Boreel baronets

The family's recorded lineage begins with Ruffin Bourell or Rufino Borelli who lived in Lille in 1401.

Pieter Boreel (1524–1568), a merchant of oil and candles, fled to Norwich (Norfolk, England) in 1567 after participating in the Iconoclastic Fury.

[1] He tried in vain to buy his freedom of religion for three million guilders from the Governor of the Netherlands, Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba.

[2] After Middelburg chose the side of William I, Prince of Orange, the Boreel family returned.

Sir Jacob Boreel (1552–1636) was mayor of Middelburg and one of the founders of the Dutch East India Company (VOC).

Pieter Boreel was until 1642 a member of the Council of the Indies, a central organ of the Dutch Empire in Asia.

Sir William Boreel (1591–1668) was appointed a lawyer for the Dutch East India Company in 1618.

Sir Jacob Boreel, the eighth Baronet (1768–1821), was raised in 1814 into the Dutch nobility as Jonkheer by Sovereign Prince William I of the Netherlands (king in 1815); the same thing happened for his two brothers, Lieutenant-General Jhr.

This line of the family failed on the death of the latter's son, the thirteenth Baronet, who died without male issue in 2001.

Sir Stephan Gerard Boreel (born 1945), the fourteenth Baronet and (as of 2018) present holder of the title.