BOYSE, BOYS, or BOIS, John, one of the translators of the English Bible, was born at Nettlestead in Suffolk, January 3. 1560. He received the rudiments of learning from his father; and so precocious were his talents, that it is said he could read Hebrew at the age of five. At fourteen he was admitted of St John's College, Cambridge, where he was during ten years principal Greek lecturer. He also delivered a Greek lecture for some years at four in the morning, in his own chamber, which was frequented by many of the fellows. On the death of his father, he succeeded to the rectory of West Stowe. At the age of thirty-six he married the daughter of Mr Holt, whom he succeeded as rector of Boxworth, in Cambridgeshire, in 1596. On his quitting the university, the college gave him £100; but his wife being a bad economist, he soon became so much involved in debt that he was obliged to sell his choice collection of books, consisting of every Greek author then extant. When James I. directed a new translation to be made of the Bible, Bois was chosen as one of the translators; and he not only executed his own portion, which was the Apocrypha, but also the part assigned to another. He was also one of the six who had met at Stationers' Hall to revise the whole; which task they performed in nine months, having each, from the company of stationers during that time, thirty shillings a-week. He afterwards assisted Sir Henry Savile in publishing the works of St Chrysostom. In 1615 Dr Lancelot Andrews, bishop of Ely, bestowed on him unasked a prebendal stall in his cathedral. He died 14th January 1643, and left a great mass of manuscripts behind him. A work of his on the text of the Evangelists and Acts was published in 1655. When a student, Boyse received from the learned Dr Whitaker three rules for avoiding those diseases which are often engendered by sedentary pursuits, viz., to read standing, not to study at a window, and never to go to bed with cold feet. By attention to these simple precepts he is said to have preserved to the last an unwrinkled brow, with a freshness of complexion and vigour of constitution very rarely to be found in advanced age.