Background
His father was Rear-admiral Thomas Boys of Kent. He was born at Sandwich, Kent, and educated at Tonbridge Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge.
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Thomas Boys
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Trinity College.
Career
The failure of his health from over-study prevented his taking more than the ordinary degrees (Bachelor 1813, Master of Arts 1817), and, finding an active life necessary to him, he entered the army with a view to becoming a military chaplain, was attached to the military chest in the Peninsula under Wellington in 1813, and was wounded at the battle of Toulouse in three places, gaining the Peninsular Meda He was ordained deacon in 1816, and priest in 1822. While holding this last post, he revised Deodati"s Italian Bible, and also the Arabic Bible.
Boys also made a translation of the Bible into Portuguese.
He began by making a critical revision of João Ferreira de Almeida"s version: according to The Bible of every Land, published by Samuel Bagster in 1848, Boys "appears to have completed the revision of the New Testament, and to have published small editions of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, and of the Psalms". Then, in 1837, the Trinitarian Bible Society decided to publish a new Portuguese translation from the Greek and Hebrew texts, and appointed Boys to carry out the work.
He was instructed to use Almeida"s version as a basis, but carry out a careful comparison with the Hebrew, and to make his version comprehensible to contemporary readers. The New Testament was published in 1843, and the Old Testament in 1847.
In 1848 he was appointed incumbent of Holy Trinity, Hoxton.
He died 2 September 1880, aged 88.
