11

High Displeasure

By September 1534 relations between the King and Queen had become even more tense. In the late summer, Anne had lost a baby—probably a son—at full term, another crushing disappointment for Henry VIII, who had strayed again during her second pregnancy, sleeping with “a beautiful and adroit young lady for whom his love is daily increasing,”¹ but whose name is not recorded. Anne’s influence was clearly declining, and she must have realized that Henry’s great passion for her was dying, so she had many reasons to be humiliated—and furious—when, in September 1534,² Mary appeared at court noticeably pregnant. After six years of widowhood, she had done “the one thing a lady of breeding could not explain.”³

Mary could explain, however. She confessed that she had secretly, and of necessity, married—for love—plain Mr. William Stafford of Grafton, a younger son of knightly birth with no fortune. Marrying for love—as Mary Tudor had once done, setting Mary Boleyn a dangerous example—was then regarded as the most rash and imprudent conduct⁴—and Anne had good cause to be horrified and furious, for Stafford was certainly no match for the Queen’s sister.

Friedmann believed that Mary only pretended to be married to William Stafford to cover the shame of her illicit pregnancy, but there is ample evidence in official documents that the pair were legally wed, and that besides being in love, and being loved in return, Mary was glad to escape the miserable “bondage” of her widowhood and her dependence on her avaricious and begrudging father.⁵

William Stafford had been present as one of “the knights and gentlemen summoned to be servitors” at Anne Boleyn’s coronation on June 1, 1533,⁶ and it was probably on that occasion—or at the great feast in Westminster Hall that followed—that he encountered Mary Boleyn, possibly not for the first time. As has been discussed, they may have met before, when they were both in Calais in the autumn of 1532, but it is unlikely that they had become acquainted much earlier, even though William was in the King’s retinue and had relatives residing in Kent,⁷ for Mary hints in a letter written late in 1534 that she had known him only for a “little time.”⁸

Fit and strong, as became one of his soldierly profession,⁹ and apparently a man of loyalty with a volatile temperament, William was probably at least twelve years younger than Mary, yet—as she was to reveal in 1534—he became smitten and eager to marry her, while she at length responded to his ardor and high regard, which clearly went a long way toward restoring her sense of self-esteem. Theirs was obviously a true love match—it may have been Mary’s first experience of being in love¹⁰—and their feelings for each other were strong enough to override any fears they may have had for the consequences of their secret marriage, and the hardships they might—and would—endure in the face of William’s poverty.¹¹

William Stafford was a minor courtier, a Gentleman Usher to the King,¹² and the second son of a relatively obscure member of a family that, despite sharing the same surname, was related only through two marriages, made in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,¹³ to the noble house of Stafford. William’s father, Sir Humphrey Stafford of Cottered and Rushden, Hertfordshire, sometime Sheriff of Northamptonshire, was the son of an attaindered traitor who had perished at Tyburn in 1486, on the orders of Henry VII, for having supported Richard III, and whose confiscated lands were given to Sir Edward Poynings. Sir Humphrey had then been just eight years old,¹⁴ but he had labored long and hard to restore his family to royal favor, until finally, in 1515, Henry VIII reversed his father’s attainder and restored some of his lands, including the manors of Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire; Bourton-on-Dunsmore, Warwickshire; and Chebsey in Staffordshire.

Sir Humphrey married well, his first wife being Margaret, the daughter of Sir John Fogge of Ashford, Kent, and London; Treasurer of the Household to King Edward IV (Henry VIII’s grandfather); Privy Councillor, Keeper of the Writs, Knight of the Shire for Kent; and M.P. for Canterbury. Margaret Fogge’s mother was Alice, who was the daughter of William Haute by Joan Wydeville, and therefore first cousin to Elizabeth Wydeville, Edward IV’s queen. William Stafford, born in or before 1512, was thus third cousin to Henry VIII.

