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 upon the honor of the late Earl of Strafford, the late Bishop [Bramhall] of Derry, the lord chancellor Bolton, and several others.' Sir Richard Bolton was erroneously supposed to have been the author of a brief treatise entitled 'A Declaration setting forth how and by what means the laws and statutes of England from time to time came to be of force in Ireland.' In the archives at Kilkenny Castle is a petition in which Dame Margaret Bolton, widow of Sir Richard Bolton, applied in 1663 to the Duke of Ormonde, then viceroy, for the arrears due to her late husband. Sir Richard Bolton's son Edward succeeded him as solicitor-general in Ireland in 1622, and as chief baron in 1640. On the death of Charles I, Edward Bolton was by Charles II reappointed chief baron. From that office he was removed by the parliamentarian government, which, however, employed him in 1651 as commissioner for the administration of justice in Ireland. A second edition of Bolton's 'Justice of the Peace ' was published at Dublin in 1683, in folio. A unique portrait of Sir Richard Bolton is stated to have been; accidentally destroyed by fire at the residence of one of his descendants, some of whom in the last century held considerable estates in the county of Dublin.

[Archives of the city of Dublin; State Papers, Ireland, 1608; MSS. of Hon. Society of King's Inns, Dublin; Regiminis Anglicani in Hiberuia Defensio, London, 1624; Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica, 1772; Patent Rolls, Ireland, James I, Charles I; Letters and Despatches of Earl of Strafford, 1740; Journals of House of Lords, Ireland, vol. i. 1779; Journals of House of Commons, Ireland, vol. i. 1796; Carte's Life of Ormonde, 1736; Reports of Royal Commission on Historical MSS.; Carte MSS.. Bodleian Library, Oxford; Contemporary History of Affairs in Ireland, 1641-52, Dublin. 1879; Clarendon Papers, 1646-47. Bodleian Library; Survey of Rejected Peace. Kilkenny, 1646; Additional MSS. 4798, British Museum; Peerage of Ireland, vol. v. 1789; Hibernica, part ii. 1750; Records in office of Ulster King of Arms, Dublin.]  BOLTON, ROBERT (1572–1631), puritan, was the sixth son of Adam Bolton, of Brookhouse, Blackburn, Lancashire. The history of his family has been carefully traced in the 'Genealogical and Biographical Account of the Family of Bolton in England and America. By Robert Bolton, A.M. New York, 1868.' The most trustworthy source of information as to Robert Bolton is the 'Life and Death of Mr. Bolton,' by his friend E[dward] B[agshawe] [q. v.], which is prefixed to the successive editions of Bolton's 'Four Last Things.'

Bolton was born 'on Whitsunday, anno Dom. 1572.' Fuller says of his family at the time: 'Though Mr. Bolton's parents were not overflowing with wealth, they had a competent estate, as I am informed by credible intelligence, wherein their family had comfortably continued a long time in good repute' (Worthies, ed. Nuttall, ii. 207). Adam Bolton was one of the original governors of Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School (1567) at Blackburn, and there his son was educated, under one Yates, until his twentieth year. Young Bolton 'plied his bookes so well that in short time he became the best scholler in the schoole.'

In 1592 he proceeded to Oxford, being entered of Lincoln College, 'under the tuition of Mr. Randall, a man of no great note then, but who afterwards became a learned divine and godly preacher of London' [q. v.] 'In that colledge,' continues Bagshawe, 'he fell close to the studies of logicke and philosophie, and by reason of that groundwork of learning he got at schoole, and maturity of yeares, he quickly got the start of those of his owne time, and grew into fame in that house.' 'In the middest of these his studies [in 1593] his father died, and then his meanes failed; for all his father's lands fell to his elder brother.' No longer able to buy books, Bolton borrowed them from Randall and the libraries, and crammed endless notebooks with carefully made and classified extracts on the whole range of his studies. Greek was his favourite study, and, according to Wood, he 'was so expert that he could write it and dispute in it with as much ease as in English or Latin.' His notebooks witness that his Greek and Hebrew caligraphy was as exquisite as that of John Davies of Hereford.

He removed from Lincoln College to Brasenose, 'with a view to a fellowship therein,' as being of Lancashire. He proceeded B.A. on 2 Dec. 1596 (, Fasti, i. 272). He found in his poverty a warm patron and helper in a fellow Grecian, Dr. Richard Brett, 'a noted giver' and eminent scholar of Lincoln College. In 1602 he became fellow of Brasenose, and passed M.A. on 30 July of the same year ( Fasti, i. 296). On James I's visit to the university in 1605, he was appointed to hold a disputation in the royal presence on natural philosophy, and his majesty was loud and frank in laudation of Bolton. He was also appointed lecturer in logic and moral and natural philosophy.

Up to this date Bolton had lived profligately, and about this time a schoolfellow at Blackburn, a zealous Roman catholic, and so distinguished for his eloquence as to have