BOLTON or BOULTON, EDMUND Eng lish historian and poet, brought up a Roman Catholic and educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, afterwards residing in Lon don at the Inner Temple. In i600 he contributed to England's Helicon. He was a retainer of the duke of Buckingham, and through his influence secured a small place at the court of James I. The most important of his numerous works are Hyper critica (1618?), a short critical treatise valuable for its notices of contemporary authors, reprinted in Joseph Haslewood's An cient Critical Essays (vol. ii., 1815), The Roman Histories of Lucius lulius Florus (translated, 1618); Nero Caesar, or Mon archie Depraved (1624), with special note of British affairs.