Despite this, and the loyalty, pragmatism, and talents that would later make him a good husband, courtier, and diplomat, William had little to recommend him. He was not even a knight at this time, but a mere freeholder of Cardinal Wolsey’s manor of Tickford,¹⁵now part of Newport Pagnell in Buckinghamshire. His name was doubly tainted by treason, for he was a distant relation of Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, who had gone to the block in 1521 for allegedly conspiring to seize the throne. Since then, Henry VIII had looked with suspicion on the Staffords, for the senior line had Plantagenet blood and were too close for comfort to the throne—and they had been oversupportive of his first wife, Katherine of Aragon.

William’s chief disadvantage, though, was that he was a landless nobody, a simple soldier. His older brother, another Sir Humphrey, was Esquire of the Body to the King and heir to the Stafford lands; in 1517 he inherited the manors of Blatherwycke and Dodford, both in Northamptonshire, from his great-uncle, Thomas Stafford.

William is often referred to in genealogies as “William Stafford of Grafton” or “William Stafford of Chebsey,” but this is not wholly correct. Grafton in Worcestershire, part of the manor of Bromsgrove, had been one of the Stafford properties forfeited to the Crown in 1486; subsequently, it had been granted to Sir Gilbert Talbot, in whose family it remained. Chebsey in Staffordshire was demised by Sir Humphrey Stafford to his younger brother William in a will drawn up in 1545; William inherited the manor three years later, on Humphrey’s death, and it was in the possession of his second wife after his own demise.¹⁶ Thus, William never held lands in Grafton, and not in Chebsey during Mary’s lifetime.¹⁷

He had perhaps been born at his father’s manor of Cottered, a pleasant village situated on undulating chalk hills near Royston, with a fifteenth century church boasting an embattled tower and medieval wall paintings. The Lordship, a magnificent moated hall house—probably the former manor house, given its name and prominent position near the church—also dating from the fifteenth century, but much altered since, survives as one of the most ancient buildings in Hertfordshire.¹⁸ It is more likely that William was born here, as his father’s other manor, nearby Rushden, was just a tiny settlement.

In November 1527, after the King had been shown evidence that “more scarcity of corn is pretended to be within this our said realm than, God be thanked, there is in very truth,” William, then fifteen or more, was one of several men commissioned to search the barns and stacks in Berkshire, “putting at the same time into execution the Statute of Winchester against vagabonds and unlawful games.”¹⁹ In April 1529 he and one Richard Andrews bought the lands, which were worth less than £5 (£1,600), and marriage of a royal ward, William Somer, for twenty marks (£2,100).²⁰ The following November, Stafford was appointed joint Sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire with John Brome and Henry Bruges, Stafford’s name being personally pricked by the King with his pen on the deed of grant.²¹ Clearly he had been the royal choice, and must therefore have already impressed his monarch with his good service or personal qualities.

On June 2, 1533, Arthur Plantagenet, Viscount Lisle (an illegitimate son of Edward IV, and thus cousin to Henry VIII), the new Deputy Governor of Calais, took up residence in that town,²² and it would appear that Stafford transferred to his service as a spearman in the Calais garrison.²³ Possibly, after his visit the previous autumn, he had pursued the idea of a post in Calais, and seized the opportunity when it came, which suggests that, whenever he and Mary had met, whether it was in Calais or at the coronation or earlier, he either had not fallen for her sufficiently to mind the prospect of long partings, or he saw his new posting as a means of raising enough money to marry her.

It seems he proved himself able, reliable, and trustworthy, as he was soon singled out to perform special errands for the Lisles. In December 1533, John Husee, Lisle’s man, met with Stafford in Dover, Stafford having evidently been to England to purchase a gorget (a metal fillet worn around the head), ribbons, and lawns for Lady Lisle.²⁴ In a letter to Honor Grenville, Lady Lisle, dated August 1534, one Leonard Smyth wrote: “Since my coming to London from Hampshire, I hear that Stafford, your servant, to whom I gave the letter, was in London long after, so I wish to know whether it has been received.”²⁵ Evidently Stafford was now traveling to and fro across the English Channel, entrusted with the business of his employers, and it was probably during these visits that his romance with Mary Boleyn flowered. Probably it was at William’s behest, on behalf of a friend or acquaintance of his, that Mary wrote to Lord Lisle in February 1534:

I desire you and my good lady to be good unto Thomas Hunt, a poor man at Calais, for the room [post] of soldier with 6d (£8) a day in the King’s retinue, when any such is vacant. From the King’s manor of York Place at Westminster, 13 Feb.²⁶

Her letter is countersigned by Sir William Kingston, Constable of the Tower and a favored courtier and Privy Councillor with a military background, who had probably known and approved of Thomas Hunt prior to the latter’s going to Calais. Mary’s somewhat regal and peremptory tone suggests that, as the Queen’s sister, she expected her request to be met.

Yet, despite the position of trust in which “young Stafford” was clearly held, he had nothing to offer beyond himself, and was no match for the Queen’s sister. Even with her increasingly dubious reputation, Mary could have contrived to marry more advantageously, and thereby increased still further the Boleyn affinity and the family’s standing; but she had dared to marry merely for love in an age in which society in general considered that to be an offense against “God, good order, and all,” and wayward and foolish in the extreme. Furthermore, she had not even had the courtesy to ask her father, her sister, or the King for permission to remarry, but had gone ahead regardless of her family’s sensibilities and interests and the King’s likely displeasure. Nor did it apparently occur to her that the scandal of her marriage would “darken Anne’s reputation.”²⁷

Above all, Mary had disregarded her sister’s position; Anne, by virtue of her queenship, was now the effective head of the Boleyn family, and in marrying without first obtaining her permission, Mary had failed to recognize this, or the implications of her ill-advised marriage for Anne and for herself, as the Queen’s sister.²⁸ Both the King and Queen had every reason to be angered by this misalliance, but it was Anne who was the more incensed, and also perhaps because Mary not only had hopes of a child when hers had just been cruelly dashed, but also a husband who loved her. The King, by contrast, was “tired to satiety” with the wife he had ardently pursued for so long, and openly dallying—if Chapuys is to be believed—with his latest mistress.²⁹ Here was Anne, the darling of her family, applauded by them all for her success in becoming Queen of England, but not at all “the most happy,” as her empty motto claimed; and there was her despised sister, who had done nothing except spoil her reputation and bring derision upon herself, proudly proclaiming her happiness with the lowly man she had married. Small wonder that Anne now refused to see her sister. Mary, somewhat ingenuously, was to write soon afterward: “As far as I can perceive, her Grace is highly displeased with us both.”³⁰

Wiltshire was just as furious—indeed, the whole Boleyn family, and Mary’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, were up in arms, doubtless fearful of how Henry would react to this misalliance, which made a landless soldier his brother-in-law. As soon as Wiltshire realized that Mary’s child had been conceived out of wedlock and that her marriage had been a necessity—Chapuys confirms that she had been “found guilty of misconduct”³¹—he immediately cut off the allowance he had reluctantly paid her throughout her widowhood, knowing that there was little risk of his being ordered to reinstate it. Worse still, Anne and her father had no compunction in persuading the King instantly to banish the disgraced couple from court.

Maybe—scandal aside—the sight of her sister, happily married and pregnant, was too much to bear in the wake of Anne’s own disappointment and anxiety. Perhaps she was angry that Mary had thrown herself away on this man of low status when she could have made a marriage that was advantageous to the Boleyns.

Probably, although evidence is lacking, Henry was also persuaded to cut off Mary’s royal pension, because, in a letter written three months later, she refers to having to beg her bread with her new husband, and twice mentions living “a poor honest life with him.”³² Now that she was a married woman, she would be her husband’s responsibility, and even if her daughter Katherine was the King’s, there was a legal presumption that she was William Carey’s, and there was nothing Mary could do about the loss of her annuity, unless she wanted to court scandal and opprobrium.

“The Lady’s sister was banished from court three months ago,” Chapuys informed the Emperor on December 19, “it being necessary to do so, for besides that she had been found guilty of misconduct, it would not have been becoming to see her at court enceinte.”³³

Mary seems to have been crushed by the reaction to her marriage. Once banished from the court with William Stafford, neither would have been welcome at Hever Castle, so they perhaps took refuge with William’s father at Cottered—and then waited three months before Mary attempted to plead her case, by which time her penury was probably beginning to bite, and she had begun to realize that the anger and displeasure occasioned by her marriage was no transitory thing. It was probably for this reason that she judged it best to make her appeal through the King’s principal secretary, Thomas Cromwell, whom she evidently knew fairly well, frankly revealing to him how her ill-judged marriage had come about. Her letter is undated but seems to have been written in the latter part of 1534, in which case her marriage had probably taken place in the late summer, which is apparently corroborated by Leonard Smyth’s letter of August that year, by which time Stafford was back in Calais.³⁴ Either Mary and William were married before then, or he returned to London soon afterward.

The full text of Mary’s letter, the second of only two written by her to survive, is as follows:

Master Secretary,

After my poor recommendations, which is smally 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 that 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 reason of our marriage without their knowledge, wherein we both do yield ourselves faulty, and acknowledge that we did not well to be so hasty nor 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 bondage, and glad I was to be at liberty.

The groveling tone is typical of letters of the period sent by those suing for favors or forgiveness: in each case, petitioners laid on the flattery with a trowel, or abased themselves. But this is more than a begging letter. Mary’s reference to being “in bondage” betrays how unhappy she had been living for so long under the strict control of a father who evidently had a low opinion of her—and in the shadow of a sister who also appears to have thought her of little account. No wonder that, in her early to mid-thirties, she had seized what might be her only opportunity of happiness and freedom, and escape from a family who, while paying lip service to her position as the Queen’s sister, apparently expected her to remain invisible in case the sight of her gave people cause to question the legality of that sister’s marriage.

It is clear from this letter that Mary, at last, was loved for herself, and that William—a considerably younger man—had fallen in love with her before she, in time, came to reciprocate; this boost to her confidence would have been incalculable, and no doubt gave her the courage, for once in her life, to defy those who had always dictated to her.

Maybe, in the mayhem and excitement of Anne’s coronation day, she had grasped the rare chance to enjoy a little dalliance, and gone on grasping it whenever she could escape Wiltshire’s vigilance, which would have lent a certain spice to her love affair and invested it with the excitement of forbidden fruit. It would have been easy, in the chaotic world of the court, to indulge in clandestine meetings, or go missing for a short time … and it only required two witnesses and a compliant priest to make a secret marriage.

Mary’s sense of liberation must have been powerful, and although she freely admitted that she had erred in marrying so impulsively, she was clearly not regretting it. Her letter continued, rather poignantly:

So that for my part, I saw that all the world did set so little store 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 doubt but we should, if we might once be so happy to recover the King’s gracious favor and the Queen’s. For well I might a had a greater man of birth, and a higher, but I ensure you I could never a had one that should a loved me so well, nor a more honest man. And besides that, he is both come of ancient stock, and again as meet (if it was his Grace’s pleasure) to do the King service as any young gentleman in his court.

Mary’s statement, that “all the world did set so little store by me,” betrays just how unhappy and unloved she had felt, probably for years. Small wonder that she felt such love for, and pride in, her husband, the man who had rescued her, which comes across so movingly in this passage.

Nevertheless, she knew that if her plea was to succeed, she must acknowledge herself to be grievously at fault:

Therefore, good Master Secretary, this shall be my suit to you, that, for the love that well I know you do bear to all my blood, though for my part, I have not deserved it but smally, by reason of my vile conditions, as to put my husband to the King’s Grace that he may do his duty as all other gentlemen do.

Here, Mary was asking for Stafford to be restored to his post at court, even though she knew she could merit little consideration as a result of the “vile conditions” of her disgrace. She continued:

And, good Master Secretary, sue for us to the King’s Highness, and beseech his Highness, which ever was wont to take pity, to have pity on us; and that it would please his Grace, of his goodness, to speak to the Queen’s Grace for us; for, so far as I can perceive, her Grace is so highly displeased with us both that, without the King be so good lord to us as to withdraw his rigor and sue for us, we are never likely to recover her Grace’s favor, which is too heavy to bear. 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 it again; wherefore it is the more alms to help us. But if I were at my liberty and might choose, I ensure you, Master Secretary, for my little time, I have spied so much honesty to be in him that I had 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.

It is clear from this that Mary believed the King to be more likely to show compassion than Anne, which suggests that her relationship with him had been less complicated than that with her sister. It also suggests that she was sensible of his kindnesses to her, and that there was still some affection between them.

She concluded:

Therefore, good Master Secretary, seeing we are so well together and does intend to live so honest a life, though it be but poor, show part of your goodness to us as well as you do to all the world besides; for I promise you, you have the name to help all them that hath 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 my mother to be good to us, and to let us have their blessings, and my husband their goodwill; and I will never desire more of them. Also, I pray you, desire my Lord of Norfolk [her uncle] and my Lord my brother to be good to us. I dare not write to them, they are so cruel against us. But if with any pain I could take my life [that] 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 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 goodly cause. And seeing 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 folk, I trust it shall be our chance, through your good help, to come to the same; as knoweth the [Lord] God, Who send you health and heart’s ease.

Scribbled with her ill hand, who is your poor,

humble suitor, always to command,

Mary Stafford.

The letter was addressed to “The right worshipful &c. Master Secretary.”³⁵

J. S. Brewer, writing in the Victorian age, and believing that Mary was a woman of loose morals, thought that this was not the letter of “a woman of strong character or decided principles.”³⁶ But that is hardly fair, because, in defying her family and making a marriage of which she must have known they would disapprove, and in defending it passionately, Mary was probably calling upon strengths in her character that she may not hitherto have known she had. It could be said that she was now paying the price for showing a reckless disregard for the wider consequences of her actions, yet today we would hardly blame her—as the Victorians might have done—for seizing her chance of happiness and freedom. It has been claimed—somewhat fancifully—that the letter betrays “liquidity, an April-like glisten and quiver” to Mary’s character, and shows her to be “without calculation,”³⁷ and it has also been convincingly described as the work of “an articulate and passionate woman.”³⁸

Yet some passages in Mary’s letter do reveal a glaring lack of tact and insight, and also anger at the way she had been cut off by her family. One can sympathize with her for being unable to hide that, yet she probably did herself no favors by her sometimes defiant, unrepentent tone, and her rather self-centered claim that her plight was more deserving of pity than anyone else’s; or by making so many peremptory demands of Cromwell, as if she were still riding high in favor as the Queen’s sister. Yet the erratic nature of the letter—the veering from pleading to defiance—strongly suggests that Mary was in turmoil when she wrote it, and not thinking clearly about the consequences. There is a sense of her rushing to commit all her thoughts and emotions to paper, without calculation, and perhaps unaware that she was revealing rather more than she had intended.

What drove her to write the letter was probably the final collapse of her hopes that the story of her impulsive marriage would have a happy ending, with everyone coming to understand how beneficial it really was, and receiving her back into the fold; and, more immediately, her fear of rapidly encroaching poverty—because it is doubtful that she found the loss of Anne’s favor “too heavy to bear” on a personal level. If she was really hoping for a reconciliation with her sister, she was surely going about it the wrong way, deliberately highlighting the fact that, even in disgrace, she now enjoyed a far happier marriage than Anne did. “For well I might a had a greater man of birth,” she had written, “but I ensure you I could never a had one that loved me so well. I had rather beg my bread with him than to be the greatest queen christened.”

