Greenwich (ib. No. 1111). In October he set up his household at the royal manor of Beaulieu, from which the king ordered the Princess Mary to remove to make way for him (ib. No. 1296). In 1634 he was twice sent over to France, mainly about an interview which Henry was eager to have with the French king, but which it was necessary in the end to put off (ib. vii. Nos. 469, 470, 958). In June of that year he was made warden of the Cinque Ports (ib. 922 (16)), and in November he received the French admiral Brion, who was sent to Henry VIII in embassy on his landing at Dover, where he entertained him four days till his whole train had disembarked and conducted him to Blackheath (ib. 1416, 1427).
On 10 April 1536 he obtained a grant from the crown of the manor of South, in Kent, which had been granted to Sir Thomas More (Patent Roll, 26 Hen. VIII, pt. 1, m. 32). Soon after his services were once more employed in a mission to France, to qualify some of the conditions on which Henry had offered the hand of his infant daughter Elizabeth to the Duke of Angoulême (Herbert in Kennett, ii. 179). This is the last we hear of him in any public capacity before his melancholy end. On May day in 1636 he was one of the challengers in that tournament at Greenwich from which the king abruptly departed; next day he was arrested and taken to the Tower, the queen, his sister, being arrested that day also and consigned to the same fortress. The two were arraigned together on Monday, 16 May, for acts of incest and high treason, and judgment of death was pronounced against each. Two days later (17 May) Lord Rochford, with four other alleged paramours of Anne Boleyn, were beheaded on Tower Hill, the execution of Anne herself being deferred till the 19th.
[Calendar of State Papers, Henry VIII (of which the principal specific reference have been cited above); Third Report of the Deputy Keeper of Public Records, App. ii. 243; Wriothesley's Chronicle.]
BOLEYN, GEORGE (d. 1603), dean of Lichfield, was not improbably the son of George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford [q. v.], who is usually reported to have left no male issue. In his will (preserved at Somerset House) he mentions that he was a kinsman of Lord Hunsdon, who was the grandson of Mary, eldest daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, father of the ill-fated Viscount Rochford. A close study of the State Papers and other records reveals the fact that the family of the Boleyns (or Bullens) suffered constant persecution and spoliation at the hands of Henry VIII, and afterwards of Elizabeth, Viscount Rochford's large estates passed to the crown upon his execution. If we suppose George Boleyn, afterwards dean of Lichfield, to have been a son of Viscount Rochford, it is intelligible that he should have entered Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in the position of a sixar, November 1544. At Cambridge Boleyn was a pupil of John Whitgift, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury. In 1552 he graduated B.A. and in 1560 commenced master of arts. On 3 Aug. 1560 he was installed prebendary of Ulleskelf in the church of York; afterwards he became rector of Kempston in Nottinghamshire, and prebendary of the church of Chichester; on 21 Dec. 1566 he was preferred to a canonry of the church of Canterbury, and in the following year graduated B.D. At the proceedings of the metropolitical visitation of the church of Canterbury in September 1573 various charges were laid against Boleyn. It was alleged that he had threatened to nail the dean to the wall; that he had struck one of the canons, William Eling, a blow on the ear; had attempted to strike another canon Dr. Rush; had struck a canon in the chapter-house, and had thrashed a lawyer. It must be granted that Boleyn was of a hasty temper; indeed he frankdy admitted that he was accustomed to swear when provoked. But he did not long trouble the peace of the resident canons. On the last day of February 1574-6 he was presented by the dean and chapter of Canterbury to the rectory of St. Dionis Backchurch, London; and on 22 Dec 1576 he was installed dean of Lichfield, having taken the degree of D.D., as a member of Trinity College, earlier in the same year. He was made prebendary of Dasset Parva on 16 Nov. 1577, but resigned that post in or about February 1578-9. In 1582 he became involved in a lengthy and serious dispute with John Aylmer, the bishop of his diocese. It appears that the bishop, 'being necessitous on his coming into the diocese, laboured all he could to supply himself from his clergy' (Stype's Whitgift, i. 201, ed. 1822). Boleyn, a man 'prudent and stout,' strenuously resisted the aggressive action of the bishop, finally making his appeal to the lords of the privy council, who appointed the archbishop of Canterbury to institute a visitation. Among the Lansdowne MSS. (39, fol. 22) is preserved a letter (part of which is printed in Strype's 'Annals of the Reformation,' iii. i. 251-2, ed. 1824) from Boleyn to Lord Burghley touching the dispute. The writer speaks of himself as 'no dissembler, but one that would speak the truth, were it good or bad, well or ill' In or about August 1592 Boleyn resigned the
