The Boleyn Women: The Tudor Femmes Fatales Who Changed English History (14 page)

Henry VIII later admitted that he had enjoyed a love affair with Mary Boleyn and there is no reason to doubt that the pair were lovers. It seems unlikely, as recently asserted, that Henry raped Mary, forcing her to begin an affair with him.
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This was a very serious charge, even for a king: Henry’s grandfather, Edward IV, allegedly held a dagger to the throat of a young widow, Elizabeth Woodville, intending to force himself upon her. When she resisted, he stopped short of the act, instead marrying his intended victim. Henry VIII did not force himself upon Anne Boleyn when she resisted him, something that suggests that he was no rapist. His ancestor, King John, earned notoriety in the early thirteenth century, partly for allegedly forcing himself upon noblewomen, something which helped to earn the enmity of his barons. Although a king, Henry VIII was not free to act outside the constraints of society and the rape of a gentlewoman who was closely related to a number of prominent figures is simply implausible. Mary Boleyn would have been a willing occupant of the king’s bed, particularly as, in 1522, the king was still a very handsome specimen, renowned as one of the most handsome princes in Europe.

Details of the pair’s relationship are scant, although Mary featured prominently in a court masque in March 1522. Her husband’s acceptance of the relationship was bought with a number of royal grants, including the keepership of New Hall in Essex, a fine palace that Henry had used as his base when visiting Bessie Blount at her residence at Blackmoor Priory: the significance of the palace’s connection with a former mistress was probably not lost on Mary or her husband.
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In July 1522, Carey and another courtier were jointly granted the valuable wardship of one Thomas Sharpe of Canterbury, allowing them to make use of his lands and income.
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This was followed by other grants, including a pension of 50 marks per year. It may have been due to Mary that her father was made treasurer of the household in April 1522 and a Knight of the Garter in April 1523. This honour was followed in June 1525 when Thomas Boleyn was created Viscount Rochford on the same day that Henry created his illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond. Thomas’s promotion, although it could be seen as the reward for his years of royal service, is more likely linked to the king’s relationship with Mary, particularly since he would later acquire two earldoms due to Henry’s love for his younger daughter.

When discussing Mary Boleyn and her relationship with Henry VIII, the question must of course be asked as to whether either of her two children, Catherine and Henry Carey, can be considered to have been fathered by the king. Henry VIII acknowledged only one illegitimate child during his lifetime, his son, Henry Fitzroy, by Elizabeth Blount. However, there is good reason for believing that Fitzroy’s sister, Elizabeth Tailboys, may also have been born to the king and other children have also been attributed to him.
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Henry Carey’s birth date of 4 March 1526 is known due to the evidence of William Carey’s inquisition post mortem.
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Catherine’s birth date is less clear although she was appointed as a maid of honour to Anne of Cleves at the end of 1539, an appointment for which she must have been at least twelve years old. Catherine married in 1540 and her first child was born in 1541, something that would suggest a birth date of around 1524.
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This is supported by the portrait of a heavily pregnant woman which is usually identified as Catherine and is inscribed with the date 1562, as well as recording that the sitter was thirty-eight.
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The lady strongly resembles an effigy known to be Catherine and there is no reason to doubt the identification, indicating that 1524 is likely to be correct.

It has recently been pointed out in one academic study that the paternity of Mary Boleyn’s children remains ambiguous.
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Henry VIII did not have problems in impregnating his sexual partners, simply that the pregnancies rarely produced healthy male offspring, and it is therefore not impossible that he produced more surviving children than previously acknowledged. There were certainly contemporary rumours as to their paternity, with the Vicar of Isleworth stating during his examination by the royal council on 20 April 1535 that ‘Mr Skidmore did show to me young Master Carey, saying that he was our sovereign lord the king’s son by our sovereign lady the queen’s sister, whom the queen’s grace might not suffer to be in the court’. A sexual relationship with Mary Boleyn potentially invalidated Henry’s marriage to her sister, something that would make both Henry and Anne reluctant for Mary’s children to be seen as of royal blood.

There is some evidence of royal favour shown to the Carey children which has been pointed out by historians. Following their marriage, Catherine Carey and her husband, Francis Knollys, were the beneficiaries of an Act of Parliament which gave them joint ownership of the Knollys manor of Rotherfield Greys; this was a method of providing for a favoured female courtier without actually incurring any expense himself that Henry had earlier utilised in relation to Elizabeth Blount following her marriage. It has also been suggested that Henry Carey may have been raised with his cousin (or half-sister) Princess Elizabeth, given their later closeness and the fact that he was later created Baron Hunsdon by Elizabeth, a reference to one of her known childhood residences.

