George Folbury (died 1540) was an English churchman and academic, master of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge from 1537. His reputation as a poet, orator, and epigrammatist is supported only by contemporary report, and none of his works are known to have survived.

Life

He was of the family of Fowbery, of Fowberry Tower

Fowberry Tower

Fowberry Tower is a Grade II* listed mansion house, situated on the banks of the River Till, near Chatton, Northumberland.The Manor of Fowberry was owned by the Fowberry family for over 400 years and their 16th century tower house incorporated the remains of an original pele tower.In the late 16th...

, Chatton

Chatton

Chatton is a village in Northumberland, in England. It is situated approximately to the east of Wooler. The village has amenities which include a pub and village shop, and also has a number of historic artifacts, with cup and ring marks and a kettle stone.-External links:* *...

, Northumberland

Northumberland

Northumberland is the northernmost ceremonial county and a unitary district in North East England. For Eurostat purposes Northumberland is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "Northumberland and Tyne and Wear" NUTS 2 region...

. He graduated B.A. at Cambridge in 1515, and M.A. in 1517, having become a Fellow of Clare Hall

Clare College, Cambridge

Clare College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England.The college was founded in 1326, making it the second-oldest surviving college of the University after Peterhouse. Clare is famous for its chapel choir and for its gardens on "the Backs"...

 in 1515. He took the higher degrees of B.D. in 1524, and D.D. at some point in Montpellier

Montpellier

-Neighbourhoods:Since 2001, Montpellier has been divided into seven official neighbourhoods, themselves divided into sub-neighbourhoods. Each of them possesses a neighbourhood council....

, France.

He was preacher to the university in 1519, and was presented to a canonry and to the prebend of North Newbald in York Cathedral in March 1531. He was then presented to the rectory of Maidwell

Maidwell

Maidwell is a village and civil parish in the Daventry districtof the county of Northamptonshire in England. At the time of the 2001 census, the parish had 325 inhabitants....

, Northamptonshire

Northamptonshire

Northamptonshire is a landlocked county in the English East Midlands, with a population of 629,676 as at the 2001 census. It has boundaries with the ceremonial counties of Warwickshire to the west, Leicestershire and Rutland to the north, Cambridgeshire to the east, Bedfordshire to the south-east,...

, on 20 February 1534. There is a long-standing theory that he was tutor to Henry FitzRoy

Henry FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Richmond and Somerset

Henry FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Richmond and Somerset was the son of King Henry VIII of England and his teenage mistress, Elizabeth Blount, the only illegitimate offspring whom Henry acknowledged.-Childhood:...

, and Beverley Murphy in a recent biography of this illegitimate son of Henry VIII proposes that Folbury succeeded Richard Croke

Richard Croke

Richard Croke was an English classical scholar, and a royal tutor and agent.He was educated at Eton College. He took his B.A. at King’s College, Cambridge in 1510, and proceeded to travel....

 as tutor and remained until the boy was 12 in 1531, his subsequent preferment coming after this appointment which would have started in the late 1520s.

Folbury was elected master of Pembroke Hall in 1537, and died between 10 July and 10 November 1540. Among those taught by him was William Turner, elected Fellow of Pembroke in 1531.