Boyes grew up in Charterhouse Square and entered Merchant Taylors' School in the Northwood area of London in 1819.
After a very creditable school career extending over nearly ten years, he studied law at St John's College, Oxford.
He graduated BA in 1833, taking a second class in classics, his papers on history and poetry being of marked excellence.
At Oxford (where he was summoned to act as examiner in 1842), and among a large circle of discriminating friends, he enjoyed a high reputation for culture and scholarship.
Archdeacon James Hessey said of him that "There was not an English or Latin or Greek poet with whom he was not familiar, and from whom he could not make the most apposite quotations.