Mary Boleyn

Mary Boleyn
Born	Mary Boleyn c. 1499
Died	July 19, 1543
Spouse(s)	Sir William Carey (1520-1528, his death) William Stafford (1534-1543, her death)

Mary Boleyn (c. 1499–July 19 1543), was a member of the famous aristocratic Boleyn family, which enjoyed considerable influence during the early part of the 16th century. Some historians claim that she was the younger sister of Queen Anne Boleyn, but her children, and Anne's daughter, believed Mary was the elder sister, as do most historians today.

Mary was one of the mistresses of King Henry VIII of England and also, allegedly, of his rival, King Francis I of France. She was married twice.

Early life

Mary was born at Blickling Hall, Norfolk and grew up around their residence in Hever Castle, Kent. She was the daughter of a wealthy diplomat, Sir Thomas Boleyn and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Howard. There is no concrete evidence about when she was born, but it was clearly sometime between 1499 and 1508. Most historians now favour an earlier date of about 1499. There is firm documentary evidence to suggest that she was also the eldest of the three Boleyn children. The evidence suggests that the surviving Boleyns believed Mary had been the eldest child; in 1597, her grandson—Lord Hunsdon—claimed the title of “earl of Ormonde” on the grounds that he was the Boleyns’ legitimate heir. According to the strict rules of aristocratic inheritance, if Anne had been the elder sister, the title would have belonged to her daughter, Queen Elizabeth—since a title descended through the eldest female line in the absence of a surviving male line.

It was once believed that it was Mary who started her education abroad and spent time as a companion to Archduchess Margaret of Austria but it is now clear that it was her younger sister, Anne. Mary was kept in England for most of her childhood.

It was not until 1514, when she was about fifteen, that she was sent abroad. Her father secured her a place as maid-of-honour to the king’s sister, Princess Mary Tudor, who was moving to Paris to marry King Louis XII of France. After a few weeks in Paris, many of the Queen's English maids were ordered to leave but Mary Boleyn was permitted to remain, probably because of her father's connections as the new English ambassador. Even when Mary Tudor left France after her husband’s death on January 1, 1515, Mary Boleyn stayed in the court of the new king and queen, Francis I of France and Claude of France.

Royal affair in France

Mary was joined in Paris by her father, Sir Thomas, and her younger sister, Anne, who had been studying in the Netherlands for the last year. While serving in France, Mary allegedly became mistress to King Francis I, who later in his life described her as "a great whore, the most infamous of all." After her relationship with Francis ended, Mary supposedly later embarked on several affairs. These would lead to her dismissal and her being sent back to England. Some historians have questioned if these stories of Mary’s promiscuity have been greatly exaggerated, but it is generally agreed that they were at least partially true.

Mary’s parents and sister were said to have been mortified by her actions and were greatly relieved when they could ship her back to England in 1519. She was given the job of lady-in-waiting to the English queen, Catherine of Aragon, for the last ten years of Catherine's marriage to Henry VIII.

Royal mistress

A year after her return to England, Mary was married to Sir William Carey, a wealthy and well-connected courtier, on February 4, 1520. Henry VIII was a guest at the couple's wedding ceremony. At some point, Henry VIII and Mary began an affair, although the timing is unclear. The affair was never publicized, and Mary never enjoyed the kind of fame, wealth and power that acknowledged mistresses in France and other countries sometimes did. The affair is believed to have ended prior to the birth of Mary's child, Henry Carey, in March 1526.

During the affair or sometime after it ended, it was rumored that one or both of Mary's children were fathered by the King. One witness noted that Mary's son, Henry Carey, bore a resemblance to Henry VIII. John Hales, vicar of Isleworth, some ten years after the child was born, remarked that he had met a 'young Master Carey,' who some monks believed was the king's bastard. No other contemporary evidence exists to support the argument that Mary's son was the king’s biological son.

Henry's first wife, Catherine of Aragon, had been previously married to Henry's late brother Arthur. Henry later used that prohibition as the justification for his divorce from Catherine, on the grounds that her marriage to Arthur (assuming it involved sexual relations) created an affinity between Henry and Catherine. When Anne Boleyn became Henry's mistress, a similar affinity existed between Henry and Anne's sister. According to canon law, because Mary had been Henry's mistress, the subsequent marriage of Henry to Mary's sister was just as illegal as Henry's to Catherine of Aragon. If Henry was aware of this, he did not let it stand in the way of his marriage to Anne.

Sister’s rise to power

Mary's sister, Anne Boleyn, returned to England in 1522, achieving considerable popularity at court. The sisters were not particularly close and Anne moved in different social circles.

Although Mary was alleged to have been more attractive than her sister, Anne seems to have been more ambitious. When the king took an interest in her, she refused to become his mistress, being shrewd enough not to give in to his sexual advances for fear he would lose interest. By the middle of 1527, Henry was determined to marry her. This gave him further incentive to seek a divorce from Catherine of Aragon.

