Thomas Boleyn

Thomas Boleyn, LL.B (c. 1400-1472), (often Master Thomas Boleyn, clerk; by some now designated Thomas Boleyn II), was the Master of Gonville Hall, Cambridge from 1454 to 1472, the seventh to hold that position. During the later 1440s, through three separate acts of foundation, he was one of the small group appointed to formulate the statutes of what became Queens' College in Cambridge. His brother Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, Lord Mayor of London 1457-58, was the great-grandfather of Anne Boleyn, Queen consort of England. Origins Thomas Boleyn was the eldest surviving son of Geoffrey Boleyn (died 1440), yeoman, of Salle, Norfolk, and his wife Alice, daughter and heiress of Sir John Bracton of Norfolk. Geoffrey and Alice Boleyn of Salle are commemorated by a monumental brass in Salle Church, which shows the two figures frontally, standing, set side by side, with a memorial inscription beneath (referring also to their children) and a scroll flying between them with a Latin prayer, "God be merciful to us sinners". Around 1730 Thomas Martin of Palgrave saw two subsidiary brass groups in the slab showing their five sons and their four daughters: these have long been missing. Thomas was the grandson of Thomas Boleyn I (died 1411) of Salle and his wife Agnes. Life Early career Thomas was ordained as deacon on 8 March 1421, and at the time of his ordination as a priest later in 1421 he was a fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He then became rector of the church of Reepham, just south-west of Salle, from 1422 to 1429. He is titled Magister in the commission for him to attend the Council of Basle in 1434 upon the King's affairs in the suite of Edmund Beaufort, who presented him to the rectory of Hackford next Reepham in 1436. His degree of Legum Baccalaureus, or "Bachelor of Laws" indicates some grounding in both Civil and Canon Law (mainly for scholarly and philosophical purposes and not as a legal training), presumably in the University of Cambridge, and remained his identifying qualification throughout his career, although he is generally referred to as "Master", and "clerk".