Another suggestion that the Carey children might have been commonly believed to have been fathered by Henry VIII is found in Sir Robert Naunton’s
Fragmenta Regalia
. Naunton was born in 1563 and had connections to the court of Elizabeth I, eventually serving as secretary of state to James I. In an anecdote concerning Elizabeth’s favourite, Robert Dudley, Naunton recorded that:

And for my Lord Hunsdon [Carey], and Sir Thomas Sackville, after Lord Treasurer, who were all contemporaries, he was wont to say of them that they were of the tribe of Dan, and were
noli me tangere
, implying that they were not to be contested with, for they were indeed of the queen’s nigh kindred.
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On the face of it, this remark refers only to the fact that both Hunsdon and Sackville, who was related to the Boleyns but not descended from Mary Boleyn, were considered to have a special position at court due to their relationship to the queen’s maternal family. However, the reference to the tribe of Dan is an interesting one. In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses called Dan a ‘lion’s whelp’ and this has been taken to mean that a reference to the Careys as the tribe of Dan might also suggest their descent from a lion – the king himself.
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Another point that should be raised in relation to this is the line
noli me tangere
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or ‘touch me not’. While again, this can be given its literal meaning to demonstrate the special status of the queen’s maternal kin, it is also potentially another covert reference to the Careys’ paternity. In a well-known poem by Sir Thomas Wyatt, which clearly refers to Henry VIII’s pursuit of Anne Boleyn, the poet included the line ‘
Noli me tangere
, for Caesar’s I am’ in reference to the king’s possession of Anne Boleyn. Given the continuing popularity of Wyatt’s poems in the later sixteenth century, this reference would have been widely known: it is just possible that the words ‘
Noli me tangere
’, as uttered by Dudley, were also meant to imply that the Careys belonged to ‘Caesar’ or Henry VIII.

There is a difficulty in interpreting the tribe of Dan remark to refer to the paternity of the Carey children. In the Book of Genesis, Jacob referred to Dan as a serpent that bites a horse’s heels to make the rider fall backwards, while he instead calls his fourth son, Judah, a ‘lion’s whelp’.
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It is therefore clear that Dan was not the only lion’s whelp among the sons of Jacob and a reference to the tribe of Dan in order to infer royal paternity in the sixteenth century need not have been immediately apparent. In addition to this, Dudley, who was politically opposed to the Careys, might have meant to refer to their treachery in his remark, referring to them as biting a horse’s heels to make a rider fall backwards.

Another counter-argument to the tribe of Dan remark is that it may have been meant to have another connotation. The tribe is listed in the Book of Numbers as the largest of the twelve tribes of Israel, and it has been estimated that there were approximately 103 members of the Carey family alive during the reign of Elizabeth I due to the great fertility of Henry and Catherine Carey.
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Given that Elizabeth always showed these cousins great favour, it is likely that their high numbers were resented at court and this could certainly have been the rationale behind Dudley’s remark. Also, of course, Dudley was not born when Henry VIII and Mary Boleyn were conducting their affair and, while he might have heard rumours and even had some more specific knowledge from the queen herself, he was hardly in a position to know for certain whether the Carey children were the king’s. Henry VIII, after all, never acknowledged them. It is therefore possible that, even if he did indeed mean to imply their potential royal paternity in his remarks, he may only have been repeating rumour and not speaking from actual fact. That said, however, Elizabeth I would presumably have been aware if the Careys were her half-siblings and it is not at all impossible that she could have imparted this information to her favourite.

William Carey received a royal grant on 20 February 1526, twelve days before Henry Carey’s birth.
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One historian who considered that both Carey children were the king’s considered that ‘significantly, this royal grant included the borough of Buckingham which was granted to William Carey “in tail male”. It is impossible not to be struck by the coincidence of this entailment to a male “heir”, just twelve days before the date of record on which William Carey’s wife gave birth to a male child said to be the king’s son.’
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However, it would seem implausible that this grant was intended to provide for the king’s own son, given that this ‘son’ had not yet been born, with Mary’s second pregnancy as likely to result in a daughter as her first. It would seem more arguable that the child that Mary was carrying was her husband’s, unlike her earlier daughter who can be attributed to the king. William Carey’s quiet acceptance of his wife’s relationship with the king had to be bought, as can be seen by the royal grants to him. It seems likely that it was also agreed that the king would make some provision for Carey’s own heir, perhaps as a reward for Carey raising the king’s daughter as his own. The entail on male heirs for this grant was in order to ensure that Catherine Carey, whom the king knew to be his daughter and intended to provide for in due course, would not inherit. Instead, the property would pass to the sons that Mary Boleyn would bear her husband.

