by David Loades
These facts have caused endless speculation about the nature of Mary’s relations with the King. That she later became his mistress is authenticated by Henry’s own admission, but it is usually thought that that did not happen until 1522, when the beginning of a number of grants to William Carey indicate a special interest in his wife. Mary used her influence to get Thomas Gardiner appointed to the priory of Tynemouth, but that is an event which cannot be securely dated.[100] It did not happen before 1520, but then Mary was not in a position to exercise any influence until the latter part of 1519. She took part in a number of courtly entertainments in 1520 and 1521, but that proves nothing beyond the fact that she was a well-established lady of the court. She also accompanied the Queen to the Field of Cloth of Gold in the summer of 1520, but there is no record of what she may have done there, apart from assisting the Duchess of Suffolk by looking decorative. The first indication that she might have been in any way special comes on Shrove Tuesday 1522, in the Burgundian style masque of the assault on the Chateau Verte. The King’s sister in the guise of Beauty, led the defenders, among whom Mary featured in the significant role of Kindness. Her sister Anne, then newly returned to England, also took part as Perseverence, but it has been rightly commented that Mary’s designation was the more suggestive.[101] If Mary was sharing the royal bed in 1522 and 1523, then she must have had some contraceptive knowledge, which no well brought up young lady was supposed to possess. Henry had inflicted well nigh annual pregnancies on Catherine between 1509 and 1518, and another on Bessy Blount in the latter year. So whatever may have happened later, there is no reason to suppose that in the early 1520s, the King’s potency was any the less. Yet Mary survived anything between three and five years as the royal mistress without becoming pregnant. Where she had learned this art is another matter, but presumably in France, where those adventures which had earned her a reputation may also have taught her a lot about ways in which to manage her body. Henry may well have been mystified, because this was a skill which only whores were supposed to possess. On the other hand, he may not have cared, because another bastard was not going to solve the succession problem which was increasingly gnawing away at his mind.[102]
Mistress Carey’s charms may have faded, or been replaced by those of her sister, but the indications are that Mary was handed over to her husband at some point in the summer of 1525. Her son, Henry Carey, was born on 4 March 1526, and that suggests that she began to sleep with William at some time in June or July of 1525. Although it was soon being suggested that Henry was the King’s son, those tales came from the anti-Boleyn political camp of the 1530s and need not be taken too seriously.[103] If there had been any doubt at the time about Henry’s paternity, there was no reason why the King should not have claimed him. He had just made a great fuss of ennobling his only acknowledged bastard, Henry Fitzroy, and would no doubt have been willing to do as much for a second – if one had appeared. The token which Mary did leave to the King was not a child but a ship. The Mary Boleyn was a vessel of 100 tons, which was deployed in the Irish Sea in September 1523, and appears to have been a royal ship which the King had named after his mistress. Unfortunately, no such ship appears in the King’s inventories of the time; the only vessel of 100 tons in service with the navy was the Katherine Pleasaunce, which had been built in 1518. We are therefore left with the intriguing possibility that Henry renamed a ship originally called after his wife in honour of his mistress![104] More mundanely it is possible that the Mary Boleyn belonged to Sir Thomas, and had been ‘taken up’ for some particular service in Irish waters. The records do not make this clear, and the Katherine Plesaunce goes on being mentioned down to 1525. From 1526 onwards Mary is overshadowed by her sister Anne, and glimpses of her in the records become few. She must have spent quite a lot of her time on pregnancy leave, because a few months after Henry’s birth she had conceived again, and bore William’s second child, a daughter Catherine, at some time in 1527. Then in the summer of 1528, the sweating sickness visited the court. Henry immediately panicked, as was his wont in such situations. Anne was sent down to her father’s house at Hever, where she and Sir Thomas both fell ill, but recovered. The King took himself off into the country, moving his lodging frequently to avoid infection, and somehow or other escaped. William Carey was less fortunate, and on 28 June 1528 he died.[105]