It is this letter that provides the best clue to the relationship between the sisters. Maybe there had never been much love lost between them, or they clashed often, flaring up in anger or resentment, only to make up just as readily, as sisters do. Maybe Mary had always been unable to restrain herself with Anne, and was given to venting her feelings with biting honesty. Almost certainly she had been jealous. That jealousy may have had its roots in Anne, the more charming and intelligent of the two, being found a court position before she, the elder sister, did, and shining in that milieu; it would have been fed by Anne snaring the King, who had perhaps rejected Mary, and becoming Queen; it must have festered as a result of Mary being treated as if she were of little account. Now she was making the rather cruel point that she had done better in marrying for love than Anne had done in marrying for ambition. She must have known that was unlikely to impress her family, or Cromwell, or the King, so she had probably dashed it all down angrily in revenge for Anne’s treatment of her. Her words exposed the bitter irony of their respective situations: here was Mary, the King’s discarded mistress, who had never sought more for herself, but who had ended up happily married—and Anne, who had held him off for years in order to gain the ultimate prize, but had ended up trapped in unhappy and insecure wedlock.³⁹

Anne almost certainly got to see what Mary had written, or Mary had said as much to her face-to-face,⁴⁰ and she was incensed at the obvious jibe, which shattered any possibility of Mary being restored to favor. It seems that she and her new husband were never again received at court, for there is no record of her being there after that time; in April 1535, as we have seen, John Hale mentioned that “the Queen’s Grace might not suffer [her sister] to be in the court,”⁴¹ and so it is unlikely that Anne and Mary were ever reconciled.

Mary’s letter evidently did her no good with Cromwell either, for he apparently lifted no finger to help her.⁴² His reply—if there was one—does not survive, but there was little advantage for him in supporting such an errant couple and risk incurring the royal displeasure.

Anne, however, may secretly in the long run have come to wonder if dismissing her sister was foolish,⁴³ for it would, in a short time, become clear that many of her supporters were abandoning her and that she needed all the friends she could get, especially in her own privy chamber, although it is unlikely that Mary had the influence to be “a potentially useful ally,” as has been suggested.⁴⁴ This may explain why Anne did relent slightly and perhaps gave Mary money and a gold cup;⁴⁵ or maybe her conscience was troubled at Mary’s plight. But there is nothing to support the claim that she “provided assistance through Cromwell,”⁴⁶ and it is unlikely that the sisters ever met again.

Mary may well have been relieved to be gone from the court, with all its “hypocrisy, backbiting, and intrigue,”⁴⁷ and indeed she would have good cause to be thankful for it within a year or so, for time would prove, dramatically, that she was to end up by far the more fortunate of the two Boleyn sisters.⁴⁸

Mary and William were to pass the rest of their married life in relative obscurity—and, for some years, in “obscure poverty.”⁴⁹ Unless Mary miscarried, a child was born to them in 1535. There has been speculation that this was probably a daughter called Anne, after the Queen, and that the couple also had an unnamed son who had died by 1543.⁵⁰ But there is no contemporary evidence for a second child, or for the sex and name of the child Mary may have borne in 1535, the fruit of her scandalous pregnancy. We do not even know if she carried it to term. If it was a boy, he must have predeceased Mary, otherwise the manor of Abinger and other properties and rights, which William Stafford inherited from her at her death, would surely have passed to their son.

