Mary Boleyn

Mary Boleyn
Spouse	Sir William Carey (m.1520-1528) Lord William Stafford (m.1534-1543)
Mistress of	Henry VIII of England Francis I of France
Issue	Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon Catherine Carey, Lady Knollys Anne Stafford Edward Stafford
Father	Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire
Mother	Elizabeth Howard

Mary Boleyn (c. 1499-19 July 1543) was a member of the English Boleyn family, which enjoyed considerable influence during the reign of King Henry VIII of England. Mary was the sister of Queen consort Anne Boleyn; some historians claim she was the younger sister, but her children believed Mary was the elder sister, as do most historians today.

Mary was one of the mistresses of King Henry VIII. It has been alleged that she bore two of the King's children. Mary was also rumored to be a mistress of Henry VIII's rival, King Francis I of France.

Early life

Mary was born at Blickling Hall, Norfolk and grew up at Hever Castle, Kent. She was the daughter of a wealthy diplomat and courtier, Sir Thomas Boleyn and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Howard. There is no concrete evidence of her exact date of birth, but it was sometime between 1499 and 1508. Some historians suggest that she was also the eldest of the three Boleyn children who survived infancy. The evidence suggests that the surviving Boleyns believed Mary to have 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 male line. However, Queen Elizabeth was said to have offered Henry, Mary's son, the title as he was dying, but he declined it. If Mary was the eldest Boleyn, Henry would have had inherited the title upon his Grandfather's death without the need to claim it.

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

She was sent abroad in 1514 when her father secured her a place as maid-of-honour to the King’s sister, Princess Mary Tudor, who was going to Paris to marry King Louis XII of France. After a few weeks, many of the Queen's English maids were sent away but Mary Boleyn was allowed to stay, probably because her father was the new English ambassador. Even when Mary Tudor left France after she was widowed on 1 January 1515, Mary Boleyn joined the court of Louis's successor, Francis I of France and his queen Claude of France.

Royal affair in France

Mary was joined in Paris by her father, Sir Thomas, and also her sister, Anne, who had been studying in the Netherlands for the last year. Mary supposedly embarked on several affairs, including one with King Francis I himself. Although some historians believe that the reports of her sexual affairs are exaggerated, the French king referred to her as "The English Mare" and as "una grandissima ribalda, infame sopra tutti" ("a great prostitute, infamous above all").

She returned to England in 1519, where she was given the position of maid-of-honour to Catherine of Aragon.

Royal mistress

Soon after her return, Mary was married to Sir William Carey, a wealthy and well-connected courtier, on February 4, 1520, and Henry VIII was a guest at the couple's wedding. At some point, Henry and Mary began an affair, although the timing is unclear. The affair was never publicized, and Mary never enjoyed the fame, wealth and power that acknowledged mistresses in France and other countries sometimes had. The affair is believed to have ended prior to the birth of Mary's second child, Henry Carey, in March 1526. Her first child, Catherine was born in 1524.

During the affair or sometime after, it was rumoured 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 Hale, Vicar of Isleworth, some ten years after the child was born, remarked that he had met a 'young Master Carey' who was the king's purported bastard child. No other contemporary evidence exists to support the argument that Henry was the king’s biological son.

Henry VIII's first wife, Catherine of Aragon, was married to Henry's elder brother Arthur, but Arthur had died just a few months later, when he was a little over 15 years old. Henry later used that as the justification for the annulment of his marriage to Catherine, on the grounds that her marriage to Arthur (assuming it was consummated) created an affinity between Henry and Catherine. When Mary Boleyn became Henry's mistress, a similar affinity existed between Henry and Anne. According to some interpretations of church law, because Mary was Henry's former mistress, his subsequent marriage to her sister was equally illegal as that of Henry to Catherine of Aragon. As Henry was a man who was educated in theology, it is likely that he was aware of this.

Sister’s rise to power

Mary Boleyn's sister, Anne, returned to England in January 1522, achieving considerable popularity at the royal 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 and intelligent. When the king took an interest in her, she refused to become his mistress, being shrewd enough to wait and not give in to his sexual advances until it was the most advantageous. By the middle of 1527, Henry was determined to marry her. This gave him further incentive to seek the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

A year later, when Mary's husband died during an outbreak of sweating sickness, Henry granted Anne Boleyn the wardship of her nephew, Henry Carey. Mary's husband had left her with considerable debts, and Anne arranged for Henry to be educated at a respectable Cistercian monastery. Anne interceded to secure Mary a small annual pension of £100.

