6

The Assault on the Castle of Virtue

Historically, Elizabeth Blount was by far the most prominent of Henry VIII’s mistresses, yet her fame has in recent years been eclipsed by the woman who was probably her successor in Henry’s bed, Mary Boleyn.

We can discount an unsubstantiated claim, made in 1879, that Elizabeth was replaced in the King’s affections by a Mistress Arabella Parker, the wife of a London merchant.¹ Apart from the fact that she is not mentioned in any contemporary source, Arabella (or, more correctly, Arbella) was then a Scots name and virtually unknown in England until it was given, in 1575, to the Lady Arbella Stuart, Henry VIII’s great-great-niece. Because she was perceived to be a dynastic threat to Elizabeth I and James I, the name did not gain popularity, and it was not until the late seventeenth century that it started to become fashionable.²

Henry VIII’s affair with Mary Boleyn was conducted so discreetly that there is no record of the date it started, its duration, or when it ended.³ Early in the nineteenth century, the Catholic historian John Lingard put forward the claim that Mary had been Henry’s mistress, and backed it with striking arguments; but within thirty years it was being asserted that there was no evidence to prove “aught against the reputation of Mary Boleyn” and that the “malicious rumors” about her relationship with the King were invented “to blacken the fame of Henry while he was seeking to divorce Katherine of Aragon, leading the world to believe that he who could be capable of such enormities could entertain no scruples of conscience on the grounds of consanguinity.”⁴ Even the magisterial Froude (and after him, in 1952, Sir Arthur MacNalty) vehemently denied that the affair ever took place. Froude—who miscalled Mary’s husband “Henry Carey” and incorrectly claimed that they were married in January 1521—wrote, “The story may have been true, and if it was true it was peculiarly disgraceful, but it is not proved … The balance of probability is the other way.” He went on to castigate “respectable historians” for believing it, and concluded that “it was a legend which grew out of the temper of the time, a mere floating calumny.”

Friedmann, citing much of the evidence that will be set out in this chapter, exploded that myth in 1884, and since then our knowledge of Henry VIII’s private life has advanced immeasurably, so there can now be no doubt that he did have an affair with Mary Boleyn. Indeed, the evidence for it is overwhelmingly conclusive.⁵

Nevertheless, the first non-contemporary reference to the relationship dates only from 1527, while other primary evidence is sparse. Henry did not “flaunt” the affair;⁶ we only know about it from later sources, primarily a Papal dispensation granted to Henry VIII in 1528, the testimonies of George Throckmorton (1533) and John Hale (1535), several Spanish diplomatic reports of the 1530s, and a treatise written by the King’s cousin, Cardinal Reginald Pole, in 1538—all of which will be discussed in due course. Froude pointed out in 1891 that the affair was not mentioned in the first draft of “Pole’s Book,” Pro ecclesiasticae unitatis defensione (On the Unity of the Church), which took the form of an open letter to the King, written at Henry VIII’s request and sent to England in 1536, which suggests Pole did not know of it at that time. It was only mentioned in the published edition in 1538, which was sent to England the following year with Pope Paul III’s Bull of Deposition. This makes sense, as the Pope could have divulged to Pole what he knew to be the truth about Mary, which prompted Pole to castigate Henry VIII for marrying the sister of his mistress.

As has been noted previously, in 1533, George Throckmorton, a Catholic MP who had opposed Henry VIII’s Reformation legislation in Parliament, had the impudence to tax the King with having “meddled” both with Lady Boleyn and her daughter Mary before pursuing Anne, to which Henry replied, tellingly, “Never with the mother.” It was Thomas Cromwell who added diplomatically, “Nor never with the sister either, and therefore put that out of your mind.”⁷

By the 1530s the Spanish ambassador, Eustache Chapuys, was well aware that Henry’s relations with Mary created a bar to his marriage to her sister Anne, while in 1535, John Hale, a supporter of Katherine of Aragon, was to report gossip that Mary Boleyn had borne the King a son.⁸ By the reign of Anne’s daughter, Elizabeth I (1558–1603), the affair had become common knowledge and was mentioned by several writers.

In the early 1520s, Henry VIII was in his glorious prime, but married to an aging, childless, and increasingly pious wife. Henry had enormous respect for Katherine, and may still have loved her, but it is probably fair to say that “she no longer satisfied the desires of a virile man just entering his thirties.”⁹ With his former mistress, Elizabeth Blount, now married and fully occupied with childbearing, the King, it seems, was ripe for an affair.

It has often been suggested that Mary Boleyn was the reason why the King had lost interest in Elizabeth Blount, or that, once Elizabeth had fallen pregnant and was no longer available sexually, Henry had looked elsewhere. One popular theory, first put forward by Lingard (who, like Froude, gives the date of Mary’s marriage incorrectly as January 1521), is that Mary became Henry VIII’s mistress at that point, before her marriage, and that she was married off to William Carey because he was insignificant—enjoying, according to one fanciful account, only “a small place at court”¹⁰ and prepared to be a sensible, pragmatic, and complacent husband.¹¹ The marriage is said to have been hastily arranged by the King for his mistress “to cloak their affair.”¹² It is also said that that Carey “knew all about the affair from the beginning, and was as willing as Mary to comply in order to gratify the King”;¹³ and even that Mary was married off “as a precaution” against an illicit pregnancy¹⁴ and “to protect her honor.”¹⁵ It has further been asserted that “it is almost certain that she was already Henry’s mistress by this time.”¹⁶ Is it?

With very little evidence to go on, historians differ considerably in dating the affair, variously placing its commencement within the fifteen years from 1510 to 1525.¹⁷ With such a broad suggested date range, it is small wonder that there has been much confusion as to when Mary’s affair with the King flourished. Going on the sparse surviving evidence, it probably began after Mary’s marriage.¹⁸ William Carey, as we have seen, was far from insignificant, and the facts would argue against his having been chosen as Mary’s bridegroom just because he was willing to be a compliant husband.

The few pointers we have suggest that Mary attracted the King’s interest in 1522.¹⁹ The start of their affair has been the subject of much unsubstantiated, and often romantic, speculation: that Henry was attracted to Mary Boleyn because, like Elizabeth Blount, she was an accomplished dancer, eager to join in the pleasures in which the Queen was no longer interested;²⁰ or that she resembled her mother, which was the real source of her attraction for the King.²¹ We cannot be certain that, after acknowledging his bastard by the unmarried Elizabeth Blount, Henry decided that affairs with married women were preferable;²² that hardly rings true in the light of his later pursuit of Anne Boleyn and other unmarried ladies. It has been suggested that, “turning from his aging wife, Henry lost his heart to Mary Boleyn”²³—yet we have no means of knowing if his heart was involved at all, or that he “adored” Mary,²⁴ as has been claimed. Others creatively imagine the King being attracted to Mary as “a wisp of passion, fresh and winning,”²⁵ and suggest that it was in view of her French reputation, her “hint of French glamour,” and her being sexually experienced that she caught Henry’s eye.²⁶ There is no evidence at all that Mary was “warmly recommended” to Henry VIII by François I.²⁷

It has been thought extremely unlikely that Henry would have had anything to do with Mary if he knew she had been the mistress of his French rival, or was in any way promiscuous.²⁸ We do not know if he was aware of her affair with François, although what we can surmise of his approach to Mary Boleyn suggests that he may have been—possibly having heard gossip, or even been told it by François himself, at the Field of Cloth of Gold, which is not inconceivable, given that Mary was present—and if he did, he perhaps found an added piquancy in appropriating for himself a woman who had graced his rival’s bed. Henry was not so nice in such matters as he was in his prudish attitude to marital sex. There has even been speculation that he quizzed Mary as to how he compared with François in bed.²⁹

In the overheated imagination of Paul Rival, writing in the 1930s, it was Mary’s Boleyn blood that appealed to Henry, who noticed her “because of her gaiety, because she was in love with love, and because of other, more intangible things that lent an elusive savor to sentiment.” Rival, who believed that Henry had had an affair with Mary’s mother, opined that with Mary, “he recovered his adolescence,” discerning that “a tinge of incest” added its own piquancy. As for Mary, “life had made its mark on her: she was youthful, yet at the same time overmature … With the flesh of this gentle creature slept all the alluring sins of France. Henry, in the security of his rustic retreats, in the pauses between the songs of the nightingale, made it his pleasant business to awaken them. On [Mary’s] loving bosom, he pillowed his head. In her arms he savored a very peaceful happiness.” We are entirely in the realms of fantasy here, and there is much more of the same in the ensuing pages of Rival’s supposedly factual book.

Henry VIII’s relationship with Mary Boleyn probably flourished in the guise and play of courtly love.³⁰ On March 2, 1522, the King held a tournament in honor of the ambassadors of the Emperor Charles V, who were then visiting England to arrange a marriage between the Emperor and Henry’s daughter, the Princess Mary. King Henry himself took part in the jousts, riding a horse trapped in silver caparisons embroidered with a wounded heart and the motto Elle mon Coeur a navera (“She has wounded my Heart”).³¹Henry was an adept at playing the game of courtly love by the time-honored rules, which required a suitor to keep the identity of his beloved a secret, so we cannot be certain who it was that had wounded his heart, only that the lady likeliest to have been the object of such overt yet mysterious symbolism was Mary Boleyn. The date fits, as does the circumstantial evidence. It seems that Mary “had the King of England entirely enthralled”³²—at least for a time.

Henry’s motto proclaimed the unkindness of the lady in rejecting his advances. It also conveyed the message that he was, or fancied himself, in love with her. What is more likely is that it was a ploy to make yet another sexual conquest.

Henry VIII was no doubt used to women succumbing to him. He was the King, and he was young, handsome, athletic and powerful, an irresistible combination. In 1519 a Venetian eyewitness had described him as “much handsomer than any sovereign in Christendom. Nature could not have done more for him; he is very fair and his whole frame admirably proportioned.”³³ He was, wrote another, “the handsomest potentate I ever set eyes on: above the usual height, with an extremely fine calf to his leg; his complexion very fair and bright, with auburn hair combed straight and short in the French fashion, and a round face so very beautiful it would become a pretty woman, his throat being rather long and thick. He speaks French, English, and Latin, and a little Italian, plays well on the lute and virginals, sings from a book at sight, draws the bow with greater strength than any man in England, and jousts marvelously. He is in every respect a most accomplished prince.”³⁴

Henry, who was aware of his own attributes and very vain, probably expected Mary to submit to him without a qualm, but it seems that she was not easily persuaded. Maybe the fact that she was now a married woman and feared to offend her husband had something to do with it; or she loved William and shrank from betraying him. Possibly she had regretted her brief affair with François I, and did not want to invite notoriety at the English court, having narrowly avoided it at the French one. Perhaps she didn’t want Henry in the way he wanted her. Maybe her sister was warning her not to get involved—given Anne’s later refusal to become Henry’s mistress until marriage was within her sights, this is a real possibility.

It may be significant that the first of a series of royal grants to William Carey was made in February 1522.³⁵ Of course, this could have been pure coincidence, an award made on William’s own merits, which would not have been unexpected, given his past career and his closeness to the King. But it could also have been a discreet incentive to William’s wife, with the implicit message that, were she to be kind to her royal suitor, he was prepared to be generous in return. Given that she was a married woman, Henry could hardly have made grants to her directly; but a grant made to her husband would benefit her too, and serve as compensation to the cuckolded William, whether or not he knew of the affair.

Anne Boleyn had just then returned from the French court,³⁶ her departure having become necessary after war broke out between England and France. Maybe there was “another happy reunion” between Anne and Mary,³⁷ but that is pure speculation. By March of that year, Anne was officially attached to the royal wardrobe,³⁸ and “her father made such means” that she was soon appointed a maid of honor to Katherine of Aragon.³⁹ Before long she had made herself noticed: “there was presented to the eye of the court the rare and admirable beauty of the fresh and young Lady [sic.] Anne Boleyn, to be attending on the Queen.”⁴⁰ But it was not this Boleyn sister who captured the King’s attention at this time.

Only two days after the tournament, on Shrove Tuesday, March 4, Mary and Anne were present at a great feast given by Cardinal Wolsey in honor of the King, the Queen, and the ambassadors at his London house, York Place. When dinner was over, the hall was cleared and a pageant was performed, entitled—most appositely—“The Assault on the Castle of Virtue,” and costing £20 (£7,500) to mount.⁴¹ A large model of a castle called Le Château Vert was wheeled into the hall. Painted green, it had three towers, from which hung banners: one depicted three broken hearts, one a lady’s hand holding a man’s heart, and the other a lady’s hand turning a man’s heart—all possibly significant symbols, given the King’s “wounded heart” of two days before. One might even be tempted to speculate that the whole thing had been designed to turn Mary Boleyn’s heart.

From this castle sprang eight ladies, including Mary Tudor, “the French Queen,” Gertrude Blount, the young Countess of Devon,⁴² “Mistress Anne Boleyn, Mistress Carey,” and “Mistress Parker,” each clad in a gown of white satin embroidered with Milan-point lace and gold thread. On their heads these ladies wore “silk cauls of diverse colors” costing 2s.8d (£50) each, and Milanese-style bonnets of gold encrusted with jewels. The eight ladies all had “strange names” embroidered in gold on their headgear and on the twenty-four yellow satin labels that were attached to each gown. Mary Tudor, who knew the Boleyn sisters fairly well, led the dancers as “Beauty”; Gertrude Blount was “Honor”; Jane Parker, the daughter of the erudite Henry, Lord Morley—she was to marry George Boleyn within two years—was “Constancy”; Anne Boleyn was “Perseverance”; and Mary Boleyn was “Kindness.” Those names seem in retrospect to have suited the Boleyn sisters rather well,⁴³ and perhaps Mary had chosen hers to convey a message to her royal suitor—or it had been chosen for her.

Beneath the castle there appeared eight choristers of the Chapel Royal disguised as “ladies whose names [Hall gives only seven] were Danger, Disdain, Jealousy, Unkindness, Scorn, Malebouche [Sharp Tongue], and Strangeness, dressed like Indian women” in black bonnets. Then eight lords entered, wearing cloth of gold hats and great cloaks made of blue satin. They were named Love, “Nobleness,” Youth, Devotion, Loyalty, Pleasure, Gentleness, and Liberty. This group, one member of which was the King himself, was led by a man dressed in crimson satin sewn with burning flames of gold. His name was “Ardent Desire.” Was this an allusion to Henry’s amorous interest in Mary Boleyn? It seems likely, given the conceit that the King had been wearing at the tournament only two days earlier. Henry himself did not play Ardent Desire—that was probably the court musician and deviser of the entertainment, William Cornish—but nonetheless “the ladies were so moved by his appearance that they might have given up the castle.” Mary Boleyn may have been more moved than the others, for the whole theme of the pageant seems to have been an allusion to the King’s desire for her.

The “Indian” women cried out that they would hold the fort, but the gallant gentlemen rushed the fortress to an explosion of gunfire, while the ladies defended it by throwing comfits at the besiegers, or sprinkling them with rose water. The men in turn assaulted it with dates, oranges, and “other pleasurable fruits,” and thus in the end overcame it and forced the defenders to surrender. Then they took the ladies by the hand, led them down to the floor as prisoners, and danced with them. It may have been a heady—or daunting—experience for Mary, dancing in public with the King in front of the Queen and the whole court, with very few people being aware of Henry’s interest in her—or perhaps putting two and two together as they watched the couple together, especially “when they had danced their fill” and “everyone unmasked themselves.” Afterward there was “an extravagant banquet.”

Yet despite the message apparently conveyed by Mary in the guise of “Kindness,” she seems not to have gone to the King’s bed willingly—contrary to claims that she was “pliable, eager to please, and anxious to enjoy Henry’s caresses”⁴⁴ or “enchanted once more by the glamour of royalty.”⁴⁵ Maybe she was making the best of an impossible situation, fearing the consequences of refusing the King. Or maybe she was forced.

Cardinal Pole, who may have had access to secret documents relating to the affair in the Vatican Library, or enjoyed the confidence of the Pope, put it in no uncertain terms to the King, in his treatise of 1538, that he had “violated” Mary and then kept her for a long time as his concubine.

The word “violate” derives from the Latin violo—to violate—and violentia—meaning “violence, vehemence, force,” and also from the Anglo-French and Old French form, violence, meaning much the same things. By the late thirteenth century it meant using physical force to inflict injury or damage. During the fourteenth century it also came to mean “breaking,” as in breaking the law, or “offending,” as in offending against the law, or “outraging,” “attacking,” or “assailing.” By the mid-fifteenth century, when used in relation to a woman, it implied rape, ravishment—which could also mean abduction—or sexual assault. It was only in the late sixteenth century that the word was debased to mean “improper treatment.” Thus in Mary Boleyn’s time, where women were concerned, the word “violate” still held all its medieval connotations of rape, and it is likely that Reginald Pole was implying that Mary was taken by the King against her will, that she was forced to become his mistress, and that, in so doing, he had taken her from her husband, offended against the laws of the Church, and committed an outrage. This, together with Pole’s accusation that Henry had thereafter “kept” her as his concubine, implies that she had very little say in the matter, and undermines the suggestion that Mary became Henry’s mistress with the sole intention of obtaining honors and preferments for her family.⁴⁶ On the contrary, maybe it was the prospect of possible future rewards that enabled her to make the best of a difficult situation.

An episode recorded in the state papers appears to support the possibility that Henry VIII was capable of taking a woman against her will and overriding any reluctance on her part. In September 1537 five men were interrogated on the orders of Thomas Cromwell, the Lord Privy Seal, after one William Webbe had been accused of treason. Webbe had complained to several people of an incident that had taken place two years before, when he was riding “a fair gelding with a pretty wench behind him” near Eltham Palace and encountered the King out riding. Henry took such a fancy to the girl that he “plucked down her muffler and kissed her, and liked her so well that he took her from him, and so lived and kept her still in avoutry [adultery].” Webbe was furious and “cried vengeance on the King” to several of his acquaintances, one of whom reported him for being a traitor.⁴⁷ It is possible that his “wench” was only too pleased to go with the King, but the description of Henry suddenly taking the girl, and Webbe’s reaction, suggest that Henry’s action was summary, and without thought for the sensibilities of either of them.

Webbe’s mistress was obviously from the lower orders of society, and therefore of little consequence, but Mary Boleyn, the daughter of a knight, was no common woman, and her very birth, and the fact that she was the wife of one of his favored courtiers, should have merited a certain respect. But Henry’s behavior suggests that these things counted for very little, as well as a certain disregard for the conventional sensibilities of ladies, all of which argues that he did know of her affair with François I; so respect clearly had its limits. Those pretty charades—the jousting motto and the elaborate allegory of the pageant—that almost certainly bear testimony to the King’s courtship—may purely have been aids to seduction. And from what Reginald Pole wrote, Henry did not take no for an answer for very long.

That is not to say that he raped Mary; rather that he maneuvered her into a position wherein she dared not refuse, and thus was forced to submit to him.

In attempting to chart the course of Henry VIII’s affair with Mary Boleyn, we often stumble upon clues that turn out to be red herrings, because the facts tend to support more than one interpretation.

We might begin our search for clues by looking at Sir Thomas Boleyn’s career. In Tudor times it was “not unusual for the males of the family to reap the benefits of a daughter’s success,”⁴⁸ and it has been claimed that “Henry’s lust for Mary” brought “rich pickings” for the Boleyns.⁴⁹ Many writers⁵⁰ have seen these particular awards as resulting from Sir Thomas’s daughter’s affair with the King, Henry’s pleasure “being measured by the pains he took to advance the complacent father”⁵¹—and a thank-you for Boleyn’s compliance, or “turning a blind eye.”⁵² That is indeed possible, but, again, they could also have been bestowed on him because he had earned and deserved them, and because he stood high in favor with Henry VIII and had served him well.⁵³ Only one historian has claimed that Mary’s connection with the King “did not much benefit Sir Thomas.”⁵⁴ We cannot say that for certain.

By the early 1520s, Sir Thomas Boleyn’s career was going from strength to strength, but it could easily be demonstrated that it was clearly on his own merits, and not necessarily due solely to the King’s interest in both his daughters successively, which came long after Boleyn had risen to prominence. By 1522, the year in which Mary probably became Henry’s mistress, Boleyn was forty-five, with a long and distinguished record of service behind him; he had been a favorite of the King for years, long before Henry’s eye alighted on his daughter. Therefore one could reasonably expect to find Boleyn receiving a string of honors such as those that were now coming his way; they were nothing out of the ordinary for a man of his standing.

In February 1516—a mark of high honor indeed—Sir Thomas was one of four persons who bore a canopy over Henry VIII’s daughter and heir, the Princess Mary, at her christening at Greenwich.⁵⁵ When Henry’s sister, Margaret, Queen of Scots, visited London in 1517, Boleyn—who had escorted her north to her marriage years before—was appointed her carver,⁵⁶ a privilege reserved only for men of rank, the ability to carve being the mark of a nobleman.

In October 1518, Sir Thomas Boleyn was a signatory of the Treaty of Universal Peace between England and France, which provided for the marriage of Princess Mary to the Dauphin.⁵⁷ He was ambassador to France from January 1519, and while there, on June 5, 1519, he acted as proxy sponsor for Henry VIII at the baptism of Francois I’s son, Henri, Duc d’Orléans, carrying out his duties “with all possible honor,” as King François wrote to King Henry a week or so later.⁵⁸ Henry VIII was appreciative of Boleyn’s good service at the French court, but aware of his limitations, for he was businesslike rather than courtly, and persnickety and plodding in his manner. In February 1520 the King replaced him with the more experienced Sir Richard Wingfield, who was better qualified to lay the diplomatic foundations for the proposed summit between the two monarchs that would later become famous as the Field of Cloth of Gold.⁵⁹

In June 1520, Boleyn was present at the Field of Cloth of Gold, which he had helped to arrange. He was now a wealthy man and an active and committed Privy Councillor; that year he was appointed Comptroller of the King’s Household,⁶⁰ and on April 24, 1522, its Treasurer, a post he held until 1525.⁶¹ On April 29 he was made Steward of Tonbridge (then called Tunbridge) and Keeper of Penshurst, both near his home in Kent.⁶² This was around the time when Mary Boleyn probably became Henry VIII’s mistress, so these important appointments may not have been pure coincidence, yet Sir Thomas could equally have been granted such offices as rewards for his long service, and in particular for sitting on the special commission before which the indictment against the Duke of Buckingham had been brought the previous year, an indictment that had led to the duke’s execution for treason and the enrichment of the King through the confiscation of his forfeited lands.⁶³

Clearly Boleyn was admired for his diplomatic and linguistic skills: in 1521, Cardinal Wolsey sent him and the Prior of St. John’s, Clerkenwell, on a “mission of mediation” to the Emperor Charles V,⁶⁴ and Boleyn was present at Windsor in June 1522 at the signing of a new treaty between Henry and Charles. With Dr. Richard Sampson, he was joint ambassador to Charles V in Spain from October 1522 to May 1523.⁶⁵

In 1523, 1524, and 1525, Sir Thomas was granted further lucrative stewardships and keeperships in Kent, Essex, Norfolk, and Nottinghamshire, and on April 23, 1523, he was made a Knight of the Garter.⁶⁶ Given his career, his connections, and his closeness to the King, this was not, as has been claimed, “an unusual honor for a mere knight.”⁶⁷ He was also appointed Vice Chamberlain of the Household, then promoted to Chamberlain. In July 1524 the King granted the manor of Grimston in Norfolk to Boleyn’s heir, George, who had just married Jane Parker,⁶⁸ daughter of the erudite Lord Morley.

It should be remembered that Henry VIII bestowed no comparable honors on Sir John Blount of Kinlet, the father of Elizabeth Blount, the mistress who had borne the King a son, and whose affair with Henry almost certainly lasted longer than Mary Boleyn’s. Although Sir John Blount came from a distinguished and renowned knightly family, he has aptly been described as “unremarkable,” and certainly he never enjoyed—and probably never merited—the kind of career and intimacy with the King that was Thomas Boleyn’s. After serving in Henry VIII’s forces in the French campaign of 1513, he was for a time an Esquire of the Body to the King, but did nothing else of note, apart from serving as Sheriff of Staffordshire in 1526–27, and engaging in a feud with Sir William Compton over property rights;⁶⁹ maybe he had long resented Compton’s familiarity with his daughter. He was not knighted until 1529.⁷⁰ The only grants he received that could be seen as rewards for his daughter’s services to his sovereign were those of the keepership of Cleobury Park and the joint stewardship with his father of Bewdley and Cleobury Mortimer; these modest favors were conferred in February 1519,⁷¹ when Elizabeth Blount was pregnant with Henry Fitzroy. This record strongly suggests that Henry VIII was not in the habit of handing out favors simply because a man’s daughter had bedded with him, even if she had done him the supreme favor of bearing a son.

Sir Thomas Boleyn was particularly fortunate in that, having broken off an affair with his elder daughter, the King began ardently pursuing the younger. We do not know for certain exactly when Henry VIII first conceived an interest in Anne Boleyn, but it was probably in 1525. Cavendish, who erroneously suggests that the King’s eye lighted upon her in 1523, avers that Boleyn was “promoted to higher dignities because of the King’s love for his daughter.” Yet he was obviously referring to the honors that came Sir Thomas’s way after 1525, which were in fact more likely to have been inducements, because Anne was famously to hold out for marriage, with her family’s staunch support.

It would be unwise therefore to attempt to chart Mary’s affair with the King through instances of royal favor shown to her family. As has been demonstrated, Sir Thomas Boleyn had already received many preferments prior to 1522, and the rewards he received thereafter were commensurate with his years of service and his friendship with Henry VIII. However, it is quite conceivable that a father who, in time, was to show himself willing to be complicit in the ruin of his children, in order to preserve his own life and position, should be happy to reap the benefits of a daughter’s adultery with the King. Indeed, Sir Thomas Boleyn would have had good reason actively to encourage both his daughters in their dealings with Henry VIII so that he could profit from them and advance himself and his family’s fortunes. Even if he was privately unhappy about Mary becoming the King’s mistress, he may nevertheless have greedily anticipated the benefits that might well come his way as a result of it,⁷² the gifts of a grateful king. There was every incentive for him to turn a blind eye to the affair—and perhaps to encourage his son-in-law, William Carey, to do likewise. As David Starkey points out, “these transactions might seem to turn Mary into the merest prostitute, with her husband and father as her pimps.”⁷³

That is certainly how some of Boleyn’s contemporaries saw it. In 1533, Mrs. Elizabeth Amadas, whom the King had once tried to seduce, would claim, among many wild assertions, that “my Lord of Wiltshire [as Sir Thomas Boleyn later became] was bawd both to his wife and his two daughters.”⁷⁴ We should not place too much reliance on her words, for she was a hostile and possibly unbalanced witness, yet her assertion may well reflect contemporary gossip. It has even been claimed, more recently, that Boleyn “approved the King’s intimacy” with Mary,⁷⁵ or that he probably encouraged it.⁷⁶ But we cannot be certain that was how it was.

Without doubt Boleyn was an ambitious man. He had wanted his girls to make good marriages in the Boleyn family tradition; indeed, he was very well placed to do that. It may seem strange that he did not make much effort to find rich or titled husbands for them while they were young, for they had reached marriageable age—which was twelve for girls in those days—long before the King took an interest in them. Prior to 1520, the year Mary was married, and Sir Thomas proposed a marriage between nineteen-year-old Anne and James Butler, there is no hint of any early negotiations or discussion of betrothals, as was customary among the landed classes. As we have seen, Boleyn’s own family had a tradition of climbing the social ladder through ever grander marriages, so it seems strange that he did not make more effort to marry his girls off all the sooner, to his advantage. Mary was more than twenty when Sir Thomas found her a husband, and between 1522, when the Butler match fell through,⁷⁷ and 1525, when the King probably began pursuing Anne, Boleyn seems to have made no further effort to make a good match for his younger daughter. Is this what one would expect of a man hell-bent on furthering his family’s fortunes by any means?

It seems unlikely that Boleyn, that ambitious father, would have approved of Mary sleeping with the notoriously licentious Francois I, and risk spoiling herself for the aristocratic marriage market in the process. He certainly did not profit from Mary’s amorous adventure in France and, as we have seen, he may have taken steps to limit the damage and have her taught better conduct. His explosive reaction in later years to her secret, unsuitable second marriage shows him to have been somewhat contemptuous of her morals and judgment, and angered at the scandal she had brought upon his family, while the vehemence of that reaction—they were probably never reconciled—may have had its roots in these earlier episodes in which she had grievously disappointed him. In each case there was probably a marked degree of self-interest involved on his part.

Boleyn may have feared further scandal when Mary succumbed to Henry VIII’s advances, yet, whatever his private feelings, he was probably content to make the best of things, and, of course, he really had no choice in the matter. Anyway, with Mary being a married woman when the King took her, she was no longer her father’s responsibility, but her husband’s. Boleyn’s grasping soul may have warred with his pride in his family’s honor and rising status, but there is no real evidence that he was “conniving”⁷⁸ or actively sought to profit from his daughter’s immoral conduct.

It might be argued that Sir Thomas Boleyn did not even know what was going on between his daughter and the King, given the secrecy that surrounded the affair. Yet his subsequent contemptuous and dismissive behavior toward Mary strongly suggests that he did, and that he did not ultimately approve—not so much on moral grounds, but because this was the second time she had compromised her reputation with a king and come out of it with nothing.

Certainly George Boleyn’s rise to prominence owed little to Mary’s liaison with the King. He was made Henry’s cup-bearer in 1526,⁷⁹ at a time when Henry’s passion for his sister Anne was increasing; but it was another two years before George was appointed a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, at a salary of fifty marks (£4,500).⁸⁰ Thereafter, like his father, he would accrue various offices and stewardships, as Henry VIII became more and more determined to marry Anne Boleyn. There can be no doubt that the later advancement of the Boleyns had much to do with this, for it was politic to load with honors the family of the future Queen of England, and thus elevate her status. In 1529, following in his father’s footsteps, George embarked on a career as a diplomat. By then he had become enormously influential at court.

As with Thomas Boleyn and his preferments at court, a series of royal grants made to William Carey between 1522 and 1526⁸¹ are often claimed to have been rewards for his complacency in regard to his wife’s dalliance with the King.⁸² Such generosity on the part of the King was hardly “casual royal bounty,” as it has been described,⁸³ but, it is said, probably reflected Henry’s regard for a man who served him daily.

As we have seen, it may well be significant that these grants began in February 1522,⁸⁴ around the time Henry appears to have begun pursuing Mary. The first grant, on February 5, was of the keepership of the King’s house called Beaulieu in Essex, where William was given responsibility for the King’s wardrobe, and the right to lodge at Beaulieu whenever the need arose; William was also granted sixty cartloads of firewood annually for Beaulieu, and the right to let the premises to farm and to hire laborers to work in the King’s garden and orchard.⁸⁵ Clearly the post was no sinecure, but required hands-on involvement. With it came the office of bailiff of the manors of New

Hall, Walkeford Hall,⁸⁶ and Powers (Hall End), Essex.⁸⁷

On May 12, 1522, William Carey and William West, a page of the King’s Chamber, were granted the joint wardship of the person and lands of Thomas Sharpe, an “idiot” of Canterbury, the Crown having a special obligation to care for those who could not care for themselves, notably “infants, idiots, and lunatics.”⁸⁸

In April 1523, “William Carey of the Privy Chamber” was granted an annuity of fifty marks (£4,500), the grant being signed by Cardinal Wolsey.⁸⁹ Later he would be assigned a much more substantial annuity of £100 (£38,000), and the office of Steward of the Duchy of Lancaster;⁹⁰ in this capacity, his role was to preside over local courts and supervise the Duchy’s regional officers. On April 26, 1523, William was appointed Receiver and bailiff of the ancient manor of Writtle, Essex, and Keeper of Writtle Park, with certain fees, herbage, and pannage,⁹¹ and granted, in tail male, jurisdiction over the large hundred of Kinwardstone that lay mainly in east Wiltshire;⁹² this hundred had formerly been held by the executed Duke of Buckingham, and encompassed William’s birthplace, Chilton Foliat, suggesting that he had retained links with the area.

Since Saxon times shires had been divided into administrative divisions called hundreds (so called either because they originally extended over a hundred hides of land—about 12,000 acres—or were intended to support a hundred households), and this one comprised forty-five villages, twelve parishes, and the market towns of Hungerford, Marlborough, and Andover in neighboring Hampshire. Carey’s responsibility as lord of Kinwardstone was to act for the monarch in ensuring that justice was administered in the hundred courts that sat at regular intervals, and to maintain the King’s peace. In actuality, these duties were carried out by a constable and a reeve, and overseen by the sheriff of the county.

Writtle, also previously owned by Buckingham, and famous as the probable birthplace of Robert the Bruce, King of Scots, boasted only a decaying royal hunting lodge dating from 1211, called King John’s Palace after its builder. It is unlikely that William and Mary went there often, if at all.

Carey was also made constable of the royal castle of Pleshey in Essex,⁹³ where he also had the right to reside with Mary, although he probably rarely did so, as the castle had declined since its medieval heyday and was ruinous by 1557. The post seems therefore to have been something of a sinecure.

On June 15, 1524, William Carey, “Esquire of the Body,” was granted the keepership of “the manor of Wanstead, Essex, with 2d. [£3] a day out of the issues of the manor.”⁹⁴ The royal manor of Wanstead had been purchased by Henry VII in 1499, and Henry VIII, who sometimes stayed there for the good hunting to be had in Epping Forest, placed it in the custody of a succession of keepers, all chosen from among his close associates. Medieval Wanstead Hall, which stood three hundred yards south of St. Mary’s Church, served as a royal hunting lodge, and Carey, as keeper, had the right to lodgings there, which means that Mary may have stayed at Wanstead from time to time. That month, William and Mary were also granted three former manors of the Duke of Buckingham near Chipping Ongar, Essex.⁹⁵

In August and October 1524—proof of Henry’s opinion of his integrity, and of his increasing importance at court, and that the trust the King reposed in him did not stem from the attractions of Mary Boleyn—William was entrusted with a huge sum totaling £49,000 (£18.5 million), given him by the King “to be employed upon the wars” with France.⁹⁶ In December that year, he was probably the “Master Karre” who was among the privileged few who were given Gascon wine by the King, while others were required to purchase theirs from the shipment.⁹⁷

On February 20, 1526,⁹⁸ sometime after the King’s affair with Mary had probably ended, William received more substantial grants of estates and manors in Hampshire and Wiltshire: “To William Carey, Esquire for the Body. Grant of the manors of Parva Brykhill [Great Brickhill], Burton, and Easington, Buckinghamshire, and the borough of Buckingham, part of Buckingham’s lands, formerly held by John, Lord Marney, deceased.”⁹⁹ With this came a license to hold fairs and markets, with other liberties, in Great Brickhill and Buckingham.

Plainly William Carey, like his father-in-law, enjoyed Henry’s regard for his own sake, being one “whom the King highly favored.”¹⁰⁰ However, he was never knighted, and Mary was never “Lady Carey,” as several writers¹⁰¹ style her.

William’s growing closeness to the King, and his importance at court, is underlined by a gift made to him in August 1523, when it was reported that “the Sieur de Revel has been here, bringing the King twelve Neapolitan chargers, and two for Master Carey, very fine and honorable presents”¹⁰²—and very expensive ones. The fact that Carey was singled out for the gift of such fine horses, horses that had been bred for a king, is evidence that he was well thought of not only in England but also in France, where he had given a good account of himself at the Field of Cloth of Gold.

Just before Christmas 1524, William was one of fourteen lords and gentlemen of the King’s household who “enterprised a challenge of feats of arms,” which the King and Queen “graciously consented” to attend. “For this enterprise was set up in the tiltyard at Greenwich a castle,” and on the appointed day, when Katherine and her ladies had taken their places in the stands, two “ancient knights” rode up before her, begging her for license to take part in the contest, despite their age. When she consented, they threw off their robes to reveal the King himself and the Duke of Suffolk. After the jousts, there was supper, a masque and dancing,¹⁰³ in which Mary Boleyn may have joined. William’s involvement in these jollifications shows that he enjoyed a warm camaraderie with the King, and that he was at the center of fashionable society at court.

In January 1526, when Cardinal Wolsey drew up the Eltham Ordinances, which were aimed at reducing waste and inefficiency in the royal household, and restricted the number of gentlemen of the Privy Chamber to six, William, who had been promoted to that rank by then, was one of those retained; his older brother John was one of four grooms of the Privy Chamber.¹⁰⁴ The same year, William Carey was appointed Keeper of Greenwich Palace¹⁰⁵—almost certainly a reward for his own good service—with the right to official lodgings there.

After his promotion, he had been allocated a courtier lodging on the King’s side of the court, rather than on an outer courtyard alongside less privileged courtiers; lodgings near the King were the most sought after, and were only allocated to those high in royal favor. It might be argued that such a lodging would be conveniently situated for the King to visit his mistress, but by 1526, Henry’s affair with Mary had probably been over for more than a year. Even had this not been the case, and assuming that William Carey was indeed a complacent husband, such an arrangement would surely have given rise to some scandal or comment. In 1536, when the King’s Principal Secretary, Thomas Cromwell, vacated his lodging at court for Jane Seymour and her family, so that the King could visit her via a secret passageway, people soon got to hear about it, among them foreign ambassadors.

Years after Mary’s affair with the King had ended, Anne Boleyn, ambitious to be Queen, was to consider it well worth courting the influential William’s support (see Chapter 9), which suggests that he had earned the favor he enjoyed, and that it owed little to her or her sister.

Possibly the grants made to William Carey were not on the scale of those given to Gilbert Tailboys and Elizabeth Blount,¹⁰⁶ but they were substantial enough, and we must remember that Elizabeth had borne the King a son. William’s income was sufficient for him to be assessed for half the amount of tax paid by his wealthy father-in-law, Sir Thomas Boleyn.¹⁰⁷ Yet while it is possible that Henry VIII did grant some gifts to William as incentives to Mary or indirect gifts to her, or even as compensation for his “indulgent complicity”¹⁰⁸ in his wife’s infidelity, it is far more likely that most, if not all, of them were the rewards that an upcoming man in Carey’s position might expect to receive.

It is just possible, considering how discreetly the King conducted his extramarital affairs, that William Carey was not even aware of what was going on, despite claims that the arrangement was apparently satisfactory for all involved¹⁰⁹ and that the “long-suffering” Carey¹¹⁰ was “pliant.” The unsupported assertion that he did know, “and realized that there was nothing to be gained and everything to be lost (including his head) by challenging the King,”¹¹¹ is a farfetched assumption, as is proved by Thomas Wyatt suffering no ill consequences when, around 1525, he locked with Henry in open rivalry for Anne Boleyn’s favors.¹¹² Yet it is hard to believe that, serving the King as intimately as he did as an Esquire of the Body, one of those who had “their business in many secrets,” Carey did not know what was going on. He may even have been ambitious and cynical enough to hope to profit from his wife’s adultery with his sovereign.

All arguments considered, we cannot interpret the grants made to William Carey as hard evidence for the affair between his wife and the King. If they were rewards or inducements, they were “not such as would raise undue comment”¹¹³—which they certainly did not. And it seems that, rather than being manipulated by her family, Mary Boleyn was manipulated by the King.