Catalogue description THE BOLEYN INHERITANCE

William Boleyn's father Sir Geoffrey, citizen and mercer of London, was mayor 1457-8. He purchased a great deal of property in Kent and in his native Norfolk. Blickling (Norf.) was bought from Sir John Fastolf.[Blomefield, Norfolk, vi. 386.] Hever (Kent) from William Fiennes, Lord Saye and Sele, in 1461.[As the manors of Hever Cobham and Hever Brokays: Cat. Anct. D.C137, C862.] The manors of Holkham, Stiffkey, Filby, Postwick, West Lexham and Carbrooke (Norf.) and Pashley (Sussex) were bought from John Lewknor and his wife Joan, all except Holkham and Stiffkey through Thomas Hoo, uncle of Geoffrey's wife.[The sales were confirmed in Feb. 1464, shortly after Geoffrey's death: below, BCM/H/2/2/1 [GC 4325]. Postwick, West Lexham, Stiffkey and Holkham had descended to Joan from her grandmother Philippa, daughter and coheir of David Strathbogie (d. 1369): below, BCM/H/2/2.] Geoffrey had married, by Feb. 1455, Anne, daughter of Thomas Lord Hoo and Hastings (d. 1455) by his first wife; with her three half-sisters she was coheir of her father, and her inheritance was the manors of Luton Hoo, Cockernhoe and Offley Hoo, grouped on the Bedfordshire-Hertfordshire border.[Most of Lord Hoo's lands passed in the first instance to his half-brother, Thomas Hoo esquire, but the three manors were settled on Thomas in tail male with remainder to Anne wife of Geoffrey Boleyn and passed to their son William Boleyn on Thomas's death in 1486: GEC vi. 564; CIPM Hen. VII, i, nos. 160, 205; Blomefield, Norfolk, vi. 388.] Geoffrey's heir was his elder son Thomas, who died without issue in 1471 or 1472 leaving his brother William as his heir.