Individual Details

Geoffrey Boleyn, Mayor of London

(1406 - 1462)

According to Wikipedia:

Sir Geoffrey or Jeffery Boleyn (1406-1463) was a London merchant and Lord Mayor of London.

Life

Hever Castle

Blickling Hall as it is today
Geoffrey Boleyn was the son of Geoffrey Boleyn (d. 1440) yeoman of Salle, Norfolk, and his wife Alice, daughter of Sir John Bracton, a Norfolk knight; and he was grandson of Thomas Boleyn (d. 1411) of Salle and his wife Agnes[1].

Geoffrey went to London, was apprenticed to a hatter, and became a freeman of the city through the Hatter’s Company in 1428. In 1429 he transferred to a grander livery company, the Mercers’ Company. Having served as a Sheriff of London in 1446-47, as Member of Parliament for the city in 1449, and as alderman from 1452 (Castle Baynard, 1452-57, Bassishaw 1457-63),[2] he was chosen Master of the Mercers' Company for the year 1454.[3]

He was Lord Mayor of London in 1457-58, and was knighted [4] by King Henry VI.[5] In 1461 he and Geffray Feldyng headed the list of contributors towards a prest of 500 marks granted to the King by the fellowship of the Mercers for the Earl of Warwick to go into the North.[6] He purchased the manor of Blickling in Norfolk from Sir John Fastolf in 1452, and Hever Castle in Kent in 1462.[5]

He was buried in the church of St Lawrence Jewry in the City of London.[5] His will was proved in July 1463.[7]

Siblings
Groups of five sons and four daughters were presented as mourners on the memorial brasses of the elder Geoffrey and Alice his wife, and were still in situ in Salle's parish church in 1730.[8][9] The principal figures and inscription still remain, but the mourner groups have gone.[10]

William Boleyn (died 1427).[11] William settled in Lincolnshire and was progenitor of the Lincolnshire branch of the family.[12] The antiquary William Stukeley was a descendant on his mother's side.[13]
John Boleyn.[14]
Thomas Boleyn (died 1472), prebendary of St. Stephen's, Westminster, precentor and sub-dean of Wells Cathedral, Master of Gonville Hall, Cambridge, and Master of the College of All Saints, Maidstone, Kent.[15] He was executor to Geoffrey's will.
one unknown brother.
Cecily Boleyn (1408-26 June 1458),[16] died unmarried at Blickling.
three unknown sisters.
Marriage and issue
Boleyn married Anne Hoo (1424-1484) (only child of the first marriage of Thomas Hoo (later Baron Hoo and Hastings, d. 13 February 1455), to Elizabeth Wychingham), by whom he had two sons and five daughters:

Sir Thomas Boleyn (d. 1471/2).
Sir William Boleyn (1451-1505), mercer, who married Margaret Butler, daughter and co-heiress of Thomas Butler, 7th Earl of Ormond.[17] William and Margaret were the parents of Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, father of Queen Anne Boleyn.[18]
Isabella (1434-85) who married Henry Aucher (1410-60).
Alice Boleyn b. abt.1438 d. abt. 1480 m. Sir John Fortescue of Punsborne, Hatfield, Herts d. 1500.
Anne Boleyn (born c. 1440),[citation needed] second daughter, who married Sir Henry Heydon (d. 1504),[19] by whom she had eight children. She died c. 1509.[20]
Cecily Boleyn b. abt. 1442.
Elizabeth Boleyn b. abt. 1459.
Heraldry
Burke gives the arms as: "Argent, a chevron gules,between three bulls heads couped Sable, quarterly with arms of Bracton, Azure, three mullets, a chief dauncette or."[21]

Relatives
Simon, parochial chaplain of Salle, Norfolk died 3 August 1482.
James of Gunthorpe, Norfolk, died 1493 (executor to Simon's will).
Thomas of Gunthorpe, Norfolk (executor to Simon's will).
Joan, named in her brother Simon's will. She married (1) Alan Roos of Salle (died 1463): he was receiver of rents for the Salle properties of Margaret Paston (née Mauteby, d. 1484).[22] Alan was son of Thomas Roos (who died 12 October 1440[23]), a prosperous merchant who built the north transept chapel and who, like the Boleyns of Salle, was a member of the Guild of the Holy Trinity of Coventry.[24][25] She married (2) Robert Aldrych, who died in 1474.
Historian Elizabeth Norton describes the Geoffrey Boleyn who died in 1440 as their great-uncle.[26]

References
The Boleyn Women, Elizabeth Norton (Stroud: Amberley, 2013)
A. B. Beavan, The Aldermen of the City of London Temp. Henry III to 1912 (Corporation of the City of London, 1913), II, p. 10.
L. Lyell & F. D. Watney (eds), Acts of Court of the Mercers' Company 1453-1527 (Cambridge University Press 1936), p. 42.
D. Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII (HarperCollins, 2003), p. 257.
Weir, p. 145.
Lyell and Watney, Acts of Court of the Mercers' Company, p. 54.
Will of Geffray Boleyn, Mercer and Alderman of Saint Lawrence Jewry, City of London (P.C.C. 1463 (Godyn)).
W. Langley and E. Parsons, Salle, The Story of a Norfolk Parish, its Church, Manors and People, (Jarrold & Sons Ltd., Norwich 1937), p.42.
F. Blomefield and C. Parkin, An essay towards a topographical history of the county of Norfolk VIII (William Miller, London 1808), p.275.
S. Badham, 'Geoffrey Boleyn, 1440, and wife Alice, Salle, Norfolk' Monumental Brass Society, Brass of the Month, May 2011.
W. Rye (ed.), The Visitacion of Norffolk Harleian Society XXXII (London 1891), pp. 51-53 (Brampton), at p. 52.
Blomefield and Parkin, Topographical History of the County of Norfolk, VI (William Miller, London 1807), pp. 386-89.
'Memoir of William Bowyer', in J. Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, Comprizing Biographical Memoirs (Nichols, Son, and Bentley, London 1812), V, p.499.
Rye, Visitacion of Norffolk, p. 52.
'Thomas Boleyn' in J. Venn, Biographical History of Gonville and Caius College (Cambridge University Press 1901), III, p. 18.
"Engravings of Sepulchral Brasses in Norfolk ", by John Sell Cotman and Samuel Rush Meyrick, volume I p.23
Richardson 2004, pp. 178-179.
E. W. Ives, 'Anne (Anne Boleyn) (c. 1500-1536), queen of England, second consort of Henry VIII', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (OUP 2004). Online edition (2008) (subscription required).
C. E. Moreton, 'Heydon, Sir Henry (d. 1504), lawyer', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (OUP 2004). Online edition (2008) (subscription required).
Moreton 2004.
'Coat of arms of Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, Lord Mayor of London, 1457', in B. Burke, The General Armory of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales; comprising a registry of armorial bearings from the earliest to the present time, (Harrison and Sons, London 1884), p.96.
Langley and Parsons, Salle, The Story of a Norfolk Parish, p.149.
Blomefield and Parkin, Topographical History of the County of Norfolk, VIII, p.275.
An amalgamation of the Guilds of St Mary, St John and St Catherine.
J.D.Tracy and M. Ragnow, Religion and the Early Modern State, views from Russia, China, and the West (Cambridge University Press 2004), p.326.
E. Norton, The Boleyn Women (Amberley Publishing 2013), chapter 1.
Sources
Cokayne, George Edward (1949). The Complete Peerage, edited by Geoffrey H. White. XI. London: St. Catherine Press. p. 51.
Cokayne, George Edward (1945). The Complete Peerage, edited by H.A. Doubleday. X. London: St. Catherine Press. pp. 137-142.
Hughes, Jonathan (2007). "Boleyn, Thomas, earl of Wiltshire and earl of Ormond (1476/7-1539), courtier and nobleman". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/2795. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
Richardson, Douglas (2004). Everingham, Kimball G. (ed.). Plantagenet Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families. Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Publishing Company Inc. ISBN 978-0-8063-1750-2. Retrieved 17 March 2011.
Weir, Alison (1991). The Six Wives of Henry VIII. New York: Grove Weidenfeld. p. 145. ISBN 9781446449097.

Events

Birth1406
Acceded1457
Death1462

Families

SpouseAnne Hoo (1410 - 1484)
ChildSir William Boleyn (1451 - 1505)
FatherGeoffrey Boleyn ( - 1440)
MotherLiving