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 king's artillery under the castle walls. After the battle, when the king had gone with his army to Oxford, the Earl of Essex with his whole force besieged Donnington Castle with no better success than the others had done. He abandoned the attempt before the king returned from Oxford for the purpose of relieving Donnington on 4 Nov. 1644. The place was then revictualled, and his majesty slept in the castle that night with his army around him. In August 1648 Boys made a fruitless attempt to raise the siege of Deal Castle. A resolution put in the House of Commons at the same time to banish him as one of the seven royalists who had been in arms against the parliament since 1 Jan. 1647-8 was negatived. In 1659 he was a prisoner in Dover Castle for petitioning for a free parliament, but was released on 23 Feb. 1659-60. He apparently received the office of receiver of customs at Dover from Charles II.

Sir John Boys died at his house at Bonnington on 8 Oct. 1664, and was buried in the parish church of Goodnestone-next-Wingham, Kent. The inscription describes his achievements in the wars. By his first wife, Lucy, he had five daughters. He had no children by his second marriage with Lady Elizabeth Finch, widow of Sir Nathaniel Finch, serjeant-at-law, and daughter of Sir John Fotherby of Barham, Kent.

There is a portrait of Boys engraved by Stow, and reproduced by Mr. Walter Money in his 'Battles of Newbury' (1884).

 BOYS, JOHN (1749–1824), agriculturist, only son of William Boys and Ann, daughter of William Cooper of Ripple, was born in November 1749. At Betshanger and afterwards at Each, Kent, he farmed with skill and success, and as a grazier was well known for his breed of South Down sheep. He was one of the commissioners of sewers for East Kent, and did much to promote the drainage of the Finglesham and Eastry Brooks. At the request of the board of agriculture he wrote 'A General View of the Agriculture of the County of Kent,' 1796, and an 'Essay on Paring and Burning,' 1805. He died on 16 Dec. 1824. By his wife Mary, daughter of the Rev. Richard Harvey, vicar of Eastry-cum-Word, he had thirteen children, eight sons and five daughters.

 BOYS, THOMAS (1792–1880), theologian and antiquary, son of Rear-admiral Thomas Boys of Kent, was born at Sandwich, Kent, and educated at Tonbridge grammar school and Trinity College, Cambridge. The failure of his health from over-study prevented his taking more than the ordinary degrees (B.A. 1813, M.A. 1817), and, finding an active life necessary to him, he entered the army with a view to becoming a military chaplain, was attached to the military chest in the Peninsula under Wellington in 1813, and was wounded at the battle of Toulouse in three places, gaining the Peninsular medal. He was ordained deacon in 1816, and priest in 1822. While in the Peninsula he employed his leisure time in translating the Bible into Portuguese, a task he performed so well, that his version has been adopted both by catholics and protestants, and Don Pedro I of Portugal publicly thanked him for his gift to the nation. In 1848 he was appointed incumbent of Holy Trinity, Hoxton; but before that he had established his reputation as a Hebrew scholar, being teacher of Hebrew to Jews at the college, Hackney, from 1830 to 1832, and professor of Hebrew at the Missionary College, Islington, in 1836. While holding this last post, he revised Deodati's Italian Bible, and also the Arabic Bible. His pen was rarely idle. In 1825 he published a key to the Psalms, and in 1827 a 'Plain Exposition of the New Testament.' Already in 1821 he had issued a volume of sermons, and in 1824 a book entitled 'Tactica Sacra,' expounding a theory that in the arrangement of the New Testament writings a parallelism could be detected similar to that used in the writings of the Jewish prophets. In 1832 he published 'The Suppressed Evidence, or Proofs of the Miraculous Faith and Experience of the Church of Christ in all ages, from authentic records of the Fathers, Waldenses, Hussites &hellip; an historical sketch suggested by B. W. Noel's "Remarks on the Revival of Miraculous Powers in the Church." 'The same year produced a plea for verbal inspiration under the title 'A Word for the Bible,' and 1834 'A Help to Hebrew.' He was also a frequent contributor to 'Blackwood' of sketches and papers, for the most part descriptive of his Peninsular experiences. The most important of these was 'My Peninsular Medal, which ran from November 1849 to July 1850. his acquaintance with the literature and antiquities of the Jews was very thorough, but perhaps the best proofs of his extensive 