09/02/2018
~ Mary Boleyn, Anne Boleyn's Sister, A Guest Post by Lissa Bryan ~
Mary Boleyn has suffered almost as much from myth and slander in history as her sister, Anne. She's been called the "English Mare" of the king of France. She's said to have been the mother of Henry's children. As it turns out, neither is likely true.
The birth dates of the three famous Boleyn siblings are in question, as is the order of their birth. Mary is thought by many scholars to be the eldest surviving daughter because if Anne had been the oldest daughter, it should have been mentioned in the patents creating her Marquess of Pembroke. Mary was also married first, as was traditional for the elder sister.
Mary was likely born around 1499 or 1500 at Blickling Hall to Thomas Boleyn and his wife Elizabeth Howard. Thomas later complained that right after they were married, Elizabeth had a child every year and they had only a small pension to live on. We know of five Boleyn children for certain, but only three of those survived to adulthood. (Two graves of infant boys are still extant; there may have been more children who never had memorials or their graves are lost.) The family moved to Hever Castle shortly after the death of Thomas's father in 1505.
Thomas seems to have been a very erudite and well-educated man who ensured that his children also received a fine education. We don't know the specifics, but all three Boleyn children turned out to be eloquent writers, and they each spoke more than one language.
Besides the academic topics covered in their education, the girls would have been taught courtly manners and how to dance gracefully. Thomas had grand plans for his children, and they all had to be prepared to be glittering jewels of the court.
Legend has it Mary was thought to be the more traditionally beautiful of the two Boleyn sisters, but we don't have an authenticated portrait of her, or even a written description. There are several portraits which are said to be Mary, but each has issues which make the attribution questionable.
Mary was sent to the French court in 1514 when Princess Mary Tudor, the sister of King Henry, married the king of France. But that union was short-lived. The king died only months after the marriage. Mary remained in France after the princess returned home and became a maid of honor for the new queen Claude.
Mary may have been a short-term mistress of the newly-crowned King Francis at some point during her five years in the French court, or it's possible that something caused a rumor to spring up to that effect. Some historians question it, speculating that Mary's reputation may have been slandered in order to cast shame on her sister, Anne. A letter from the Bishop of Faenza in 1536 is the only contemporary record of it.
"[T]hat woman [Anne Boleyn] pretended to have miscarried of a son, not being really with child, and, to keep up the deceit, would allow no one to attend on her but her sister, whom the French king knew here in France per una grandissima ribalda et infame sopre tutte." [A great w***e, infamous above all.]
However, there are some obvious problems with this letter. Mary had been banished from court in 1534 and was not with Anne during her final miscarriage. Chapuys claims to have spoken with people who examined the fetus and said it was a normal male of about four months gestation, so Anne's pregnancy was not feigned. The Bishop's veracity in repeating Francis's supposed remark must thus be viewed with a healthy amount of skepticism.
Beyond that, all we have are later historians, starting with Nicholas Sander in Elizabeth's reign, whose Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism gave us the claim that Francis called Anne (not Mary, though his words were soon assigned to describe her) his "English Mare" or "royal mule."
Herbert repeats the claim as well, quoting William Rastal's version for good measure.
"This author, though learned, yet more credulous than becomes a man of exact judgment, reports out of one William Rastal, a judge, (in his life of Sir Thomas More) that Mistress Anne Bolen was the king’s daughter, by the wife of Sir Thomas Bolen, while, sub specie minoris, he was employ’d by the king, ambassador in France; and that this gentlewoman coming to the age of fifteen, was deflour’d by some domesticks of her father’s, and then sent to France; where also she behav’d herself so licentiously, that she was vulgarly call’d the hackney of England, till being adopted to that king’s familiarity, she was termed his mule."
Later authors repeated the slander, applying it to Mary, not Anne, and it appeared so many times in biographies and books about the period that it became accepted as fact.
Upon her return to the English court in early 1519, Mary Boleyn became the mistress of Henry VIII. We don't know when the affair began, but it appears to have started quickly after her arrival at the English court. Henry's affair with Bessie Blount had ended and it appears he was looking for a replacement.
