His father was a clerk in the Court of Chancery (Ireland), but this position may have been a sinecure, since the Boate family were substantial landowners in Tipperary.

Sir Richard Levinge, 1st Baronet, Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas, also had a very poor opinion of Boate, as he did of almost all of his colleagues on the Bench.

She died in 1739, and is buried beside her husband They had at least two daughters: In 1720 the Crown moved against Edward Waters, the printer of Swift's Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture.

[11] Whitsed's conduct of the trial was much criticised: on no less than nine occasions he refused to accept a verdict of not guilty, claiming that Walters and Swift were part of a Jacobite conspiracy.

[12] Swift developed a deep hatred of Chief Justice Whitshed, with whom he clashed again over the Drapier Letters, and he did not forget or forgive Boate either.