The Boleyn Women: The Tudor Femmes Fatales Who Changed English History (13 page)

While Elizabeth Howard Boleyn was rumoured to have been a mistress of Henry VIII, it is certain that her eldest daughter, Mary Boleyn, shared the king’s bed. Mary has been subject to an upsurge in interest in recent years, with two biographies recently released.

Mary Boleyn began her career in France. Henry VIII’s sister, Mary Tudor, was betrothed in childhood to Charles of Castile, the future Holy Roman Emperor and Catherine of Aragon’s nephew. Although the groom’s aunt and guardian, Margaret of Austria, Regent of the Netherlands, was enthusiastic about the match, Charles’s two grandfathers, the Emperor Maximilian and Ferdinand of Aragon, were less enthusiastic, employing delaying tactics when Henry pressed for the marriage. In 1514 the English king finally lost patience, breaking the betrothal and, instead, engaging his beautiful young sister to the ‘feeble old and pocky’ Louis XII of France.
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The bride was, unsurprisingly, unenthusiastic, but she gave her consent. She travelled to France in October 1514 with a large train of attendants, including Mary Boleyn.
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She would have attended the royal marriage in the cathedral at Abbeville on 9 October and also the new queen’s Coronation later in the month. For Mary, this was a prestigious appointment, and she was soon joined by her sister, who journeyed to France direct from Brussels.

Soon after the wedding, Louis caused consternation in his wife’s household by sending most of her English attendants home, including the new queen’s governess, Lady Guildford. Both Boleyn sisters found favour with the French king, perhaps due to Anne’s language skills, and they were allowed to stay. Louis was besotted with his beautiful young bride and, apart from the disagreement over her attendants, the marriage was harmonious. It was also particularly short, with Louis, exhausted by his efforts to keep up with his wife, dying on 1 January 1515, leaving his son-in-law and kinsman, Francis of Angoulême, as King of France.

As the king’s widow, Mary Tudor was expected to spend time in seclusion, moving with her household to the palace of Cluny. Both Boleyn sisters were with her and were witnesses to the dramatic events that unfolded during the French queen’s period of mourning. France had the Salic law, which barred the inheritance of women or of men descended from the royal line through women, something which meant that Louis’s two daughters were unable to succeed to the crown, with Louis’s heir male, Francis, marrying Louis’s eldest daughter as a courtesy. It was therefore of paramount importance to Francis that Mary did not bear a son and he took an active interest in the widowed queen’s establishment at Cluny. Francis had some romantic interest in Mary himself, with rumours of an attraction between the two before Louis’s death. Francis was warned not to take any action for fear that he should father a child with her which would be attributed to Louis, leading to him remaining ‘plain Comte d’Angoulême, and never King of France’.
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Once it was clear that Mary was not pregnant, the licentious new king did indeed make advances towards his wife’s stepmother, something which must have increased the attitude of unease that pervaded at Cluny. Francis was also anxious that Henry would bestow Mary in marriage with Charles of Castile, something that would be dangerous to France, and he therefore encouraged her in her affection for Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, who had come to bring her home to England. With Francis’s encouragement and her own fears that her brother would arrange a second match for her, Mary did the unthinkable and secretly married Suffolk. When Henry found out, he was furious, but he soon accepted the
fait accompli
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with the couple returning to England in May 1515. Her two Boleyn attendants, Mary and Anne, had been witnesses to all that had happened at Cluny. Anne definitely did not return home to England with Mary Tudor, instead transferring to the household of the new French queen, Claude. Mary’s whereabouts are less certain. She may have also moved to Claude’s household, although there is no record of her there. Alternatively she may have returned to England with Mary Tudor or soon afterwards.
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In any event, Mary Boleyn’s relations with King Francis must have been of only a brief duration, occurring during the early months of 1515.

