire [q. v.], and brother of Anne Boleyn. Of the date of his birth we have no record, and the earliest notice of him is in the year 1522, when his name appears, joined with that of his father, as the holder of various offices about Tunbridge granted to them by patent on 29 April (Calendar of Henry VIII, lii. 2214). On 2 July 1524 he received a grant to himself of the manor of Grimston in Norfolk (ib. iv. 546). Four years later, on 26 Sept. 1628, he further received an annuity from the crown of fifty marks, payable by the chief butler of England out of the issues of the prizes of wines, and on 16 Nov. of the same year a number of offices in connection with the royal palace of Beaulieu, or Newhall, in Essex; to which was added, on 1 Feb. 1528–9, that of chief steward of the honour of Beaulieu (ib. 4779, 4993, 5248). By this time his sister Anne had become the avowed object of the king's attentions, and there can be no doubt to what influence these honours were due. In the summer of 1528, while with the king at Waltham, he and some others attending the court fell ill of the sweating sickness, causing the king at once to remove to Hunsdon; but another courtier, William Cary, the husband of Anne Boleyn's sister Mary, was carried off by the disease, and the offices above referred to at Beaulieu were rendered vacant by his death (ib. 4403, 4413). At this time Boleyn was also master of the buckhounds (Calender, v. pp. 306, 312, 321). On 27 July 1529 he was appointed governor of Bethlehem Hospital (ib. iv. No. 6816). Towards the end of that year he was sent to France with Dr. Stokesley, who was shortly afterwards made bishop of London, to consult with Francis and the Duke of Albany on various modes of counteracting the emperor's influence, and how to prevent the assembling of a general council (ib. 6073). His allowance as ambassador was forty shillings a day (ib. v. p. 315). As yet his designation was only squire of the body or gentleman of the privy chamber; but just about this time he appears to have been knighted and received the title of Viscount Rochford, by which name the fallen Cardinal Wolsey granted him, by Cromwell's advice, an annuity of two hundred marks out of the revenues of his bishopric of Winchester to secure his favour. By this name also he signed, along with the rest of the nobility, a memorial to Pope Clement VII, urging him to consent without delay to the king's wishes on the subject of his divorce from Catherine of Arragon (ib. iv. No. 6513).

On 16 July 1531 he was joined with his father in a grant of the stewardship of Rayleigh and other offices in Essex (ib. v. No. 364). In February 1533 he received a summons to parliament as Lord Rochford. Next month he was again sent on embassy to France, to inform Francis I that King Henry had married his sister Anne Boleyn, and trusted to him to support him against any papal excommunication (ib. vi. Nos. 229, 230). He returned early in April (ib. 351), and in less than two months was sent abroad again, in company with the Duke of Norfolk and others, to persuade Francis from his proposed meeting with the pope at Marseilles, which, however, actually took place later in the year. He went back to England, and returned while Norfolk remained in France (ib. Nos. 613, 661, 831, 918, 964, 973). He was at home again in September, and was present at the christening of his niece, the in&nt Princess Elizabeth, at 