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 ofthe 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,