The new Queen of France was fifteen and a rather unprepossessing figure. During her marriage she suffered near-annual pregnancies which ruined her health and also ensured that she was unable to have any real presence at court, instead being overshadowed by her husband’s more dynamic mother, Louise of Savoy, and his sister, Marguerite of Angoulême. Claude was pious to the point of saintliness. Francis always showed his wife respect in public, but he was notoriously licentious. Chasing women was one of his chief pastimes and, according to a near contemporary, Seigneur de Brantôme, the best way to please him was

by offering to his view on his first arrival a beautiful woman, a fine horse and a handsome hound. For by casting his gaze now on the one, now on the other and presently to the third, he would never be a-weary in that house, having there the three things most pleasant to look upon and admire, and so exercising his eyes right agreeably.
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Following Francis’s accession, there were reports of the ladies of his court that ‘both maids and wives, do oft-times trip, indeed do so customarily’. This was an exaggeration, but there is no doubt that Francis I’s court was an easy place for a woman to lose her virtue if she so chose.

The hostile Elizabethan writer, Nicholas Sander, claimed that, at the French court, Anne Boleyn became known as ‘the English mare, because of her shameless behaviour; and then the royal mule, when she became acquainted with the King of France’. Sander believed that Anne had disgraced herself in France by indulging first in sexual relations with members of Francis’s court and later with Francis himself. It must however be remembered that it was also Sander who claimed that Anne had first been sent to the Continent after disgracing herself in a relationship with her father’s butler and Sander’s tales can certainly be dismissed as fanciful.

While there is no evidence that any hint of scandal ever attached itself to Anne Boleyn, who appears to have acquitted herself well and honourably during her years in France, becoming French in all but birth, there is some evidence that Mary Boleyn’s reputation was not entirely spotless. It is not at all impossible that Sander confused the two sisters in his account and that there was therefore a grain of truth in his claims of an ‘English mare’ and a ‘royal mule’. Francis I, in spite of his love of women, was not known for his gallantry, later describing Mary Tudor as ‘more dirty than queenly’. Some years after both Boleyn sisters had left his court, he recalled Mary Boleyn ‘as a very great whore and infamous above all’.
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It is possible that Francis referred to Mary’s later affair with Henry VIII in this remark, although, given that he himself had a number of mistresses, it is unlikely that an affair with one monarch would be enough for Francis to brand Mary quite so viciously. It therefore does seem more likely that he was aware of Mary being considerably more promiscuous than her two marriages and affair with Henry VIII would suggest. When Anne Boleyn visited the French court in late 1532 she and Francis sat together and spoke privately for some time, indicating that they were indeed acquainted and that the French king remembered his first wife’s former maid. Given his comments on Mary Boleyn, he is also likely to have recalled her. Although the evidence is highly limited, it does seem likely that she had something of a reputation for promiscuity while in France and that the king himself was aware of this, suggesting an affair with him or, at least, members of his court close to him. If Sander’s comments are considered to have any basis in fact then it is possible that Mary slept with Francis himself, although she cannot have been more than a casual lover for the King of France. The evidence, such as it is, suggests that Mary embarked on her career as a royal mistress while in France and that she did not keep herself chaste.

Whispers of misconduct may account for the fact that she does not appear again in the sources until 1520. Her sister, Anne Boleyn, would later be rusticated from court for carrying out an illicit relationship with Henry Percy, spending some years at home at Hever. This would have allowed any rumours to die down. Alternatively, since there is no evidence of her actually returning to England in 1515 Mary may have remained in France as her recent biographer has suggested, staying at Brie-sous-Forges with an acquaintance of her father’s, well away from the court.
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That Mary’s conduct was not widely known is clear from her appointment in the household of Catherine of Aragon by 1520. However, her sexual experience may have served to pique Henry’s interest in his wife’s new attendant when whispers of Mary’s reputation did begin to reach England. The sixteenth-century Nicholas Sander believed that Henry had seen Mary on visits to her mother and ordered her to be brought to court so that he could ruin her.
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More likely, however, Elizabeth Howard Boleyn was able to use her own court connections to secure a place for her eldest daughter. It was at court that Henry VIII first became interested in Mary Boleyn.

