5

William Carey, of the Privy Chamber

Mary’s marriage to William Carey was probably no hasty affair, as has been claimed by several writers, who assert that it came “out of the blue,”¹ and who believe that the haste is the reason why people think it was arranged as cover for Mary’s affair with the King.² Negotiations for it must have begun before January 1519, when Sir Thomas Boleyn left for France to serve as England’s ambassador. The existence of two receipts, dated 1496 and 1498, to the bridegroom’s maternal grandparents, Sir Robert Spencer and Eleanor Carey, Countess of Wiltshire, from James Butler, Earl of Ormond, and Thomas Carey (Mary’s future father-in-law), for part payment of an annuity payable during Ormond’s lifetime,³ proves that there was a long-established connection between the Carey and Butler families, and suggests that the marriage was mooted by Thomas Boleyn, or would have been pleasing to him.

The King’s attendance at the wedding confirms that the marriage was made with his hearty approval, or even at his behest;⁴ there are many instances of his ordering or influencing the marriages of his nobles and courtiers, as was his traditional privilege, and he was to involve himself in negotiations for the marriage of Anne Boleyn later that same year. William Carey was his cousin and one of his intimates in the Privy Chamber, so it follows that he would have interested himself in finding Carey a bride. Of course, Mary, like so many well-born girls of the Tudor era, had little or no say in the matter.

It is likely that the Howards had been involved too;⁵ they may well have stood proxy for the bride’s father in bargaining over the marriage contract and arranging the wedding in his absence. Boleyn may well have hoped to be back in England in time for the ceremony, arranged for February 1520, but was unable to leave France until he had completed his tour of diplomatic duty there and his replacement had arrived; in the event, he returned home early in March.⁶ As marriages were not supposed to be celebrated during Lent, when the devout were expected to abstain from sexual intercourse, it was no doubt agreed that the young couple should not be made to defer their marriage in order to await Sir Thomas’s coming.⁷

William Carey, the husband chosen for Mary, was one of the privileged staff of the King’s Privy Chamber,⁸ an Esquire of the Body to the King⁹—an office that Thomas Boleyn had once held—and a man of good family. There is no evidence that he was ever a member of Cardinal Wolsey’s household, as has been claimed.¹⁰

Contrary to popular belief, William Carey did not have “little to recommend him as a husband.”¹¹ He was far more than the “undistinguished courtier” described by David Hume in the eighteenth century, which has been the prevailing view ever since. Yet it cannot truthfully be said that he was “of no particular account,”¹² “lowly,”¹³ a “fairly undistinguished member of the King’s household, never of much importance,”¹⁴ or “obscure.”¹⁵ He did not hold an “insignificant office,”¹⁶ but one of the most coveted positions in the royal household, and he has been described by David Starkey¹⁷ as “a major figure at court.” He was of good birth, a cousin to the King, who “highly favored” him,¹⁸ and all the signs were that he had a brilliant career ahead of him.

The young couple were well matched in age and by birth. Their supposedly “poor” marriage was not “surprising,”¹⁹ nor was it “far below the [Boleyn] family’s expectations,” “a great disappointment” to them,²⁰ or “scarcely the great match” they had hoped for.²¹There is no basis for the astonishing theory that Mary’s disappointing marriage taught Anne Boleyn “a cautionary lesson that may have helped to teach her a deep fear of sex, which prevented her fulfilling what her manner promised.”²² Nor was Carey the kind of man on whom Mary, as “soiled goods,”²³ could be palmed off; there is, in fact, no evidence that her “reputation” had preceded her. On the contrary, doubtless Carey was pleased to be marrying the daughter of a man of importance like Sir Thomas Boleyn. It has been said that he got an acceptable dowry with her,²⁴ but no details survive.

Even as a younger son, William could be considered “a prestigious match;”²⁵ he was a fast-rising star, and we may surmise that Thomas Boleyn found it advantageous to have a son-in-law in such an influential position at court²⁶—it may have been thanks in part to Carey’s influence with the King that Boleyn would obtain high office there within two years—and that, “politically and socially, Mary’s marriage served to bolster her family’s ambitions at court.”²⁷ It also gave the Boleyns an advantage in their rivalry with Wolsey.²⁸ So it was, in many respects, “a good marriage.”²⁹

There has been speculation that the couple married for love,³⁰ with Mary indulging in what Agnes Strickland unfairly called her “incorrigible predilection for making love matches,” but we have no evidence for this,³¹ as nothing is known about the personal relationship between her and William. There is no basis to the claim that “Mary added to the unforgivable errors of her ways by marrying presumably for love,” nor was this “a sorry match for a Boleyn,” with Mary having “spoiled her chances of a good one. Significantly, her father did not attend the wedding.”³² As we have seen, although Sir Thomas was unable to get back to England in time, the marriage clearly took place with his approval. And, in an age in which marrying purely for love was regarded as akin to insanity, the presence of the King at the wedding argues that it was supported by all parties and considered eminently suitable.

There is no evidence to support the oft-repeated assertion that Carey was “chosen more for his willingness to have his wife continue to grace the royal bed than for any other reason.”³³ All the evidence points to Mary’s affair with Henry VIII having begun after their marriage. Given her misconduct of five years past, she may be considered lucky to have preserved her reputation and secured such a husband. Her father was perhaps aware that he had put soiled goods on the marriage market, but William Carey had probably not heard of Mary’s brief affair with the King of France—and probably never would, for no doubt care would have been taken to keep it a secret.

Mary’s wedding took place on February 4, 1520,³⁴ at court, with Henry VIII himself attending the ceremony in the newly rebuilt chapel royal³⁵ at Greenwich Palace, on the banks of the River Thames.³⁶ The King’s Book of Payments records: “For the King’s offering upon Saturday, at the marriage of W. Care and Mare Bullayn, six shillings and eightpence.” (£130)³⁷ Contrary to what some writers³⁸ have assumed, this was not a gift to the newlyweds but an offering at the altar. Antonia Fraser states that Queen Katherine also “attended the festivities,” but there is no record of this in contemporary sources.

Henry’s presence at the wedding is unlikely to have been due to an amorous interest in the bride, as has often been suggested, but probably had much to do with Sir Thomas Boleyn being in high favor and William Carey being the King’s kinsman. William’s maternal grandmother, Eleanor Beaufort (who had once been married to James Butler, 5th Earl of Ormond), was the first cousin of Henry’s grandmother, Margaret Beaufort, and through Eleanor,³⁹ William was descended from King Edward III and related to nearly every aristocratic family in the land. Indeed, he boasted “a more immediate royal heritage than the Boleyns.”⁴⁰

The second son of Thomas Carey of Chilton Foliat, Wiltshire, by Margaret Spencer, William was then about twenty-four, an upwardly mobile courtier of some standing, all set for a glittering career at court, and a man of good birth.

His family could trace its lineage back to the eleventh century. In Domesday Book, the manor of “Kari,” which they owned, and from which their name⁴¹ was derived, is described as lying in the parish of St. Giles in the Heath, near Launceston, Somerset. The Norman castle they later occupied at Castle Cary, Somerset, stood on the hillside above the village horse pond, but survived only into the twelfth century, and nothing of it remains today. A later manor house of the Careys that stood in the village has also long since disappeared.

The first member of the family to make his mark was Sir John Carey, who supported Richard II after his deposition in 1399, and died in exile in Waterford, Ireland. For this, his lands were confiscated by Richard’s successor, Henry IV, and it was only after Sir John’s son, Sir Robert Carey of Cockington and Clovelly in Devon, had defeated a knight errant of Aragon and won the post of Champion of Arms to Henry V that they were largely restored. Sir Robert and his descendants, including William Carey, were thereafter authorized to bear the arms of the vanquished knight: “in a field argent a bend sable bearing three roses of the field.”

The family fortunes suffered another reversal when Robert’s grandson, Sir William Carey of Cockington, who supported the House of Lancaster in the Wars of the Roses, was executed in 1471 after the Yorkists won the Battle of Tewkesbury. He left an heir, Robert, by his first wife, Elizabeth Paulet, and a younger son, Thomas, born in 1460,⁴² by his second, Alice Fulford.

This Thomas was William Carey’s father. He settled at Chilton Foliat, which lies two miles northwest of Hungerford in Wiltshire, and had links with the Careys going back at least as far as 1407, when a Robert Carey was rector.⁴³ Thomas sat in Parliament as burgess for Wallingford, Berkshire, in 1491–92, and made a good marriage to Margaret, daughter of Sir Robert Spencer by Eleanor Beaufort; by her he had three sons and four daughters. His date of death is variously given in genealogies: some writers say he died in 1500,⁴⁴ but documents in the National Archives show that he was pursuing a lawsuit between 1518 and 1529, and died shortly before June 21, 1536, at Tewkesbury.⁴⁵

Thomas’s eldest son, born around 1491, was Sir John Carey,⁴⁶ later of Thremhall Priory in Essex, which was granted to him in 1538 at the Dissolution of the Monasteries.⁴⁷ In 1522 this John was serving as a captain of one of the ships in Henry VIII’s navy, but by 1526, probably through the influence of his younger brother, William, he had been appointed a Groom of the Privy Chamber, a lower rank than that of Esquire of the Body. He returned to his naval career, however, and by 1542 had risen to the rank of vice admiral. In 1547 he was knighted by Edward VI. He died in 1552 at Hunsdon House in Hertfordshire, and is buried in Hunsdon Church.

William, who married Mary Boleyn, was John’s junior by perhaps five years—if we accept the date 1526 on an Elizabethan copy of his portrait, where his age is given as thirty,⁴⁸ which places his birth around 1496. The third son, Edward Carey, was perhaps born in 1498, and died in 1560. One daughter, Mary, married Sir John Delaval of Seaton Delaval in Northumberland, a marriage that was possibly arranged through the good offices of her maternal aunt, Katherine Spencer, Countess of Northumberland. Two others, Eleanor and Anne, became nuns at Wilton Abbey. The remaining daughter, Margaret, appears to have remained unwed.

Chilton Foliat, where the Carey siblings apparently grew up, was—and still is—a small, ancient settlement on the River Kennet, straddling the Marlborough Road and surrounded by lush, unspoiled woodland and gentle hills. It is an area of outstanding natural beauty. There are traces of Neolithic and Bronze Age settlements near the parish church. The medieval manor house stood immediately to the west of the twelfth century church of St. Mary, but was demolished in the 1750s. It was in this manor house that William Carey had probably been born. It was surrounded by a large manor-owned farm and a deer park, in which there was a hunting lodge.

As the younger son of a younger son, William Carey had no landed estate or affinity, and had had to make his own way in the world, so he must have risen to prominence at court on his own merits, as one of the new men so favored by Henry VIII: men who owed their success to ability rather than rank.

William had begun his career at court by January 1519, probably gaining entry through the patronage of Henry Courtenay, Earl of Devon, the King’s cousin. He had probably come to Courtenay’s notice through his Carey connections in Devon.⁴⁹ In a very short time he had won the favor of Henry VIII and secured a post in the King’s Privy Chamber, as Esquire of the Body to his royal master,⁵⁰ the same post that Thomas Boleyn had once held.⁵¹ In fact, Carey had all the qualities and talents that Henry VIII sought and admired in the young men of his court: he could joust, gamble, and play tennis with the best of them, and the chances are that he was learned, witty, and good company.

On New Year’s Day 1519 the King’s Book of Payments records that Carey—who must have quickly proved himself reliable—was entrusted with a thousand crowns (£78,000) for “playing money for the King” and got 4s.2d (£80) for fetching it.⁵² The next month, he is twice recorded as playing—and winning—against the Earl of Devon “at the King’s tennis court.”⁵³ On June 18, at Windsor, the King granted Carey an annuity of fifty marks (£4,600).⁵⁴

By October of that year, Carey’s name appears on a list of thirty-two privileged persons entitled to “daily liveries in the King’s household,” which included “ordinary breakfasts daily to be served within the counting house”: the list included the Lord Steward, the King’s and Queen’s Lord Chamberlains, the Treasurer of the Household, the Comptroller, the Princess Mary, the French Queen (Mary Tudor), Cardinal Wolsey, the Duke of Suffolk, several Knights of the Body, the Master of the Horse, “Mr. Carey,” and some “young minstrels.”⁵⁵ No one under the degree of baron could ordinarily “have any breakfast in the King’s house.”⁵⁶ The following month we find Carey listed with Nicholas Carew, Henry Norris, and Anthony Poyntz as members of the King’s household.⁵⁷“William Carey, of the Privy Chamber” is also mentioned in a document relating to the household of Henry VIII, drawn up between 1519 and 1522, in which he is recorded as one of the Esquires of the Body “that lieth upon the King’s pallet,” “having wages in the counting house and in the Exchequer,” and the right to keep four servants and two horses at court.⁵⁸