A year later, when Mary's husband died during an outbreak of sweating sickness, Henry VIII granted Anne Boleyn the wardship of her nephew, Henry Carey. Mary's husband had left her with considerable debts. She arranged for him to be educated at a respectable Cistercian monastery. Mary's father showed no intention of helping her. Anne interceded to secure Mary a small annual pension of £100.

Second marriage

When Anne went to Calais with Henry VIII on a state visit in 1532, Mary was one of her companions. Anne was crowned Queen on June 1, 1533 and gave birth to her first daughter (who would later become Queen Elizabeth I) that autumn. In 1534, Mary secretly married William Stafford, a commoner with no rank and small income. Due to this fact, historians largely suspect this to be a true love match. When this was discovered, her family disowned her for marrying beneath her station and the couple was banished from the Court by Queen Anne.

Her financial circumstances became so desperate that Mary was reduced to begging the King’s adviser Thomas Cromwell to speak to Henry on her behalf. Henry, however, was indifferent to her plight. So, Mary asked Cromwell to speak to her father, her uncle, and her brother, but to no avail. Surprisingly, it was Anne who relented first. She sent Mary a magnificent golden cup and some money, but she still refused to receive her back at court. This partial reconciliation was the closest the two sisters came, since they did not meet between 1534 and Anne's death in 1536.

Mary's life between 1534 and her sister's execution on May 19 1536 is difficult to trace. She did not visit her mother, nor did she visit her sister Anne when the latter was imprisoned in the Tower of London. She also made no attempts to visit their brother George, also condemned to death on charges of treason. There is also no evidence that she wrote to them. Like their uncle, Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, she may have thought it wise to avoid association with her now-disgraced relatives.

Mary and her husband remained outcasts living in retirement at Rochford in Essex. After Anne’s execution, their mother retired from the royal court, dying in seclusion just over a year after the executions. Sir Thomas died the following year. After her parents' death, Mary inherited some of the Boleyn properties in Essex. She seems to have lived out the rest of her days in anonymity and relative comfort with her second husband. She died in her early forties, a relatively young age even by the standards of the time, on July 19, 1543.

Children

Her marriage to Sir William Carey (1495 – June 22 1529) resulted in the birth of two children:

• Catherine Carey (c. 1524 – 15 January, 1568). Maid of Honour to Anne of Cleves and Catherine Howard. She was married to the Puritan, Sir Francis Knollys, Knight of the Garter. She was later lady-in-waiting to her cousin, Elizabeth I. One of her daughters, Lettice Knollys, became the second wife of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, the favourite of Elizabeth I.
• Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon (March 4 1526 – July 23, 1596). He was ennobled by Queen Elizabeth I just after her coronation and later made a Knight of the Garter. When he was dying, Elizabeth offered Henry the Boleyn family title of Earl of Ormonde, which he had long sought. He refused the honour.

Her marriage to William Stafford (d. May 5, 1556) resulted in the birth of a son, who was considered to have been born in 1535 and to have died in 1545. There may also have been a daughter, named Anne.

Descendants

Mary Boleyn is a distant ancestor of many notables including Winston Churchill, P G Wodehouse, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, Diana, Princess of Wales, Sarah, Duchess of York, and Charles Darwin.

Depictions in fiction

Mary appeared in the 1969 movie Anne of the Thousand Days, where she is presented as pregnant, dejected and bitter. She was played in that movie by Valerie Gearon, opposite Geneviève Bujold as Anne Boleyn, Richard Burton as Henry VIII and Michael Hordern as Thomas Boleyn.

A fictionalised form of her character also features prominently in the novels The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn by Robin Maxwell, I, Elizabeth by Rosalind Miles, The Rose of Hever by Maureen Peters, The Lady in the Tower by Jean Plaidy, Mistress Anne by Norah Lofts, Anne Boleyn by Evelyn Anthony, Dear Heart, How Like You This? by Wendy J. Dunn, and Young Royals: Doomed Queen Anne by Carolyn Meyer.

Mary has been the central character in three novels based on her life; Court Cadenza (later published under the title The Tudor Sisters) by British author Aileen Armitage, Karen Harper's The Last Boleyn and The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory. Gregory later nominated Mary as her personal heroine in an interview to the BBC History Magazine. Her novel was a bestseller and spawned five other books in the same series. However, it was controversial, especially with historians.

The Other Boleyn Girl was made into a BBC television drama in January 2003, starring Natascha McElhone as Mary, Jodhi May as Anne, Jared Harris as Henry VIII and Steven Mackintosh as George Boleyn. A Hollywood version of the book was released in February 2008, with Natalie Portman playing Anne, Eric Bana as the king and Scarlett Johansson as Mary.

Perdita Weeks portrayed Mary in the Showtime original drama series The Tudors.

References

• The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn by Eric Ives (2004)
• Anne Boleyn: A new life of England's tragic queen by Joanna Denny (2004)
• Divorced Beheaded Survived: A Feminist reinterpretation of the wives of Henry VIII by Karen Lindsey (1995)
• The Wives of Henry VIII by Lady Antonia Fraser (1992)
• The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir (1991)
• Anne Boleyn by Marie-Louise Bruce (1972)