George Boleyn, 2nd Viscount Rochford (April 1504-17 May 1536) was an English courtier and nobleman, and the brother of Queen Anne Boleyn. In 1536, he was charged with incest with his sister, and King Henry VIII had Boleyn and his sister executed.
Biography[]
George Boleyn was born in Blickling Hall, Norfolk, England in April 1504, the son of Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire and Elizabeth Boleyn. George received an excellent education, speaking fluent French together with some Italian and Latin. In April 1522, he was gifted with various manor houses in Kent by his father, and he became a gentleman of the Privy Chamber in 1525. Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, an enemy of the Boleyns, ensured that Boleyn was fired six months later, as he halved the number of Privy Chamber gentlemen. In January 1526, he became Royal Cupbearer, and he was promoted to Esquire of the Body and Master of the King's Buckhounds in 1528; he owed most of his appointments to King Henry VIII's affairs with his sisters Mary and Anne Boleyn. In 1529, he was knighted and named Viscount Rochford, taking his father's old title after his father was promoted to Earl of Wiltshire. He served as ambassador to King Francis I of France six times, serving into the early 1530s. However, he fell from the King's favor after Anne delivered stillborn children and not a surviving male child. King Henry accused George Boleyn of incest with his sister, and he had both Anne and George beheaded.
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