William is recorded as taking part in the revels at New Year 1520, when—in company with Carew, Norris, and Anthony Browne, prominent courtiers with whom he was already closely associated—he was one of twelve gentlemen who took part in a pageant staged at Havering in Essex, wearing coats in the German fashion in green or yellow satin adorned with gold or silver scales. He got to keep his expensive apparel too.⁵⁹

As a member of the Privy Chamber, which was at once the King’s private lodging and an exclusive department of state that centered upon the monarch’s person, William received £33.6s.8d (£12,650) a year from the King;⁶⁰ this figure relates to 1520, and was the same wage as Henry Norris, a great favorite of the King, received. Carey’s duties as Esquire of the Body, which were carried out on a shift basis, included waiting on the monarch hand and foot, attending on him in his bedchamber, sleeping near him on a pallet bed at night, guarding his lodgings when he was absent, and sharing his leisure time in the day.⁶¹

Since 1518 the Privy Chamber had become one of the two power centers in the kingdom, the other being the Privy Council;⁶² not for nothing would there be clashes with the all-powerful Cardinal Wolsey, who complained that “certain young men in [the King’s] Privy Chamber, not regarding his estate or degree, were so familiar and homely with him, and played such light touches with him, that they forgot themselves.”⁶³ In 1519 some of the King’s gentlemen—among them Sir Francis Bryan and Sir Edward Neville—had disgraced themselves by indulging in loutish behavior in the streets of Paris and London, which gave the powerful Wolsey the excuse he needed to purge the Privy Chamber of his rivals, which he was to do again in 1526, with the passing of the Eltham Ordinances. Yet William Carey was secure enough in the King’s favor to survive both purges and escape banishment from court. His conduct had clearly not given cause for criticism.⁶⁴

Even so, he and his privileged companions were also the targets of some resentful censure by members of the aristocracy. Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, who was of royal blood and suffered execution in 1521 for plotting to seize the throne, was outraged by the fact that “the King would give his fees, offices, and rewards to boys rather than noblemen,”⁶⁵ while other peers would disparagingly refer to these gentlemen as “the minions,” a term that then meant a favorite or darling. The minions may also have been satirized by the court poet John Skelton in his interlude Magnificence.

William Carey was fortunate enough to be one of this select group of young men who enjoyed a privileged degree of daily access to—and intimacy with—the King, and therefore great influence and the ability to exercise lucrative patronage. No man gained admittance to this small and select band of gentlemen and esquires unless Henry liked and favored him, for these were the men with whom he enjoyed his “pastime with good company,” as he described it in his own song, in which he speaks of hunting, singing, dancing, and “all goodly sports.” Most of this small, favored band of courtiers had come to prominence through their expertise at jousting,⁶⁶ and shared the King’s sporting interests.⁶⁷

Such company could enable Henry VIII to digest “all thoughts and fancies” and indulge in “mirth and play.”⁶⁸ All Privy Chamber staff were expected to be competent at making music, singing, dancing, cards, dice, and even acting. Many had similar intellectual tastes as the King, and dazzled him with their wit and repartee. They were enjoined to be “loving together” and discreet, and warned “not to tattle about such things as may be done or said when the King goes forth.”⁶⁹

We may infer from Carey’s rapid rise to favor that he had all the requisite talents—and, no doubt, vices—and that the King had taken an instant liking to him and detected in him the kind of qualities that would be useful to him.

The minions were violently pro-French “in eating, drinking, and apparel, yea, and in French vices and brags, so that all the estates of England were by them laughed at; the ladies and gentlemen were dispraised, so that nothing by them was praised but if it were after the French turn.”⁷⁰ No doubt it would have suited William Carey very well to acquire a wife who had served a queen of France, and whose father had strong diplomatic links with the French court.

As for Mary, she had married a splendid young man at the height of his powers, an intelligent man who was destined for greatness, and—if William’s portraits are anything to go by—good-looking too, with brown hair, a short beard, a strong nose, and eyes that markedly resembled those of his cousin, Henry VIII.⁷¹ It was a fine match, and it might have marked the beginning of obscurity and genteel domesticity for Mary—but for the fact that some time after her marriage she became Henry VIII’s mistress.

