rectory of St. Dionis Backchurch, and in 1595, after much opposition, was appointed to the rectory of Bangor. He died in January 1602–3, and was buried in Lichfield Cathedral, where there is a monument to him.
It is stated in Willis's ‘Survey of Cathedrals’ (ii. 825) that ‘Dean Boleyn was kinsman to Queen Elizabeth, who would have made him Bishop of Worcester, but he refused it,' In his will he writes: ‘Her majestie gave me all that ever I have and subjectes gave me nothing.’
Among the Lansdowne MSS. (45, fol. 152) is a letter of Boleyn’s to Lord Burghley, dated 10 June 1589, asking his lordship to use his influence with Dr. Still, master of Trinity College, Cambridge, to procure a scholarship at that college for a poor youth whom Boleyn had educated. In Add. MS. 5937 (fol. 36, verso) is a letter to Boleyn from James Strangeman, the genealogist, preferring a request to be allowed the use of the old books in the cathedral library of Lichfield. Some letters of Boleyn's are preserved among the Lambeth MSS. and the State Papers. There are some curious allusions to Boleyn in the ‘Protestatyon of Martin Marprelate.’ It appears that he had a dog named Spring, and that on one occasion, when he was in the pulpit, ‘hearing his dogg cry, he out with this text: whie how now hoe, can you not lett the dogg alone there? come Springe, come Spring.’ At another time, as he was delivering a sermon, ‘taking himself with a fault he said there I lyed, there I lyed.’ In Manningham’s ‘Diary’ (ed. Camden Society, p. 148) there is another story about Boleyn’s dog.
[Cooper's Athenæ Cantabriginses; Le Neve's Fasti, ed. Hardy, i. 57. 563, 599, iii. 220; Willis’s survey of Cathedrals, i. 172. ii. 825; Antiquities of Lichfield, 5, 57; Strype's Whitgift, i. 201–209, ed. 1822; Strype’s Annals of the Reformation, iii. i, 251–2, 592, iii. ii. 206–8, ed. 1824; Strype’s Life of Parker, ii, 301, ed. 1821; Lansdowne MSS. 39 (fol. 22), 45 (fol. 152); Calendar of State Papers, Dom. ser., 1581–90, pp. 329, 426; Newcourt's Repertorium, i. 330; Dean Boleyn's Will, preserved at Somerset House; Protestatyon of Martin Marprelate.]
BOLEYN, Sir THOMAS, Earl of Wiltshire (1477–1539), was the second son of Sir William Boleyn of Blickling, Norfolk, and grandson of Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, a wealthy London merchant, who was lord mayor in 1457. The manor of Blickling, purchased originally by Sir Geoffrey of the veteran Sir John Fastolf, descended to Sir James Boleyn, the elder hrother of Sir Thomas. His mother was Margaret, daughter and coheir of Thomas Butler, Earl of Ormonde. According to his own statement he was fifty-two years old in 1529 (Calendar of Henry VIII, iv. p. 2581), therefore have been born in 1477. In 1497, when he was twenty, he was in arms with his father against the Cornish rebels. In 1509 he was appointed keeper of the exchange at Calais and of the foreign exchange in England, and in 1511 the reversion of the keepership of the royal park of Beskwood in Nottinghamshire was granted to him (ib. i. Nos. 3-13, 1477). That same year he accepted the challenge of King Henry VIII and three other knights to a tourney on the birth of a prince (ib. No. 1491), and shortly afterwards obtained a contingent reversion of some of the forfeited lands of Viscount Lovel granted by Henry VII to the Earl of Oxford, of which he no doubt came into possession on the earl's death without issue in 1513 (ib. No. 1774). In 1511 also he had a grant of lands in Kent (ib. No. 1814), and early next year he was appointed, in conjunction with Sir Henry Wyatt, constable of Norwich castle (ib. No. 3008), and received other grants and marks of royal favour besides. At this time he was sent in embassy to the Low Countries with Sir Edward Poynings, where he remained for about a year, with an allowance of twenty shillings a day (ib. ii. p. 1456, 1461). On 5 April 1513 he and his colleagues concluded with Margaret of Savoy at Mechlin the Holy league, by which the Emperor Maximilian, Pope Julius II, and Ferdinand of Spain combined to make war on France (ib. i. Nos. 3859, 3361). He took part in the invasion of France in the following summer with a retinue of a hundred men (ib. No. 4307); but nothing is recorded of his exploits in the war. He appears to have made some exchange of lands with the crown in or before the year 1516 (ib. ii. No. 2210). Even then he must have occupied a distinguished position at the court of Henry VIII, for on 21 Feb, in that year he was one of four persons who bore a canopy over the Princess Mary at her christening (ib. No.1573). In 1517 he was appointed sheriff of Kent (ib. No. 3783). On 26 Oct. in that year he obtained a license to export from his mill at Rochford in Essex, in a ‘playte’ or small vessel of his own, called the Rosendell, all ‘wode, billet, and ...’ (a Word illegible in the original), made (which apparently means cut or manufactured) within the lordship of Rochford (ib. No. 3756). Early in 1519 he went in embassy to Francis I, and he remained in France till the beginning of March 1520. During this period the famous interview of the Field of the Cloth of Gold was projected, and it was Boleyn who negotiated the preliminary arrangements. He was