By 1535, Mary’s elder son, Henry Carey, now ten, had been removed from her care, and—as John Hale’s testimony suggests—was living at Syon Abbey, a Bridgettine nunnery at Isleworth in Middlesex, once much favored by Katherine of Aragon. Founded in 1415 by Henry V, it was one of the wealthiest abbeys in England, and was renowned for its magnificent library of over fourteen hundred books, its spiritual ethos, and the quality of its preachers. It would not be suppressed until 1539. Syon Park—as it is now called—has been remodeled several times over the centuries, and all that remains today of the abbey where Henry Carey resided is the quadrangle (the site of the former cloisters), the vaulted undercroft below the great hall, and a brick barn. Contrary to what has been suggested, young Carey was not “kept out of sight” here and “given no attention whatsoever”⁵¹—he was at a great abbey, which enjoyed royal patronage, to be educated, and “benefited enormously from his position as ward of the Queen.”⁵²

For Anne Boleyn took her responsibilities as her nephew’s guardian seriously. In 1535 she found him a distinguished tutor, the celebrated French humanist and poet Nicholas Bourbon (1503–50). Before May of that year, Bourbon had been granted asylum in England after falling foul of the French authorities for attacking the worship of saints and for his evangelical reformist beliefs—beliefs that Queen Anne shared. After the French ambassador, Jean de Dinteville, had drawn the King and Queen’s attention to his plight, they secured his release from prison and extended to him a warm welcome and their patronage. Bourbon was first lodged in the house of the King’s physician, Dr. William Butts, a fellow humanist, and later moved in with the King’s goldsmith, Cornelius Heyss.

Butts recommended Bourbon to Anne as tutor to her ward Carey, and thus Anne was doing Bourbon a favor when she appointed him to teach her nephew and two other boys: Henry, the heir of Sir Henry Norris, Groom of the Stool and Head of the Privy Chamber, and Thomas, son of Sir Nicholas Hervey, another reformist courtier of the Queen’s circle.⁵³ “You, O Queen, gave me the boys to educate!” a thankful Bourbon enthused, in the book of verse (dedicated to Henry VIII and François I) he was to publish two years later. “I try to keep each one faithful to his duty. May Christ grant that I may be equal to the task, shaping vessels worthy of a heavenly house.” Young Carey could not have had a more respected tutor, for Bourbon was the friend of modern thinkers such as Thomas Cromwell, Archbishop Cranmer, Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, Nicholas Kratzer, the astronomer and mathematician, and the painter Hans Holbein, for whom he sat.⁵⁴ In December 1535, Anne Boleyn visited Syon Abbey, possibly to see her ward, and while there harangued the nuns about their popish forms of worship.

It is entirely credible that Bourbon did a good job of imparting his staunch reformist and evangelical principles to Henry Carey, as Anne had surely intended, and indeed, his teachings probably found fertile ground in which to take root. It has been asserted that—“with the possible exception of Mary,” which is hard to believe—the Boleyns were devoted to “the reformed faith,”⁵⁵ but athough a study of the books owned by Rochford suggests that he came quite near to becoming a Lutheran, Anne and her father died as orthodox Catholics, so it would be more accurate to say that the Boleyns were zealous for the cause of reform within the Catholic Church.

Given her background as a member of a family notorious in Henry VIII’s reign for its aggressive reformist opinions, and rumored to be “more Lutheran than Luther himself,”⁵⁶ Mary probably shared these views and approved of the education afforded her son, especially after her second marriage. For William Stafford later revealed himself to be so staunch a Protestant that he was prepared to choose exile in Geneva during Mary Tudor’s reign rather than suffer persecution for his beliefs, and there became a friend of the austere reformer John Calvin. It is entirely plausible that he had embraced the cause of reform, if not the Lutheran faith, before or during his marriage to Mary Boleyn. Indeed, part of her attraction for him may have been the fact that she came from such a famously reformist family. Mary’s daughter, Katherine Carey, would marry a man who was “well affected to the Protestant religion.” It would be surprising therefore if Mary herself did not support the cause of reform, at the very least. Since she died before it became acceptable—and safe—to “come out” as a Protestant, there is no way of proving this, but in view of her background and her family connections, it is a credible supposition. Like her sister Anne, however, she probably remained, outwardly at least, an orthodox Catholic to the end of her days, dying in the faith of her forefathers.

