Mary Boleyn has gone down in history as a “great and infamous whore.” She was the mistress of two kings, François I of France and Henry VIII of England, and sister to Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife. She may secretly have borne Henry a child. It was because of his adultery with Mary that his marriage to Anne was declared invalid. It is not hard to see how this tangled web of covert relationships has given rise to rumors and myths that have been embroidered over the centuries, and particularly in recent years, so that the truth about Mary has become obscured. In all my years of writing women’s histories, I have never tackled a subject who has been so romanticized, mythologized, and misrepresented.
It may seem strange, in the pages that follow, to see popular history books, some of them decades out of date, compared with serious academic studies, and yet the former are important because it is through them that the mythology of Mary Boleyn has been largely created, nurtured, and reaffirmed; and it is helpful to see where and how misconceptions originated.
Everyone knows Henry VIII as the king who married six times. His matrimonial adventures have been a source of enduring fascination for centuries, and the interest shows no sign of abating. On the contrary, in the wake of Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl (2001), the two film versions of it, and the successful (but alarmingly inaccurate) TV drama series The Tudors, it has been elevated to a virtual obsession, as one can see reflected only too clearly in numerous websites and blogs on the Internet, where historical personages like Anne Boleyn now have what are essentially fan clubs. We have also witnessed a disconcerting blurring of the demarcation line between fact and historical fiction in the public’s eye.
Comparatively little is known or understood about Henry VIII’s extramarital adventures. Most recent popular history books have thrown little new light on that subject, or have merely confused it further, and thanks to them, and to the widespread appeal of The Other Boleyn Girl, many people have the wrong idea about the woman whom that novel has made the most famous of Henry’s mistresses, Mary Boleyn. Was she really such a “great and infamous whore” with a notorious reputation? Is it true that the King was the father of her children? I am often asked these and numerous questions about Mary, and am constantly being made aware, not only of various misconceptions that are accepted as facts by a majority, but also that many others who are well-informed on the subject wonder why Mary Boleyn is so misrepresented. It is for these reasons—and because I have done a lot of unpublished research on her over four decades—that I have written a biography of Mary.
Mary Boleyn represents only one short episode in Henry VIII’s checkered love life; all we can say with certainty is that she was his mistress for a short period while he was married to his first wife, Katherine of Aragon. Mary’s true historical significance—and importance—lies in the implications of her royal affair for her more celebrated sister, Anne Boleyn.
My interest in Mary, and my research, goes back to the 1960s, when she was regarded as little more than a footnote to history—in which obscurity she remained until the publication of Philippa Gregory’s novel. Since then I have written about Mary briefly in three books: The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Henry VIII: The King and His Court, and The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn, while my unpublished research comes from my extensive original version of The Six Wives of Henry VIII, written in 1974. A serious historical treatment of Mary Boleyn is long overdue. There has been just one admirable, but sadly brief, study by Josephine Wilkinson; I understand that Dr. Wilkinson was constrained by a disadvantageous word limit when she had so much more to say, and she has most generously agreed that I can claim that this is the first full biography of Mary.
Recently, in The Tudors, Henry VIII has been portrayed as a great lover and sensualist. Many people are asking if this is true! Although the evidence is fragmentary, there are many tantalizing references in contemporary sources that can help provide an answer to the paramount question: what was Henry VIII like as a lover? Was he the virile Adonis portrayed in The Tudors? Was he, in fact, a bit of a prude in bed? The answers to these questions necessarily have a bearing on Henry’s relations with Mary Boleyn, and they form a part of this book.
Having had some experience in constructing women’s histories from fragmentary source material—in, for example, Eleanor of Aquitaine; Queen Isabella; and Mistress of the Monarchy: The Life of Katherine Swynford, Duchess of Lancaster—and having collated information on Mary Boleyn and Henry VIII’s extramarital career for earlier books and projects, I had a good basis for crafting what has turned out to be an unexpectedly fascinating—and astonishing—story from the surviving evidence relating to Mary Boleyn’s life. In her case, the sources are richer than for those medieval ladies, for she lived in an age of flowering literacy and diplomacy, and we have far more insights into her existence through letters, diplomatic dispatches, and archival records than is the case with any medieval women.
As is my usual practice, I consulted all the primary sources first when preparing this book, researching into the expanding and ever-changing narrative, which is, I have found (thanks to Sarah Gristwood), the most effective way to write historical biography. Onlythen did I look at the secondary and present-day sources, leaving Josephine Wilkinson’s biography of Mary Boleyn until last, as I wanted to research my subject thoroughly beforehand and did not wish to be seen as drawing upon her work. In this process, I found that some modern historians had reached the same conclusions as I had already, and in such cases that is signified by “cf.” (compare) in the references section. I have also made it clear where I have benefited from their insights and research.
There is no escaping the fact that an air of mystery pervades every aspect of Mary Boleyn’s life.1 There is so much we don’t know about her, and only so much we can infer from the scant sources that have survived. She is in the shadow of her famous sister in more than one way. Furthermore, much that is inaccurate has been written about her. Many of the misconceptions come from novels like The Other Boleyn Girl and others of its kind, namely The Last Boleyn by Karen Harper (2006) and Court Cadenza by Aileen Quigley (1974), republished as The Tudor Sisters by Aileen Armitage—because people often make the mistake of thinking that what an author of fiction writes must be history—and accurate history.
Yet even historians have often been guilty of making sweeping, unsupported assumptions about Mary Boleyn. This became staggeringly clear when, having researched the original sources, I turned to the secondary ones, which are—with only a few honorable exceptions—littered with inaccuracies. For example, many modern works state categorically that one or both of Mary’s children was or were the King’s, even though this has never been proven. Time and again, mere assumptions are presented as hard facts—I have lost count of the number of times I noted a source not being cited—and dubious evidence is accepted indiscriminately, as will repeatedly be highlighted in the pages that follow. Some writers merely recirculate and perpetuate old myths, and even sound and respected, reliable and conscientious historians can be guilty of repeating the same misinformation about Mary Boleyn. I have to confess that I too, in earlier books, have sometimes accepted without question what others have written about her.
It is thanks to such accounts that misconceptions about Henry VIII’s private life remain widespread. In fact, it is the persistence of the mythology surrounding Mary Boleyn that has been the most disconcerting aspect of my research. For much of what we might read about Mary, even in history books, should be treated with caution, based as it is on false assumptions. And yet, as will appear in the pages that follow, it is sometimes the case that even the most fanciful and unreliable historians can provide us with compellingly credible—and useful—insights into Mary’s character and conduct. One could go on; the fact is that—as we will see—much of what has been written about Mary Boleyn in history books belongs more properly to historical novels. For this reason, this book is not only a biography but also a historiography of Mary Boleyn.
What follows is a tale that has never fully been told, a rigorous assessment of what we know—and don’t know—about Mary Boleyn, which hopefully will enrich our understanding of this much misrepresented lady and her relations with Henry VIII.
A NOTE ON MONETARY VALUES
All monetary sums quoted in the text are in sixteenth century values. The approximate modern equivalent (at the time of writing) is given in parentheses. For converting old money to new, I have used the National Archives Currency Converter (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk).