BOATE, Edward (1584-1650), of Strood, Kent, and Portsmouth, Hants

Edward Boate the shipbuilder was born in Kent, into a family which was possibly of Dutch extraction. His father John may have been the man of that name who in the 1590s addressed a petition to Robert Cecil about his shipping business, while Henry Boate, recorder of Queenborough, and a servant and officer of Sir Thomas Walsingham*, vice admiral of Kent, may have been a kinsman.12HMC Salisbury xiv. 275; CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 427; 1633-4, pp. 291, 295, 312-13, 316, 318. Edward Boate’s early life is obscure, but he married in 1604 and his elder son Augustine was baptised at Strood in September 1609.13Strood par. reg. He probably served an apprenticeship, training as a shipwright and mercantile administrator, as his sons Augustine and Edward were to do from a young age.14HMC Cowper, i. 204. He was possibly the Edward Boate who in August 1621 complained to the East India Company of his ‘over-sudden discharge’ and arrears due for work done, perhaps because his request for a contract for building a ship at Blackwall had just been declined.15CSP Col. E. Indies 1617-21, pp. 442, 444-5.

By March 1623 Boate was acting as an agent for the navy, at that point in Portsmouth, and thereafter he wrote a series of letters on accountancy matters, addressed variously from Bristol, Deptford and Chatham, to the future secretary of state, John Coke, who was a navy commissioner.16 HMC Cowper, i. 132, 138, 149, 163, 178, 188. Boate’s activities were commended by Thomas Norreys, who noted Boate’s ‘diligent and sincere carriage’, as well as his integrity, unconcerned by the ‘sudden flashes of fury and threatening’ for which Boate was apparently renowned.17HMC Cowper, i. 176. On 2 June 1626 the navy commissioners recommended Boate to George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham, to be assistant master at Chatham, and in early January 1627 he was also mentioned as keeper of the outstores there; the Edward Boate, ‘labourer’ of Chatham mentioned in indictments between 1629 and 1631 perhaps being his younger son.18CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 346; 1627-8, pp. 5, 95; Cal. Assize Recs. Kent Indictments Chas. I ed. Cockburn, 82, 95, 111, 126, 145, 162. In April 1628, evidently considering that his exertions during the war against France meritted some form of promotion for himself and his son, he approached Secretary of state Edward Nicholas.19CSP Dom. 1627-8, p. 65; 1628-9, p. 87. A few weeks later, at the instigation of Secretary Coke, Buckingham despatched Boate to Portsmouth, where there was then customarily no resident master shipwright, and he was immediately set the task of making a survey of the king’s ships and undertaking repairs; in January 1631 he obtained a reversion of the chief place there after Phineas Pett.20CSP Dom. 1628-9, pp. 149, 154, 160, 179, 260, 417; Coventry Docquets, 180; Winfield, British Warships, 300. As well as providing frequent reports on the costs incurred, some of which he met from his own pocket, Boate provided Coke with naval news.21CSP Dom. 1628-9, pp. 487, 521; HMC Cowper, i. 285, 385, 388, 432.

In the 1630s, Boate secured preferment and promotion for his sons, who followed in his footsteps as keepers of the outstores and master shipwrights.22HMC Cowper, i. 412; CSP Dom. 1633-4, pp. 281, 323; 1635-6, pp. 365, 384, 389, 409, 421, 529; 1636-7, pp. 40, 481; 1637, p. 351. In 1632 and 1633 Boate received orders for the construction of new ships for the royal fleet, although he clearly felt that his work was hampered by the conditions at Woolwich.23CSP Dom. 1631-3, pp. 337, 405, 563; 1633-4, p. 129. He was not afraid to submit proposals of his own, and to petition for improvements in his salary.24CSP Dom. 1634-5, p. 73; 1635-6, p. 222; 1636-7, pp. 481, 527; 1637, pp. 351, 390. He spent much of his time at Chatham and Woolwich, until in January 1638 he was appointed formally as master shipwright based permanently at Portsmouth, where he married his second wife, Rebecca Holt, sister of a local navy victualler, and where he was later joined by his two sons.25CSP Dom. 1637-8, p. 269; 1645-7, p. 286; 1652-3, p. 564; Winfield, British Warships, 300.

In the early 1640s Boate seems to have remained in Portsmouth, although there is no evidence of his activity during the period when the town witnessed a bitter struggle for control between royalists and parliamentarians. When Augustine Boate drafted his will in January 1643, in addition to the property he and his wife Margaret held at Todenham and Woolaston in Gloucestershire, he and his father had equal shares in the ship Unicorn and in other maritime business.26C6/7/13; LMA, wills 1643. On 22 April 1644 Edward Boate senior was among those added by Parliament to the commission for felling the timber of delinquents for use by the navy, while that October, Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick communicated with Boate as one of the principal officers of the navy in the town, to prepare a ship for service.27CJ iii. 468a; CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 220.

In April 1646 a writ was issued for the election of a replacement for Portsmouth’s royalist MP George Goring*, who had been disabled from sitting.28C231/6, p. 43. Probably through the influence of powerful patrons in the navy as well as on the strength of his own local standing, Boate was elected, taking his seat before 15 May, when he was granted permission to go to the country.29CJ iv. 546b. He had returned to Westminster by 24 June, when he took the Covenant, but made little recorded impression upon the proceedings of the House.30CJ iv. 586a. His only known committee appointment, on 9 January 1647, reflected his personal expertise, since he was ordered to consider a book by Andrewes Burrell containing proposals for the navy.31CJ v. 47a. His only other appearance in the Journal was on 4 November 1647 when he was granted leave to go to the country.32CJ v. 349b. However, his naval duties involved contact with the Committee of Navy and Customs (which he had joined by late August 1647): that December he made a recommendation to the committee, while in February 1648 it instructed him to survey woodland near Portsmouth belonging to Oliver Cromwell* with a view to use for timber.33SP16/512, f. 79; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 612; 1648-9, p. 357. He had returned to Westminster by 1 June 1648, when he signed an order of the Committee of Navy and Customs.34SP16/518, f. 62.

Boate does not appear to have been purged from Parliament in December 1648, but his attitude towards the Rump is elusive. It is not known if, or when, he entered his dissent to the vote of 5 December. Boate died some time between 29 March 1650, when his will was written, and 17 April, when the council of state appointed his replacement as master shipwright at Portsmouth.35CSP Dom. 1650, p. 536. Neither of his sons appears to have survived him. His will mentioned Alexander’s daughter Frances, but she was already provided for, and it was among his own three daughters that he divided the property he had recently acquired in Sussex and in Gillingham and Portsmouth, and monetary bequests totalling £1,700. His executrix was his widow, Rebecca.36PROB11/212/632. In 1654 his daughter Hannah (or Anne) married another upcoming naval administrator and merchant, Josiah Child*, who with his brother John Child* sat in Parliament in 1659, respectively for Petersfield and Portsmouth.