BOYS, Sir Edward (1579-1646), of Fredville, Nonington, Kent

Boys’s ancestors had held Fredville since 1484, E. Hasted, Kent, ix. 247. and provided one of the Members for Sandwich, six miles away, in the Reformation Parliament. His father, also named Edward, was a Kent magistrate from 1597, C231/1, f. 28. and was a friend of the puritan divines Thomas Walkington and Richard Sedgwick; in the 1670s Samuel Clark referred to him as ‘a man eminent for piety’. S. Clark, Lives of Thirty-Two English Divines (1677), p. 157. We are grateful to Trevor Cliffe for this ref. and for information regarding Walkington: see STC 24966. Although the family was prosperous - sometime before 1612 the Crown calculated that the Boys estate was worth £1,000 p.a. HMC Hatfield, xxii. 13. - as a young man Boys was not wholly reliant on his father. In 1594 his childless great-uncle, the barrister (Sir) John Boys*, arranged for him to inherit some property, and in 1599 had him admitted to the Middle Temple at a reduced rate. Cent. Kent. Stud. PRC 32/41, f. 54v; MTR, 397. In 1597 Boys’s paternal grandfather Edward, sheriff of Kent in 1577-8, also left him the income from the lease of a manor ‘for the learning of the Latin, Greek and French tongues, as all other languages’. List of Sheriffs comp. A. Hughes (PRO, L. and I. ix), 69; Cent. Kent. Stud. PRC 32/38, ff. 48v.

Following James’s accession, Boys and his father were knighted. In August 1604 ‘Sir Edward Boys’ was licensed to travel abroad with a group of Kentish gentlemen, including Sir Peter Manwood* and Sir Norton Knatchbull*. By May 1605 Manwood had returned, and he and several other Kentish knights, among them either Boys or his father, accompanied Northampton to Windsor for the earl’s investiture as a knight of the Garter. Add. 34218, f. 87. On the death of his great-uncle in 1612, Boys inherited some woodland in Kent. Cent. Kent. Stud. PRC 32/41, f. 51v.

In 1614 Boys or his father was returned for the Cornish constituency of Fowey, but left no trace on the parliamentary records. He is not known to have stood in either 1620/1 or 1624, but in 1625 ‘Sir Edward Boys the younger’ was recommended by Lord Arundell of Wardour at Christchurch after Sir Thomas Wilsford plumped for Canterbury. Procs. 1625, pp. 679-80. Though returned, Boys again made no impression on the parliamentary records. In 1626 ‘Sir Edward Boys the younger’ defeated Buckingham’s client Sir Henry Mildmay* at Sandwich. Boys held some property near the borough, but it was only on the hustings that he took ‘the oath of an advocate of this town’. M.F. Keeler, Long Parl. 114; E. Kent Archives Cent. Sa/AC7, f. 132a.

Boys replaced his elderly father as a Kent magistrate in August 1632, and in 1635 became head of his family. He represented Dover in both the Short and Long Parliaments, and was entrusted with the command of the castle. He was still alive on 13 Apr. 1646, as he was then hoping to reduce his debts at the expense of a delinquent lawyer; but a new writ was issued four months later. CCAM, 693-4. His will, drafted on 27 Aug. 1639, was proved on 22 Oct. 1646. Cent. Kent. Stud. PRC31/127, f. 425. No further member of the Fredville branch entered Parliament, though a cousin sat for the county as a recruiter.