There is no source that gives credibility to the statement that Mary was reconciled to her father, who allowed her and William Stafford to reside at Rochford Hall,⁵⁷ or the assertion that she “was never fully forgiven, but persuaded her father to let her live with Stafford in one of the Boleyn properties, Rochford Hall in Essex.”⁵⁸ Prior to her clandestine marriage, Mary had apparently lived at Hever Castle or at court. Before his death in 1539, Wiltshire was considering cutting Mary off and leaving her share of his property to his niece, the future Elizabeth I, so clearly they remained estranged. It is unlikely, therefore, that he would have permitted her to live at Rochford Hall with the husband of whom he deeply disapproved.

So where did the couple live in the six years between their banishment and Mary coming into her inheritance? The answer is, probably at Calais, for William seems to have been retained by Lord Lisle: in February 1537 we find John Husee writing: “Coffin would fain have a good hawk; he liked not that [which] Stafford brought him.”⁵⁹ And in 1539, William, as one of “the retinue of that town,” was among the welcoming party appointed to receive Henry VIII’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, on her arrival in Calais.⁶⁰ Calais, where Mary had perhaps first become acquainted with William, might have held happy memories for both of them.

Thanks to the establishment of a wool staple and corporation in 1362, Calais was a prosperous town and “an impregnable fortress.” As a strategic springboard for the debarkation and marshaling of troops, and “the key and principal entrance” to England,⁶¹ it was of the highest importance to that kingdom, and no expense was spared in maintaining its defenses.⁶² That was why there was a strong garrison, which comprised “a force of five hundred of the best soldiers, beside a troop of fifty horsemen.” William Stafford was one of twenty-one mounted spearmen of the garrison; the “spears” were all men of good family, many of whom progressed upward through the ranks, as William probably did. The inhabitants of Calais were seen as men of “unshaken fidelity,” and the governor who guarded it was always “one of the most trusty barons which the King has.”⁶³

The walls of Calais stretched from Beauchamps’ bulwark to the castle of Rysebank, with its fort and tower. The chief buildings of the town were the Exchequer Palace, the churches of St. Mary and St. Nicholas, the splendid Renaissance Hôtel de Ville with its distinctive tower in the marketplace—visible in the distance in the painting of the Field of Cloth of Gold now at Hampton Court (the present Hôtel de Ville is a replica)—and the guildhall of the staple, known as the Staple Inn. Many ships and boats were moored by the Watergate on the quay, where a round tower guarded the entrance to the harbor.⁶⁴

This was the place that Mary probably called home for nearly six years, and where she would have been able to enjoy domesticated obscurity as an “army wife.” During those years, her brother, Lord Rochford, and her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, were to visit Calais more than once,⁶⁵ but, given their hostility toward Mary, it is doubtful if they made any effort to see her.

A letter sent by Robert, the new Prior of Tynemouth, to Cromwell in April 1537, would lend credence to the theory that Mary had moved to Calais. The Prior reminded Cromwell: “My lady Mary Carey, now Stafford, had an annuity of 100 marks, under convent seal of my house, for no cause except it should be for preferring my predecessor to his room [position]. The said lady can now demand no such annuity, as she can do no great good for me or my house, which is now onerate by first fruits and charges. I once stopped the payment, but could not continue through the command of my Lord Chancellor. These be to desire your Lordship that the said convent seal may be reversed, as this bearer shall declare. For your kindness herein your annuity of 20 nobles shall be made 20 marks.”

Despite this overt bribe, the annuity continued to be paid to Mary, which, along with the Lord Chancellor’s earlier intervention, and the fact that the annuity continued to be paid by the Court of Augmentations after the priory was dissolved in January 1539, is further proof that it represented the King’s provision for his daughter.⁶⁶

If Mary and William did move to Calais, as seems likely, that would explain the absence of any reference to her in contemporary records at this time. It would explain how the couple managed to subsist during the time of their disgrace. And it would also explain why there is no mention of Mary in the numerous sources documenting the cataclysmic fall of the Boleyns in 1536.