English kings didn't have "official mistresses" who had political power, and so chroniclers of the day tended to ignore the women who came and went in monarchs' lives.
Mary was married to William Carey in February, 1520. Debate continues as to whether this marriage marked the end of Mary's affair with the king.
She had two children during her marriage with Carey, Catherine and Henry. Some have claimed that one, if not both, of those children were fathered by king Henry, but it seems likely if they had been his issue, he would have seized upon this evidence of his virility, as he had done with his son by Bessie Blount.
Henry VIII was sensitive about the perception of his fertility. As soon as Bessie Blount gave him a son, Henry publicly claimed the boy and ennobled him - something no king had done for hundreds of years. Even after his other children were bastardized, Henry kept them in the public eye.
Why would he not have claimed Mary Boleyn's children, as well, even if he didn't go to the extra step of ennobling Henry Carey? It seems odd that he would not even have mentioned fathering a son with Mary Boleyn when he was busy pointing out his marriage with his queen was "cursed" by God with infertility but he could easily father male children with other women.
Some have posited that he feared public or papal disapproval would mean not being able to marry Anne if it was known he'd had children with her sister, but he was not interested in Anne until 1526 and didn't start the process of trying to make her his wife until a year after that. This theory grants Henry supernatural foresight to keep the parentage of Mary's children secret in case he ever fell for her sister in the future.
The alternative theory has Mary and Carey in a long-term, sexless marriage of convenience to cover Henry's illicit relationship with her. She doesn't conceive until five years into her relationship with the king, and then gives him a son two years later. In this scenario, the end of Henry's relationship with Mary coincides with the first recorded declaration of the king's interest her sister, Anne Boleyn.
Is there any evidence Henry's involvement with Mary continued after 1520 and her marriage to William Carey?
The chief evidence seems to rest on a series of grants that Henry made to William Carey between 1522 and 1526, which some argue were akin to payments for the "use" of Carey's wife.
Genealogy Magazine notes: "Mary Boleyn’s affair with the King probably commenced at about the same time: 1522. The spate of royal grants to her [Mary Boleyn’s] husband [William Carey] in 1522, 1523, 1524 and 1525 is also suggestive. [T]he first manors and estates, as opposed to minor keeperships and stewardships, that Mary’s husband possessed were granted to him by the crown in June 1524 and February 1526. It should be especially noted that the February 1526 grant occurred on the 20th, just twelve days before the recorded birth of Henry Carey on 4 March 1525/6. Significantly, this royal grant included the borough of Buckingham which was granted to William Carey 'in tail male.' It is impossible not to be struck by the coincidence of this entailment to a male 'heir,' just twelve days before the date of record on which William Carey’s wife gave birth to a male child said to be the king’s son."
I find no significance in the grant being "in tail male." That was a normal part of the wording of grants of the era. Secondly, there's no way Henry could have known the upcoming baby was a boy, so there's no "coincidence." Why wouldn't the king have waited for the birth itself if it was a celebration of his child, or waited to see if the baby turned out to be a boy if the intent was to give a grant to his son? Considering the high infant mortality of the day, and the equally high possibility the child could have been a girl or a stillbirth, it's likely the grant had nothing to do with Mary's current pregnancy.
If Henry wanted to hide his relationship with Mary, why "pay" her husband openly in the form of grants, which were recorded for posterity? Why wouldn't Henry just secretly slide some cash across the table to Carey?
There is no reason to assume that the grants were on Mary Boleyn's behalf. William Carey was Henry's second cousin, and a favored member of his court. He received grants in roughly the same pattern and amount as others of Henry's favorites - there was nothing unusual about this stream of gifts from the king's hands, so it did not have to be in "payment" of anything.
Another point I've seen mentioned is the dispensation Henry requested to marry Anne Boleyn. He asked in it to be freed of any impediments arising from both illicit in*******se and consanguinity, which people say wouldn't have been necessary without children from the relationship. This is incorrect. Anne and Henry were related, and so the dispensation was needed to absolve them of the blood relation of their common descent. If there had been children from his union with Mary, that would also need to be addressed in the dispensation. In other words, he would have had to be dispensed to marry the aunt of his children, because there would otherwise be an incestuous relationship. Henry also needed a dispensation to clear himself of the illicit in*******se with her sister, whether or not there had been any children from the union, and Anne had to be cleared of any impediments remaining from her relationship with Henry Percy.
The other "evidence" for the Carey children being Henry's comes from snippets of recorded gossip. An ambassador mentioned a promising "natural son" of Henry's in 1531, who was the son of a widow of one of his peers. But this could easily refer to Henry FitzRoy, since Bessie Blount had been widowed the previous year.
A court case in 1535 contained the following statement:
"Moreover, Mr. Skydmore dyd show to me yongge Master Care, saying that he was our suffren Lord the Kynge's son by our suffren Lady the Qwyen's syster, whom the Qwyen's grace myght not suffer to be yn the Cowrte."
However, Mary had been welcome at Anne's court and given positions of honor until she secretly re-married in 1534. So Anne's supposed banishment of Mary out of jealousy does not seem to ring true.
These stories show only that there was contemporary gossip, nothing more.
The last bit of evidence centers on a supposed resemblance Henry Carey had to the king. But this, too, is easily explicable. Henry and William Carey were both descendants of the Beauforts. (William Carey's grandmother was the niece of Margaret Beaufort's father.)
The Carey children had red hair, but red hair ran in the Howard family (Elizabeth Howard was Mary and Anne Boleyn's mother.) Katheryn Howard had red hair, Anne Boleyn herself may have been a red head, and we don't know what color Mary Boleyn's hair was.
In my opinion, there isn't any conclusive evidence that Mary Boleyn's children were Henry's, and the evidence they weren't is actually stronger.
Finding Mary a husband seems to have marked the end of Henry's involvement with her, as it did with Bessie Blount, a final parting gift or consolation prize. There's no evidence his involvement with either woman extended after her marriage.
The king was the one who decided when these women would marry - their families would not risk angering him by arranging a marriage to another man while the king was still interested in their daughter.
There was no reason for the king to marry off either woman before he was "done" with her, either. He had no embarrassment in claiming Bessie Blount's bastard as his own, or he would have hurriedly tried to marry her to someone else as soon as he found out she was pregnant. Instead, he waited until after the child had been born and their affair was over.
Another bit of evidence lies in Reginald Pole's chiding letter to Henry about the hypocrisy of annulling his marriage to Katharine of Aragon in order to marry Anne when his relationship with Mary created the exact same kind of incestual relationship.
"[Anne] had learned, I think, if from nothing else, at least from the example of her own sister, how soon you got tired of your mistresses; and she resolved to surpass her sister in retaining you as her lover..."
Pole's letter says nothing about Henry having children with Mary, and he mentions Henry growing quickly tired of his mistress. A relationship of six years (the high end of the estimate of how long Henry's affair with Mary lasted, giving him time to father both children) doesn't really fit with Pole's description of Henry quickly tiring of a lover. Pole, too, would have had a problem with Henry keeping a married woman as his mistress, violating the sanctity of another man's marriage bed.
When Mary Boleyn was widowed in 1528, the king showed little or no interest in the fate of her children until Anne Boleyn interceded and urged the king to get her father to support Mary. Henry wrote to Anne, who was still recovering from the same epidemic of the Sweat that had killed her brother-in-law, and assured her that he had contacted Thomas Boleyn. One of his statements in the letter is especially poignant, given the situation:
"... for surely, whatsoever is said, it cannot so stand with his honour but that he must needs take her, his natural daughter, now in her extreme necessity."
His own "natural daughter" and "natural son" would have been in poverty if they were Henry's children. Henry was later guilty of gross, extreme hypocrisies, but it's hard to imagine that Anne wouldn't have pointed out his own honor compelled him to support the children if they were his, just as Thomas's honor compelled him to support Mary.
One wonders what Mary Boleyn would have thought if the king wouldn't even publicly acknowledge her children, while giving his son with Bessie Blount two dukedoms in 1525, but leaving Mary's children in poverty. This disparity in the treatment of his supposed children is problematic when there's no real reason for it.
The Boleyn family eventually settled a pension on Mary of £100 per year, and Mary's son, Henry Carey, became Anne's ward. She would see to his education and upkeep as a man of gentle blood, reducing Mary's financial burdens.
The records are silent about Mary's life for the next few years after she was widowed. We don't know where she lived, but some believe she returned to stay at Hever Castle. Her family would have been at court with Anne, her mother as chaperone and her father trying to champion the king's annulment from Katharine of Aragon.
The only mention of her is in 1530, when Anne was given £20 from the king's purse to buy a jewel from Mary. Had it been a gift to Mary from Henry at some point - or as one scholar theorized, had Anne pawned it to her? The latter seems odd, since Anne had greater access to funds than Mary did.
In 1532, Mary traveled with Anne on her trip to France with the king to be presented as his consort, so she may have been back at court already as one of Anne's attendants. At the masquerade where Anne not-so-subtly met with Francis, Mary was given the position of honor, walking directly behind the new queen-to-be. If Mary really was Francis's mistress at one point, it's tempting to speculate about what their reunion meeting must have been like.
Does Mary's position of honor indicate the sisters were also emotionally close? Many have portrayed Mary and Anne as being jealous of one another, but we have no evidence one way or the other. Mary had another position of honor when her sister was coronated the following year, and she remained at court as a lady in waiting to the new queen.
In 1534, Mary secretly wed William Stafford. Stafford wasn't a suitable match for her. Mary was in her mid-thirties at this time, and Stafford was about twelve years younger than she. He was a soldier, the second son of a Essex landowner, and a commoner to boot. Stafford was stationed at Calais in 1533, and perhaps that's where his romance with Mary Boleyn began.
Mary managed to keep the marriage a secret until she became pregnant. When the Boleyns found out, they were horrified and furious. Mary was sister of the queen; her marriage was a matter of state interest. For her to arrange her own match for personal preference instead of family benefit was both disobedient to the social order and disrespectful of her sister's position. It made the family look ill-behaved, and it brought an unknown person of uncertain alliances dangerously close to the throne.
Mary and Stafford were banished from court. We don't know where Mary lived during this time. What is known is that Mary's financial situation became so dire, she was reduced to begging the king and queen for help.
Unable to write directly to Anne, Mary wrote an eloquent letter to Cromwell about the situation. She asked him to speak to Henry or Anne on her behalf.
"Master secretary, after my poor recommendations, which are little to be regarded of me that am a poor banished creature, this shall be to desire you to be good to my poor husband and to me. I am sure it is not unknown to you the high displeasure that both he and I have both of the king's highness and the queen's grace, by the reason of our marriage without their knowledge, wherein we both do yield ourselves faulty, and do acknowledge that we did not well to be so hasty or so bold without their knowledge.
"But one thing, good master secretary, consider that he was young, and love overcame reason; and for my part, I saw so much honesty in him that I loved him as well as he did me, and was in bo***ge, and glad I was to be at liberty: so that for my part, I saw that all the world did set so little by me, and he so much, that I thought I could take no better way but to take him and to forsake all other ways, and live a poor honest life with him; and so I do put no doubts but we should, if we might once be so happy to recover the king's gracious favour and the queen's.
"And seeing there is no remedy, for God's sake help us, for we have been now a quarter of a year married, I thank God, and too late now to call that again: wherefore there is the more need to help. But if I were at my liberty and might choose, I assure you, master secretary, for my little time, I have tried so much honesty to be in him, that I would rather beg my bread with him than to be the greatest queen christened; and I believe verily he is in the same case with me, for I believe verily he would not forsake me to be a king; therefore, good master secretary, being we are so well-together, and do intend to live so honest a life, though it be but poor, shew part of your goodness to us, as well as you do to all the world besides; for I promise you ye have the name to help all them that have need; and amongst all your suitors, I dare be bold to say that you have no matter more to be pitied than ours; and therefore for God's sake be good to us, for in you is all our trust; and I beseech you, good master secretary, pray my lord my father, and my lady, to be good to us, and to let me have their blessings, and my husband their good will, and I will never desire more of them.
"Also I pray you desire my lord of Norfolk, and my lord my brother [George Boleyn] to be good to us; I dare not write to them, they are so cruel against us; but if with any pain that I could take with my life I might win their good wills, I promise you there is no child living would venture more than I; and so I pray you to report by me, and you shall find my writing true; and in all points which I may please them in, I shall be ready to obey them nearest my husband, whom I am most bound to, to whom I most heartily beseech you to be good unto, which for my sake is a poor banished man, for an honest and a godly cause; and being that I have read in old books that some for as just causes have by kings and queens been pardoned by the suit of good folks, I trust it shall be our chance, through your good help, to come to the same, as knoweth the God who sendeth you health and heart's ease."
If Cromwell replied to this letter, it is not recorded. The records are also silent as to whether Mary's uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, or her brother George relented in their anger toward her, but Anne is said to have quietly sent Mary a gold cup and some much-needed funds, though she did not give Mary permission to return to court. She couldn't, as much as she may have wanted to. Mary had defied the social order and endangered the throne itself by bringing an unknown man into the royal family and that was something Anne could not publicly forgive without causing severe damage to her own reputation.
Sadly, Mary seemed to have either lost the child she was carrying, or the baby died shortly after birth. Various sources record that she had a child named Anne or Edward, but there is no solid record of Mary having any issue with William Stafford. Her descendants today originate from her children with William Carey.
It’s thought Mary and Anne never saw one another again after Mary was sent from court. It wasn't long afterward that Anne and George went to the scaffold. There is no record of Mary attempting to contact them in prison. That's not proof she didn't, of course. Perhaps she knew there was nothing she could do.
Nor is there any record she ever made contact with Anne's daughter, Elizabeth, after her ex*****on. One movie has Mary Boleyn striding away with baby Elizabeth under her arm to care for her after her mother's death, but that's entirely fictional. Elizabeth's accounts note no gifts from Mary or visits. Elizabeth's household was carefully monitored by the king and any contact with Mary would have been noted.
In March 1539, when her father died, Mary inherited the Boleyn estate, which allowed her to fund her children Henry and Catherine's careers at court.
Henry never attempted to arrange fine marriages for Mary Boleyn's children, which one would think would be the least he could do if they were his. It was, after all, his royal blood that would be diluted if they married a commoner. The two Carey children married well, but the king didn't provide Catherine with a dowry, or intercede to find Henry Carey a better bride than a simple country gentlewoman.
In short, Henry never behaved as an interested father toward these children, taking interest in their education or in seeing them set up with good marriages. They were on their own, as far as he was concerned.
In 1542, Mary inherited the property of her executed sister-in-law, Jane Parker. But legal wrangling over the property lasted until 1543, and Mary and Stafford only acquired Rochford Hall a few days before Mary died. She was about 42 years old.
The cause of her death isn't recorded, but there's no evidence she had suffered any sort of lingering illness. It may have been sudden, and to the Tudors, inexplicable.
The location of her grave is also unknown. She may have been buried at St. Andrews at Rochford, but the church records do not go back that far and no trace survives of her tomb. It's possible the tomb may have been destroyed in the Reformation.
Most of Mary's property was inherited by her son, Henry, but she did leave some of her estate to William Stafford. Stafford remarried about a decade after her death and had to flee to Geneva because of his Protestant beliefs. There he called himself "Lord Rochford" - a title to which he had no right.
There are many descendants of Mary Boleyn today. One of them - though their identity is kept secret - sends flowers to the grave of Mary's sister, Anne Boleyn, every year on the anniversary of her ex*****on.
Hold fast to dreams