Second marriage

In 1532, when Anne accompanied Henry to Calais on a state visit to France, Mary was one of her companions. Anne was crowned Queen on June 1, 1533 and gave birth to her first daughter (later to become Queen Elizabeth I) on 7 September. In 1534, Mary secretly married soldier William Stafford. Because Stafford was a commoner with a small income, most historians believe their union to have been a love match. When the marriage was discovered, Anne was furious, and the Boleyn family disowned her for marrying beneath her station; the couple were banished from the royal court.

Mary's financial circumstances became so desperate that she was reduced to begging the king’s adviser Thomas Cromwell to speak to Henry and Anne 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. It was Anne who relented, sending Mary a magnificent golden cup and some money, but still refusing to receive her at court. This partial reconciliation was the closest the two sisters came, since it is not thought that they met after Mary's court exile.

Mary's life between 1534 and her sister's execution on May 19 1536 is difficult to trace. There is no record of her visiting her parents, nor did she visit her sister Anne or her brother George Boleyn when the latter was imprisoned in the Tower of London. There is also no evidence that she sent correspondence. 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 two years later; her father, Thomas, died the following year. After the deaths of her parents, Mary inherited some property in Essex. She seems to have lived out the rest of her days in obscurity and relative comfort with her second husband. She died in her early forties, on July 19, 1543.

Children

Her marriage to Sir William Carey (1495 – June 22 1528) resulted in the birth of two children (however there were rumours that King Henry VIII was the biological father):

• Catherine Carey (1524– 15 January, 1568). Rumoured to have been the child of King Henry VIII. Maid-of-Honour to Anne of Cleves and Catherine Howard. She married a Puritan, Sir Francis Knollys, Knight of the Garter. She was later Chief Lady of the Bedchamber 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). Also rumouredto have been the child of Henry VIII. 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 Ormond, which he had long sought, but he declined. He was married to Anne Morgan.

Her marriage to William Stafford (d. May 5, 1556) resulted in the birth of a daughter named Anne, respectfully after Mary's sister. As well as this, a son was born named Edward, who is thought to have been born in 1535 and to have died in 1545.

Descendants

Mary Boleyn is a distant ancestress 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 was depicted in the 1969 film Anne of the Thousand Days, and was played by Valerie Gearon.

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, The Concubine by Norah Lofts, Anne Boleyn by Evelyn Anthony, Dear Heart, How Like You This? by Wendy J. Dunn, Brief Gaudy Hour by Margaret Campbell Barnes, 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 who found the work imprecise in regards to historical events and individual characteristics.

The Other Boleyn Girl was made into a BBC television drama in January 2003, starring Natascha McElhone as Mary and Jodhi May as Anne. A Hollywood version of the book was released in February 2008, with Scarlett Johansson as Mary and Natalie Portman as Anne.

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

Non-fiction

Mary is also the subject of two non-fiction books, The Mistresses of Henry VIII by Kelly Hart and Mary Boleyn by Josephine Wilkinson, which is due out later this year.

Styles

• Mistress Mary Boleyn (1499-1520)
• Lady Carey (1520-1529)
• Lady Carey; Lady Mary Carey (1529-1532)
• Lady Mary Stafford (1532-1543)

Mary Boleyn became Lady Carey upon her marriage to Sir William Carey in 1520. She then became Lady Mary Carey when her father was promoted to the title of Earl of Wiltshire.

References

• Bruce, Marie-Louise: Anne Boleyn (1972)
• Denny, Joanna: Anne Boleyn: A New Life of England's Tragic Queen (2004)
• Fraser, Antonia: The Wives of Henry VIII (1992)
• Hart, Kelly: The Mistresses of Henry VIII The History Press (2009)
• Ives, Eric: The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (2004)
• Lindsey, Karen: Divorced Beheaded Survived: A Feminist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII (1995)
• Lofts, Norah: Anne Boleyn (1979)
• Weir, Alison: The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1991)