Mary Boleyn

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Mary Boleyn

Born Mary Boleyn
c. 1499
Died July 19, 1543
Spouse 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 Boleyn family, who enjoyed considerable influence during the reign of Henry VIII. Mary was the sister of Queen Anne Boleyn; some historians claim that 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 of England and also, allegedly, of his rival, King Francis I of France[1]. She married twice.

Contents

[edit] Early life

Mary was born at Blickling Hall, Norfolk and grew up around their residence in Hever Castle, Kent.[2] She was the daughter of a wealthy diplomat, Sir Thomas Boleyn and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Howard. There is no concrete evidence of her exact date of birth, but it was clearly sometime between 1499 and 1508. Most historians now favour an earlier date of about 1499.[3] There is firm documentary evidence to suggest that she was also the eldest of the three Boleyn children.[4] 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 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 between the ages of twelve and 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 going to Paris to marry King Louis XII of France. After a few weeks, 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.

[edit] Royal affair in France

Mary was joined in Paris by her father, Sir Thomas, and her sister, Anne, who had been studying in the Netherlands for the last year. Mary supposedly embarked on several affairs, perhaps including one with King Francis I himself. Some historians believe that the reports of her sexual escapades are greatly exaggerated.[5]

She returned to England in 1519. [6] She was given the position of maid-of-honour to the queen of England, Catherine of Aragon.

[edit] Royal mistress

Soon 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 publicised, and Mary never enjoyed the kind of fame, wealth and power that acknowledged mistresses in France and other countries sometimes had.[7] The affair is believed to have ended prior to the birth of Mary's child, Henry Carey, in March 1526.[8]

During the affair or sometime after it ended, 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 bastard. No other contemporary evidence exists to support the argument that Henry was the king’s biological son.

Henry's first wife, Catherine of Aragon, had previously been married to Henry's late brother Arthur. Henry later used that fact as the justification for the annulment of his marriage to Catherine, on the grounds that her marriage to Arthur (assuming it involved sexual relations) created an affinity between Henry and Catherine. When Mary Boleyn became Henry's mistress, a similar affinity existed between Henry and Anne. 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.

[edit] 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.[9] By the middle of 1527, Henry was determined to marry her. This gave him further incentive to seek to annul his marriage to 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. Anne arranged for Henry Carey to be educated at a respectable Cistercian monastery. Anne interceded to secure Mary a small annual pension of £100.[10]

[edit] 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. 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, Mary's family disowned her for marrying beneath her station and the couple were banished from the Court.

Her financial circumstances became so desperate that Mary 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 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. 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 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, on July 19, 1543.

[edit] Children

Her marriage to Sir William Carey (1495 – June 22, 1528) resulted in the birth of two children:

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

[edit] Descendants

Mary Boleyn is a distant ancestor of many notables including Winston Churchill, P G Wodehouse,[11][12] Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, Diana, Princess of Wales, Sarah, Duchess of York, and Charles Darwin.

[edit] Depictions in fiction

Mary appeared in the 1969 movie Anne of the Thousand Days. She was played in that movie 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, 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. A Hollywood version of the book was released in February 2008, with Scarlett Johansson as Mary.

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

[edit] Styles

  • Mistress Mary Boleyn (1499-1520)
  • Lady Carey (1520-1525)
  • Lady Carey; The Hon. Mary Carey (1525-1529)
  • 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 The Hon. Mary Carey when her father became Viscount Rochford in 1525; and Lady Mary Carey when her father was further promoted to the title of Earl of Wiltshire.

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII, X, no.450.
  2. ^ Letters of Matthew Parker, p.15.
  3. ^ Ives, pp. 15–17.
  4. ^ Ives, p. 17; Fraser, p. 119; Denny, p. 27. All three scholars argue that Mary was the eldest of the three Boleyn children.
  5. ^ Denny, p. 38
  6. ^ Bruce, p. 13
  7. ^ Weir, pp. 133 – 134
  8. ^ See Letters & Papers viii.567 and Ives, pp. 16 - 17.
  9. ^ Weir, p. 160
  10. ^ Lindsey, p. 73
  11. ^ Charles Mosley, Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, 107th edition
  12. ^ thePeerage.com - Person Page 3638

[edit] 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)