Where did the Careys live after their marriage? William Carey is sometimes described in genealogies as being “of Aldenham,” a small village lying near Borehamwood and Radlett, in Hertfordshire, three miles northeast of Watford; and it has been claimed that, after their marriage, William and Mary, when not at court, resided there. But Aldenham was the property of Westminster Abbey from the eleventh century until the Reformation, when it came into the possession of Henry VIII, who granted it to the Stepneth family in 1546, and the house lived in by the Carey family was not built until between 1576 and 1589. Thus it is clear that William Carey was never lord of the manor of Aldenham, nor is there any record of him owning or residing in a house in the village, or ever living there.⁷² There is in fact no mention of any Carey living there before 1589. The likelihood is that William and Mary resided at court during their marriage.

On the assumption that Mary was less than twelve years old at the time of her wedding, it has been argued that the consummation of her marriage was “undoubtedly delayed” for some time, which is said to account for the fact that the couple’s first child was not born until 1524.⁷³ Yet this theory does not take into account the evidence that she was François I’s mistress around 1514–15, or the likely date of Anne Boleyn’s birth and the fact that Mary was the elder sister, which all suggests that she was probably at least twenty at the time of her marriage, and that it was duly consummated.

There is no record of Mary serving permanently in Katherine’s household,⁷⁴ but, as the wife of a prominent courtier, she was permitted to lodge at court with her husband, and by virtue of being married to a member of the King’s Privy Chamber, she might be called upon to serve as an extra lady-in-waiting to the Queen when needed.⁷⁵ Being in such a privileged position normally conferred its own status upon a woman, and afforded her—albeit intermittently—an independent income, for the Queen’s ladies received annual fees, occasional perquisites, and pensions upon retirement; they also enjoyed special access to royal patronage.⁷⁶ However, Mary Boleyn does not seem to have been called upon to serve Katherine of Aragon very often, and may have done so only on one occasion.

Nevertheless, as a member of the inner court,⁷⁷ she became part of a close-knit, elite circle of people whose lives revolved around that of the King. Henry VIII used more familiarity with his inferiors than most monarchs—foreign ambassadors were amazed when he leaned out of a window and shared a joke with them; he was not averse to playing dice with the master of his cellar, and he was known to put his arm around a man’s shoulder to set him at his ease. Therefore it was inevitable that most of those who lived at court would soon become acquainted—and even friendly—with this highly accessible King.

Coming to court meant embracing an itinerant life, moving from one magnificent palace to another in accordance with the demands of state, the necessity for cleansing, or the royal pleasure. As an Esquire of the Body, in almost constant attendance on the King—and later as a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber—William Carey was entitled to a lodging at court, although when on duty he would sleep in the royal apartments.⁷⁸ Mary would have shared his lodging, and been waited on by the four servants that his rank permitted him.⁷⁹ There were whole ranges of courtier lodgings at the royal palaces; Carey would probably have been assigned a double lodging, consisting of two rooms, each with a fireplace, and a garderobe; he and Mary would have been expected to provide their own furnishings and ensure that the rooms were kept clean. With servants lodging with them, space was limited, privacy difficult, and conditions cramped.

After February 1522, when William was appointed Keeper of the King’s house of Beaulieu at Boreham, near Chelmsford, Essex, with the right to lodgings there,⁸⁰ he and Mary may well have resided at Beaulieu when his duties required it—and perhaps when they wanted briefly to escape the court and enjoy some privacy. Beaulieu was a house with which Mary was probably familiar, because it had been in her family until recently. Originally entitled New Hall, it had been built as a medieval hall house by the abbots of Waltham, prior to being acquired by Edward IV. Henry VII had granted it to Mary’s great-grandfather, Thomas Butler, Earl of Ormond, who had entertained Henry VIII there in 1510—when Mary and Anne Boleyn may have been present—and in 1515, shortly before he died. His daughter, Margaret, widow of Sir William Boleyn, then inherited it, and her son, Sir Thomas, as Ormond’s executor, sold it to the King for £1,000 (£379,500) before January 1516.

Between 1516 and 1523, Henry lavished £20,000 (£7.5 million) in converting New Hall into a vast and sumptuous palace with eight courtyards, which he renamed Beaulieu. Faced with red brick, it was entered via a gatehouse embellished with the King’s arms, which led into a main courtyard with a fountain; the palace boasted a great hall, a tennis court, a chapel with brilliant stained glass, and beautiful gardens. There was even hot and cold running water in the royal bathroom. By 1519 the renovations had been sufficiently far advanced for the King and Queen to entertain noble French hostages there, and by 1522, when William was made Keeper, they were almost complete. Being entrusted with the keepership of such an important palace was quite a responsibility for William, and testifies to the King’s trust and confidence in him, and to Carey’s proven ability.

Beaulieu later came back into the hands of the Boleyns when Henry VIII, having decided that it was old-fashioned, leased it to Mary’s brother George in 1531. It is now a school, New Hall, and has been extensively rebuilt; the only remains of the house that Mary knew are the cellars, and a stained-glass window now in St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster. Beaulieu lay about twenty miles from another Boleyn property, Rochford Hall, which Mary would one day inherit.

In June 1520, as “Mistress Carey,” Mary was one of twenty-five gentlewomen among three thousand “persons attendant on the Queen”⁸¹ when the English court decamped en masse to France for the famous Field of Cloth of Gold, the lavish summit meeting between those great rivals Henry VIII and François I, which took place in a field between Guînes and Ardres in what is now northern France; Guînes was in English hands, for Calais and the surrounding area—the Pale—was an English territory, having been taken by Edward III in 1347, in the early phases of the Hundred Years War. It then became part of the great Plantagenet empire founded through the marriage of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine in the twelfth century. Over the centuries, successive kings of France had gradually clawed back the lands, and England’s defeat in 1453 at the end of the Hundred Years War brought about the loss of all the rest but Calais, which itself would be lost to the French in 1557 by Henry VIII’s daughter, Mary I.

Mary would no doubt have been excited to be involved in such a great and important enterprise, and been thrown into a flurry of preparations; and she was to go in some style, for each gentlewoman was permitted to take with her “a woman, two menservants, and three horses.”⁸² Among the knights of Katherine’s household were Mary’s kinsmen John Shelton, Robert Clere, and Philip Calthorpe, and several of her Howard relatives, while Jane Parker, her future sister-in-law, was a fellow gentlewoman.

Mary’s husband William also had a role to play in the proceedings; both he and Sir Thomas Boleyn, who had helped to organize the event, were attending on the King,⁸³ William as one of the Esquires for the Body; while her mother, “the Lady Boleyn,” and her aunt, Anne Tempest, “the Lady Boleyn junior,” were with the Queen.⁸⁴

The King and Queen and their vast retinues, all clad in “noble apparel,”⁸⁵ sailed from Dover in a great fleet of ships, then made their way in stately procession to Guînes, where Cardinal Wolsey had arranged for a small temporary palace of wood and canvas to be erected. Here, the Queen was lodged with her ladies and gentlewomen in rooms of unsurpassed magnificence, with most of her people being accommodated in silken tents. Katherine’s lodgings were of “unparalleled splendor,” hung with cloth of gold; the altar in her chapel “lacked neither pearls nor stones” and bore “twelve great images of gold.”⁸⁶ The King’s apartments were even more sumptuous.

The two kings met on June 7 in the Vale of Ardres. Attended by vast trains of courtiers, they made a magnificent sight, and the very ground had been leveled so that neither should appear greater than the other. Just to be on the safe side, Henry was accompanied by his guard, “five hundred in number.” Approaching “in the field,” he and François saluted each other while still on horseback, then dismounted and embraced “with courteous words, to the great rejoicing of the beholders.” The field in which they met was ringed with sumptuous tents and pavilions “imbued and batoned with rich cloths of silk like fine burned gold” and hung with “marvelous cloths of Arras.” In every chamber were imposing canopies of estate, also of gold, with “rich embroidery, with chairs covered with like cloth, with pommels of fine gold and great cushions of rich work.”⁸⁷

Gifts were exchanged, a treaty of friendship signed, and the two kings then passed the day in pleasant conversation, banqueting, and “loving devices,”⁸⁸ while their courts made each other’s acquaintance.

Determined to impress the French, their ancient foe, all the lords of England were decked out in cloth of gold or silver, velvets, tinsel (satin threaded with gold or silver), or crimson silk, often heavily embroidered, and, along with all the knights, gentlemen, esquires, and officers of the King, had weighed themselves down with chains, baldricks, and SS collars, all of gold.⁸⁹

In company with all the other courtiers, Mary and the rest of the ladies would have spent the seventeen days of the Field of Cloth of Gold “superbly” dressed in their “richest and costliest habits,” for “the suites of the two queens were gorgeous in the extreme,”⁹⁰although there was snide comment that “the French ones arranged theirs with more taste and elegance, so that their visitors soon began to adopt the mode of that country—by which they lost in modesty what they gained in comeliness.” Mary had spent months at the French court, and possibly years in a noble French household, so she would no doubt have been used to wearing the nimbuslike French hood that—scandalously—showed off the hair, and necklines that were cut wider, and lower, than those in England.

She would also, no doubt, have enjoyed the endless round of extravagant festivities that attended the seventeen days of the summit, which included jousts, sporting events, feasting, banquets, dancing, and excessive drinking from fountains running with free wine. On Sundays she would have attended Katherine to Mass, celebrated by Cardinal Wolsey, and probably witnessed the touching argument between her mistress and Queen Claude as to who should take precedence in kissing the Bible first—a contest that looked like it would end in stalemate until they spontaneously kissed each other instead.

When Queen Katherine, the Dowager French Queen Mary Tudor, and Queen Claude met on June 11 to watch a joust, Mary was one of the “handsome and well arrayed” ladies who were crowded into wagons or riding on palfreys in Katherine’s retinue,⁹¹ and who sat or stood behind her on a stage hung with tapestries or painted cloths and furnished with a costly canopy of estate “all of pearl,” which drew much comment. She would have witnessed her valiant husband—who had been provided with a pair of yellow velvet hose⁹²—competing in the lists as one of the Earl of Devon’s men,⁹³ jousting in the same contests as the King, winning prizes in the tournaments, and earning the acclaim of the two courts. She would have been present to watch him taking part in the revels alongside his colleagues Henry Norris, Nicholas Carew, and Francis Bryan,⁹⁴ all intimates of the King’s inner circle whom Carey would probably by now have accounted his friends.

On the following day there was another joust, in which the two kings showed off their talents in feats of skill. It is unlikely that Mary was one of the forty ladies who followed Queen Katherine on palfreys as, clad defiantly in the costume of Spain, France’s enemy, she rode in procession to the tiltyard; but she was almost certainly in the six wagons that followed. She would no doubt have thrilled to the sight of King Henry displaying his dexterity “before the ladies,” spurring his horse and “making it bound and curvet as valiantly as any man could do.” Two more days of jousting followed, with Henry and François vying to impress the two courts; the contest, most fortunately, ended in a draw.

The following evening, Mary would have been in attendance on Katherine when—Henry having gone off to be entertained by Queen Claude at the castle of Ardres—she received King François at Guînes, where he was “right honorably served in all things needful. Then the ladies came and proffered themselves to dance, and so did in the French king’s presence, which done, [he] took leave of the Queen and the ladies of the court.”⁹⁵ We do not know if Mary Boleyn was one of the dancers, although it is possible. This cannot have been one of the easiest of social occasions, since François thought Katherine “old and deformed” (as he had called her the year before), while she was soon to refer to him as “the greatest Turk that ever was.”

So far all had been sweetness and courtesy, but it could not be expected that the meeting between the two kings would go off without a hitch. Mary must have been watching when, a couple of days later, Henry VIII, a vain man who believed his athletic prowess was second to none, challenged his royal rival to a wrestling match. At first the fight was equal, but soon the courts were holding their collective breath as the King of France seemed to be getting the better of his opponent.

“Have at me again!” cried a provoked Henry, whereupon the younger François threw him ingloriously to the ground. Consternation broke out among the spectators as the English king rose to his feet and made to lunge at his brother monarch. It was only the timely intervention of Queen Katherine and Queen Claude, who pulled their husbands apart, that averted a serious diplomatic incident.

On June 19 and 20 there were two more tournaments, in which William Carey probably took part, as the two kings were “holding tourneys with all the partners of their challenge,” watched, as on every day, by the three queens, to whom, as they sat on their “stages,” the kings did reverence before the jousts began. On June 22, Henry and François did “battle on foot at the barriers.”⁹⁶ At all these functions Queen Katherine “and all her ladies were superbly dressed.”⁹⁷

During the summit Mary may well have been united with her sister Anne,⁹⁸ who was probably in the train of either Queen Claude or Marguerite of Valois. It has been suggested that, after five years, “relations between the two sisters must have been uncomfortable,” with Mary, who had been “recalled from France in disgrace,” now in attendance on Queen Katherine while “simultaneously warming King Henry’s bed”; and that King François “cannot have failed to notice that King Henry was now riding his English mare.”⁹⁹ But there is no evidence for any of this.

Even so, there may have been occasions for awkwardness. Did Mary—and her father—fear that William Carey would hear French gossip about her during the courtly social gatherings that marked the summit and would almost certainly have been attended by people who might have remembered her from the days when she had been King François’s mistress? Did she worry that the French king would recognize her in the throng and betray by some look or gesture that he knew her intimately? It is fruitless to speculate, since we know very little about the relationship between Mary and William. Given that the marriage was advantageous on both sides, we might expect Carey to have been conventional enough to have wanted an heir that he could be sure was his own; and, being a prominent man at court, he must surely have cared about his wife’s reputation. So it is possible that, for Mary, the Field of Cloth of Gold was something of an ordeal.

The costly pageant came to an end on June 24, the day after Cardinal Wolsey had celebrated a “high and solemn” Mass in the open air, which was attended by the two courts and followed by a farewell feast and a magnificent fireworks display. Formal farewells were said, with François visiting Katherine at Guînes, and Henry taking his leave of Claude at Ardres, and the meeting broke up, with very little to show for all the ruinous expense.

For despite the lavish display and protestations of friendship and amity on the part of Henry VIII and François I, the summit had achieved virtually nothing. “These sovereigns are not at peace,” a Venetian envoy had observed. “They hate each other cordially.” In fact, Henry had already secretly arranged to meet up with François’s great enemy, the Emperor Charles V, after the great long courtly charade was over. Only a fortnight after he had led his court back to Calais, where he and the Queen and their suites lodged in the Exchequer Palace, he rode, with Sir Thomas Boleyn among those in attendance,¹⁰⁰ to Gravelines to meet the Emperor and escort him back to Calais, where he and Katherine hosted a great banquet in his honor. William Carey was in attendance, and Mary Boleyn would almost certainly have been present in the Queen’s train. Soon afterward, the court sailed home to England.

Mary was no doubt able to watch her husband take part in jousts that were held to celebrate the marriage of his patron, the Earl of Devon, to Gertrude Blount, the daughter of Lord Mountjoy, which took place on October 25, 1520. The King had given orders for the making of sleeveless knee-length tunics (known as “bases”) and trappings of russet velvet and cloth of silver “lozenged and cross-lozenged with cloth of gold, every lozenge embroidered with trueloves of cloth of gold, with saddle covers and harness of the same. These were used by the King, Sir William Kingston, and Mr. William Carey at Greenwich, the 21st, 27th, and 28th October.”¹⁰¹

Tragedy struck the Boleyns sometime in 1520, when the eldest son and heir, Thomas Boleyn the younger, died. The cause of his death is unknown. This must have been a terrible blow for his family, for the young man had lived well into his twenties and they had surely envisaged a brilliant future for him. Now he was at rest at Penshurst, and his surviving brother, George, was heir in his stead.

Life, as ever, had to go on. That year, Sir Thomas Boleyn was much occupied, not only by the Field of Cloth of Gold, but in finding a husband for his younger daughter, now that the elder was satisfactorily wed. By the spring of 1520 he was negotiating to marry Anne, then still in France, to James Butler, the son of Sir Piers, who was still calling himself Earl of Ormond. Again this argues that Anne was the younger sister, whose marriage was not broached until her elder sister was settled in wedlock.

According to Cardinal Wolsey, James Butler was “right active, discreet, and wise,” and Boleyn, spurred by the prospect of his daughter becoming Countess of Ormond, joined forces with his brother-in-law, Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, the King’s Lieutenant in Ireland, to lay the proposal before Henry VIII, who thought it an admirable solution to the Ormond dispute, and gave his “agreeable consent.”¹⁰² Despite this, the marriage negotiations dragged on for over a year, and in November 1521, Wolsey told Henry VIII that he would endeavor himself to bring them to a conclusion “with all effect.”¹⁰³ He was to do quite the opposite, managing to drag out discussions all through the summer and autumn of 1522, after which the marriage plans were then abandoned because no agreement on the terms of the contract had been reached—thanks, no doubt, to the obstruction of the Cardinal, and to Sir Thomas perhaps deciding that he wanted the earldom of Ormond for himself after all. This left Anne no nearer to finding a husband than she had ever been.

By then Mary Boleyn had probably become Henry VIII’s mistress.