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.