Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Boardman, Andrew
BOARDMAN, BORDMAN, BOURDMAN, or BOURMAN, ANDREW, D.D. (1550?–1639), divine, was a native of Lancashire, where he was born about 1550. He was admitted a scholar of St. John's College, Cambridge, 9 Nov. 1568, and matriculated as a pensioner on the 12th of the same month. He became B.A. in 1571–2, M.A. in 1575, B.D. in 1582, and D.D. in 1594. He was admitted to a fellowship on the Lady Margaret foundation 12 March 1572–3 (Baker, History of St. John's, 1869, i. 289), the same day being also that of the admission of his friend Everard Digby, of Rutland, the son of Sir Everard Digby, to whose ‘Theoria Analytica,’ &c. 4to, London, 1579, he contributed some Greek verses prefixed to the work. Boardman was appointed Greek lecturer of his college 5 Sept. 1580, and at Michaelmas following was elected one of the college preachers (Baker, History, &c. i. 334). He was made junior bursar of his college 27 Jan. 1581–2 (Athenæ Cantabrigienses, ii. 549), and in the same year, the year of his first degree in divinity, was appointed minister of St. Mary's Church, Bury St. Edmunds, where he dwelt in a house which was identified in the current feoffees' accounts as ‘next St. James steple’ (Tymms, Historie, &c.). He vacated this preferment in 1586, and removed to a benefice then known as Allchurch, near Warwick, and ultimately became also vicar of St. Mary's Church in that town, to which he was appointed by the municipality 11 Jan. 1590–1, in succession to Leonard Fetherston, deprived. He appears to have held this united preferment for nearly fifty years, and to have died in its enjoyment shortly before 16 July 1639, the date at which the Rev. Richard Venour is recorded to have been presented, by King Charles I, to the living then vacant by the death of his predecessor (Dugdale, Warwickshire, 439). The authors of ‘Athenæ Cantabrigienses’ identify Dr. Boardman as the writer of some English commendatory verses, to which the initials A. B. are subscribed, prefixed to Thomas Morley's ‘Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke,’ 4to, London, 1597, and other editions. During the earlier portion of his connection with Warwick, Boardman had given umbrage to Thomas Cartwright, master of the Earl of Leicester's Hospital (Brook, Life of Cartwright, &c. 311). The literary result of the controversy was ‘The Fan of the Faithfull to trie the Truth in Controversie; collected by A. B.; dedicated by James Price,’ 16mo, London.
[Dugdale's Warwickshire, 1730; Tymms's Historie of the Church of St. Marie, Bury St. Edmund's, 1845; Brook's Memoir of Thomas Cartwright, London, 1845; Cooper's Athenæ Cantab. ii. 238–9; Baker's History of St. John's College, ed. Mayor, 1869.]