BOORDE (or Borde), ANDREW (1490?-1549), English physician and author, was born at Boord’s Hill, Holms Dale, Sussex. He was educated at Oxford, and was admitted a member of the Carthusian order while under age. In 1521 he was “dispensed from religion” in order that he might act as suffragan bishop of Chichester, though he never actually filled the office, and in 1529 he was freed from his monastic vows, not being able to endure, as he said, the “rugorosite off your relygyon.” He then went abroad to study medicine, and on his return was summoned to attend the duke of Norfolk. He subsequently visited the universities of Orleans, Poitiers, Toulouse, Montpellier and Wittenberg, saw the practice of surgery at Rome, and went on pilgrimage with others of his nation to Compostella in Navarre. In 1534 Boorde was again in London at the Charterhouse, and in 1536 wrote to Thomas Cromwell, complaining that he was in “thraldom” there. Cromwell set him at liberty, and after entertaining him at his house at Bishops Waltham in Hampshire, seems to have entrusted him with a mission to find out the state of public feeling abroad with regard to the English king. He writes to Cromwell from various places, and from Catalonia he sends him the seeds of rhubarb, two hundred years before that plant was generally cultivated in England. Two letters in 1535 and 1536 to the prior of the Charterhouse anxiously argue for his complete release from monastic vows. In 1536 he was studying medicine at Glasgow and gathering his observations about the Scots and the “devellyshe dysposicion of a Scottysh man, not to love nor favour an Englishe man.” About 1538 Boorde set out on his most extensive journey, visiting nearly all the countries of Europe except Russia and Turkey, and making his way to Jerusalem. Of these travels he wrote a full itinerary, lost unfortunately by Cromwell, to whom it was sent. He finally settled at Montpellier and before 1542 had completed his Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge, which ranks as the earliest continental guide book, his Dietary and his Brevyary. He probably returned to England in 1542, and lived at Winchester and perhaps at Pevensey. John Ponet, bishop of Winchester, in an Apology against Bishop Gardiner, relates as matter of common knowledge that in 1547 Doctor Boord, a physician and a holy man, who still kept the Carthusian rules of fasting and wearing a hair shirt, was convicted in Winchester of keeping in his house three loose women. For this offence, apparently, he was imprisoned in the Fleet, where he made his will on the 9th of April 1549. It was proved on the 25th of the same month. Thomas Hearne (Benedictus Abbas, i, p. 52) says that he went round like a quack doctor to country fairs, and therefore rashly supposed him to have been the original merry-andrew.
Andrew Boorde was no doubt a learned physician, and he has left two amusing and often sensible works on domestic hygiene and medicine, but his most entertaining book is The Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge. The whyche dothe teache a man to speake parte of all maner of languages, and to know the usage and fashion of all maner of countreys. And for to know the moste parte of all maner of coynes of money, the whych is currant in every region. Made by Andrew Borde, of Physycke Doctor. Dedycated to the right honourable, and gracious lady Mary daughter of our soverayne Lorde Kyng Henry the eyght (c. 1547). The Englishman describes himself and his foibles—his fickleness, his fondness for new fashions and his obstinacy—in lively verse. Then follows a geographical description of the country, followed by a model dialogue in the Cornish language. Each country in turn is dealt with on similar lines. His other authentic works are: Here foloweth a Compendyous Regimente or Dyetary of health, made in Mountpyllor (Thomas Colwell, 1562), of which there are undated and doubtless earlier editions; The Brevyary of Health (1547?); The Princyples of Astronamy (1547?); “The Peregrination of Doctor Board,” printed by Thomas Hearne in Benedictus Abbas Petroburgensis, vol. ii. (1735); A Pronostycacyon or an Almanacke for the yere of our lorde MCCCCCXLV. made by Andrew Boorde. His Itinerary of Europe and Treatyse upon Berdes are lost. Several jest-books are attributed to him without authority—The Merie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotam (earliest extant edition, 1630), Scogin’s Jests (1626), A mery jest of the Mylner of Abyngton, with his wyfe, and his daughter, and of two poore scholers of Cambridge (printed by Wynkyn de Worde), and a Latin poem, Nos Vagabunduli.
See Dr F.J. Furnivall’s reprint of the Introduction and some other selections for the Early English Text Society (new series, 1870).
BOOS, MARTIN (1762-1825), German Roman Catholic theologian, was born at Huttenried in Bavaria on the 25th of December 1762. Orphaned at the age of four, he was reared by an uncle at Augsburg, who finally sent him to the university of Dillingen. There he laid the foundation of the modest piety by which his whole life was distinguished. After serving as priest in several Bavarian towns, he made his way in 1799 to Linz in Austria, where he was welcomed by Bishop Gall, and set to work first at Leonding and then at Waldneukirchen, becoming in 1806 pastor at Gallneukirchen. His pietistic movement won considerable way among the Catholic laity, and even attracted some fifty or sixty priests. The death of Gall and other powerful friends, however, exposed him to bitter enmity and persecution from about 1812, and he had to answer endless accusations in the consistorial courts. His enemies followed him when he returned to Bavaria, but in 1817 the Prussian government appointed him to a professorship at Düsseldorf, and in 1819 gave him the pastorate at Sayn near Neuwied. He died on the 29th of August 1825.
See Life by J. Gossner (1831).
BOOT, (1) (From the O. Eng. bót, a word common to Teutonic languages, e.g. Goth, bóta, “good, advantage,” O.H.G. Buoza, Mod. Ger. Busse, “penance, fine”; cf. “better,” the comparative of “good”), profit or advantage. The word survives in “bootless,” i.e. useless or unavailing, and in such expressions, chiefly archaistic, as “what boots it?” “Bote,” an old form, survives in some old compound legal words, such as “house-bote,” “fire-bote,” “hedge-bote,” &c., for particular rights of “estover,” the Norman French word corresponding to the Saxon “bote” (see [Estovers] and [Commons]). The same form survives also in such expressions as “thief-bote” for the Old English customary compensation paid for injuries.
(2) (A word of uncertain origin, which came into English through the O. Fr. bote, modern botte; Med. Lat. botta or bota), a covering for the foot. Properly a boot covers the whole lower part of the leg, sometimes reaching to or above the knee, but in common usage it is applied to one which reaches only above the ankle, and is thus distinguished from “shoe” (see [Costume] and [Shoe]).