Unlike her sister, Anne Boleyn remained in the household of Queen Claude, flourishing in the cultured atmosphere of the French court. There is very little record for her time with Claude. She probably took part in the queen’s Coronation in May 1516 at St Denis, as well as her state entry to Paris. She also became acquainted with Francis’s sister, the accomplished Marguerite of Angoulême, who was later known for her support for the religious reform movement. Anne may, perhaps, have first become exposed to these ideas with Marguerite. One critical writer claimed that it was while she was in France that she first ‘embraced the heresy of Luther’. Given that Anne’s own father and brother also supported reform, however, this must be questionable: religious reform was highly fashionable in the early sixteenth century and Anne could very easily have come upon the ideas in her own home before she embarked on her court career.

Anne had a number of opportunities to meet with her father during her time in France. In early 1519, for example, Thomas was part of a mission to France headed by the Bishop of Ely and the Earl of Worcester which coincided with the birth of Claude’s son, Henry, Duke of Orleans. Thomas Boleyn attended the christening, an event that Anne is also likely to have attended. Both of Anne’s parents, her sister and many other family members attended the grand meeting between Henry and Francis in June 1520, known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold.
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Once again, Anne’s own attendance is not recorded, but, given her language skills, she is very likely to have attended Claude, who played a prominent role in the celebrations. Over 6,000 people attended Francis and his queen at their base at Ardes, while a similar number attended Henry at the English camp at Guisnes. For Anne and the other Boleyn women present, the Field of the Cloth of Gold must have been a grand spectacle, with the two kings seeking to outdo each other in magnificence and display.

If Anne had not previously seen Henry VIII while in the household of Margaret of Austria, this would have been the first time that she laid eyes on her future husband who, while still in his late twenties, remained a glittering and splendid figure, acquitting himself well in dancing and sporting prowess at the meeting. On more than one occasion Henry dined with Claude while his French counterpart visited the English queen. Anne Boleyn would have been one of the French ladies who danced before the English gentlemen, while Mary Boleyn would have done the same to entertain Francis and his men. It may have been an uncomfortable meeting for Mary and the French king. John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, later praised the queens for being ‘accompanied with so many of other fair ladies in sumptuous and gorgeous apparel’ at the meeting: Anne and Mary Boleyn, their mother, Elizabeth, and aunt, Anne Tempest Boleyn, took their places among these women to take part in the dancing and feasting which accompanied one of the most costly, and grandest, events of Henry VIII’s reign, which Bishop Fisher declared to be ‘wonderful sights as for this world’.

Mary Boleyn was already married when she attended the English queen in France, taking William Carey as her husband on 4 February 1520. Carey, who was a similar age to his bride, was a younger son of Thomas Carey of Chilton Foliat in Wiltshire. The family were prominent in the local gentry, with Thomas Carey sitting as a Member of Parliament in Henry VII’s reign. Through his mother, William Carey was related to the Earl of Northumberland. By 1519 he had joined the court, serving in the king’s household. With his association with the king, Carey represented a solid, but not brilliant, match for the daughter of the ambitious Thomas Boleyn. It may be that Carey was the best match that Mary could obtain following her behaviour in France. Alternatively, the couple, who were both resident at court, may have made a love match, although Carey’s later acquiescence with regard to her affair with Henry VIII does not suggest a man deeply in love with his wife. More likely Carey’s court connections and kinship with the Earl of Northumberland were sufficient for her family. Mary’s father had, after all, risen through his court service and he may have hoped that his son-in-law would do the same. Neither Mary nor Anne Boleyn were heiresses, and, as Anne’s later relationship with Henry Percy showed, neither was of great worth on the aristocratic marriage market. There is no evidence that Mary’s marriage was arranged to cover a relationship with the king. In February 1520 Henry’s mistress, Bessie Blount, who had borne his son, Henry Fitzroy, in June 1519, was in Essex, awaiting the birth of a second child who can probably be attributed to the king.
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As with all his affairs, Henry was discreet when he began his relationship with Mary, something which makes the dating of his affair very difficult. William Carey began to receive significant royal grants early in 1522, suggesting that the affair may have begun around that time.
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Given that Henry VIII’s mistress, Bessie Blount, was married off at around the same time, it would seem plausible to date his interest in Mary to the waning of his interest in the mother of his only acknowledged illegitimate son.