A similar pattern occurred with Bessie Blount. While the king acknowledged her first child, Henry Fitzroy. Her second child, a daughter born nearly two years before her marriage, was raised as a child of her husband, Gilbert Tailboys, something which caused considerable family friction when that daughter unexpectedly inherited the Tailboys’ patrimony.
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Where a husband acquiesced to his wife’s relationship with the king in return for offices and lands, there was little reason for him to not also raise an illegitimate daughter of the king’s as his own, particularly if the king agreed to provide for this daughter at her marriage as he appears to have done for Catherine Carey. Such a husband is, however, highly unlikely to have agreed to raise a son in a similar manner, since that son would inherit his property at his death. This must be the strongest evidence that Henry Carey was not the king’s son, although his sister may well have been a royal daughter. It has been suggested that Mary and Carey had a non-sexual marriage, with their relationship merely being a sham to cover her love affair with Henry VIII.
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There is no evidence to support this. Mary may have abandoned sleeping with her husband during her relationship with the king but, equally, she may not, something which would further throw the paternity of at least her eldest child, Catherine Carey, into doubt.

Anne Boleyn left Claude’s household early in 1522, returning to England as negotiations were opened for her marriage with James Butler in order to settle the Ormond inheritance. Like her sister, she found a place at the English court, something that was not surprising given her importance to the king’s administration of Ireland. Her sister may also have helped secure her position. Mary is highly likely to have been instrumental in arranging for Anne to take a prominent role in a court masque held at Greenwich within weeks of her arrival in March 1522. The masque was to be one of the most spectacular of Henry’s reign, with a large mock castle built within the palace for the occasion. Once the guests were seated, eight ladies wearing gowns of white satin and caps of gold and jewels appeared at the top of the castle, representing the virtues of beauty, honour, perseverance, kindness, constancy, bounty, mercy and pity. Henry’s sister, Mary, the former Queen of France, played Beauty. Mary Boleyn played Kindness, a virtue that aptly reflects her character. Even more appropriately, as it turned out, Anne took the role of Perseverance. Jane Parker, who may already have been betrothed to the sisters’ brother, George, also took part, although her virtue is not recorded. The eight ladies defended their castle with rosewater and comfits as it was stormed by eight lords dressed in cloth of gold and blue satin. Eventually, the lords drove away a further eight women dressed to represent vices, with the virtues then coming down joyously from their tower to dance with the gallants. Anne’s partner is nowhere recorded. Henry, who was one of the participants, probably danced with his sister or, perhaps, Mary Boleyn. This was Anne Boleyn’s court debut but she and her future sister-in-law, Jane Parker, must have been overshadowed by the radiant Mary Boleyn.

As well as ensuring the appointment of her sister as one of the dancers in the masque, Mary may also have used her influence on behalf of Jane Parker. Surprisingly, there are few sources relating to the life of Jane Parker, who would later become the notorious Lady Rochford. Jane was the daughter of Henry Parker, who as the son of Alice Lovel, the heiress to the Morley family, was created Lord Morley by the king in 1520.
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The Parker family, like the Howards, had been conspicuous in their support for Richard III at Bosworth Field, with Jane’s grandfather, Sir William Parker, serving as the last Yorkist king’s standard bearer in the battle. Given this association William’s son, Henry, was lucky to gain a patron in Henry VII’s mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, who took him into her household as a carver or cupbearer.
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Margaret, who was a noted supporter of scholars and the universities, may have recognised Henry’s intelligence as he became one of the most noted scholars of his day. He remained devoted to the memory of his patron, years later writing a highly flattering memoir of her for her great-granddaughter, Mary I. Margaret was fond of the young Henry, arranging for him to marry Alice St John of Bletsoe, who was the daughter of her half-brother. The couple had three surviving children, Henry, Margaret and Jane, with the earliest mention of Jane in surviving sources being her participation in the Greenwich masque in 1522. This suggests that she had already obtained a court position, something that was not too surprising given the fact that her mother was a first cousin of the king’s father. William Cavendish, who had been resident at court during the 1520s, later put words into Jane’s mouth, claiming: