In the attribution of one version of the treatise Summa super musicam he is called 'doctoris musice reverendi'.
[1] Traditionally authors followed the earliest biographical source John Bale's Illustrium maioris britanniae scriptorum (Summary of the Writers of Britain) (1548), which uses the spelling 'Hamboys' and indicates he received a liberal education from an early age, but was chiefly devoted to the study of music.
He adds that he was 'the most noted man of his day in England' and that he came to prominence in 1470 in the reign of Edward IV (r.1461-83).
[2] More recently Brian Trowell has argued that he can be identified with J. de Alto Bosco, the Latin title of a musician mentioned in the motet Sub Arturo plebs, which is probably from a century earlier, in the 1370s.
[3] It is possible that Bale only knew the Summa from a later edition and so may have assumed the period of authorship to fit with that or he may have conflating him with fifteenth-century composer and theorist John Hothby (d.