William, although he has only a walk-on role in this context, was a person of consequence in his own right. Born in 1500, he was the son of Thomas Carey of Chilton Foliot, Wiltshire, and a grandson of Sir William, an eminent Lancastrian who had been beheaded after the battle of Tewksbury in 1471. His mother had been Margaret, a granddaughter of Edmund Beaufort, first Duke of Somerset, and he was thus a very distant kinsman of the King.[106] He appeared at court as a protégé of the Earl of Devon, some time about 1515 or 1516, and seems to have been a formidable tennis player. It may have been this quality which attracted the King’s attention because he became a founder member of the Privy Chamber, and was well enough placed to marry Mary, as we have seen. Perhaps the King already had his eye on her, because their marriage was morganatic for the first five years. William was rewarded with grants of land from the King in 1522, 1523, 1524 and 1525, so he died possessed of a considerable estate in addition to his patrimony.[107] These lands would have been inherited by his two-year-old son, Henry, who became a ward of the Crown. Mary seems to have passed into limbo, because at some time before December 1529 his wardship was granted to his aunt Anne, who would consequently have enjoyed the profits of the estate, and what provision she made for her sister is not known. In December 1531 Mary Carey was granted an annuity of £100 out of the Treasury of the Chamber, which suggests that she was suffering a degree of hardship.[108] Anne may have conceded the right to educate and bring up Henry and Catherine to Mary on an unofficial basis, because there is no sign of her having sold or otherwise disposed of the wardship, but the relationship between the two women can hardly have been an easy one, particularly while Anne was so high in favour. Over the next two or three years Mary can be glimpsed as a member of her sister’s entourage, in which capacity she no doubt attended Anne’s creation as Marquis of Pembroke in September 1532, and she certainly accompanied her when she went with the King to Calais in October. What she may have done there can only be conjectured, but she took part in the masked dance which followed Anne’s ceremonial entry at the banquet on 28 October, when she was one of the six ‘gorgeously apparelled [ladies] with visors on their faces who came and took the French king, and the other Lords of France by the hand; and danced a dance or two …’ However, after the masquing was over ‘they departed to their lodgings’ and we are told no more.[109]
This is a pity, because it was probably at Calais that she first met a dashing young man named William Stafford, who was then an officer of the garrison there. Stafford was the second son of Sir Humphrey Stafford of Blatherwick, Northants., and was a distant kinsman of the last Duke of Buckingham. He seems to have been quite a lot younger than the thirty-three-year-old Mary, probably about twenty.[110] At any rate, she fell in love, and he followed her back to England, where he became a hanger on at court, and was a servitor at Anne Boleyn’s coronation. Mary seems to have taken the initiative in their relationship, because Stafford at this point is a shadowy figure, seen mainly in the light of her opinion. Early in 1534 she became pregnant by him, and they were secretly married. For some reason this caused mortal offence to her family. Anne was particularly alienated, although whether by her extra-marital pregnancy or by the marriage which followed it is not apparent. As the Queen’s sister, Mary should have gained official permission for this marriage, and that she clearly failed to do so may have been the cause of the angst. Anne may well have felt that, having survived several years in the King’s bed, her decision to conceive at this point was a statement of some kind. The Queen, who was pregnant herself in the spring of 1534, may also have felt betrayed when her sister had to withdraw from attendance on her due to her own condition. An
Imperial report of December 1534 declares that ‘the Lady’s sister was … banished from Court about three months ago … because she had been found guilty of misconduct …’[111] William Stafford, for all his exalted kindred, seems to have been thought unworthy to marry a Boleyn. Her annuity of £100 a year was cancelled, and Anne withdrew whatever favour she had extended in respect of the children. So distressed was Mary by these rejections that she wrote to Thomas Cromwell in December, lamenting her plight and begging for his assistance. Her husband was young, and did not deserve so much disfavour. She saw much honesty in him, and he loved her as truly as she did him. ‘For well I might have had a greater man of birth and a higher, but I assure you that I could never have had one that should have loved me so well nor a more honest man …’ Her problem, she implied, was not with the King but with her family. Not only was Anne rigorously against her, but her brother and her uncle the Duke of Norfolk were ‘very cruel’ as well.[112] She did not name her father, but the suggestion is that he shared the family’s aversion.
Cromwell appears to have done his best. The King wrote to the Earl of Wiltshire inviting him to make suitable provision for his daughter, being, presumably, unwilling to offend Anne by doing so himself. It is not clear that anything happened immediately, but after the catastrophic fall of Anne and George in May 1536, the remaining Boleyns were reconciled and Thomas allowed Mary and her husband the use of Rochford Hall in Essex, which was part of his estate.[113] The wardship of Henry and Catherine would have reverted to the Crown on Anne Boleyn’s attainder, and was regranted to Mary. On 3 April 1537 the Prior of Tynemouth wrote to Cromwell, begging permission to cancel the annuity of 100 marks which she had been granted for obtaining the preferment of his predecessor, because ‘the said lady can now deserve no such annuity as she can do no good for me or my house …’ But this somewhat pusillanimous request was clearly refused, and the annuity went on being paid – at least it was paid out of Augmentations after the Priory was dissolved.[114] Between 1539 and 1542 Mary inherited most of her father’s lands, albeit in trust for her son, including Rochford Hall. It was William who obtained in 1541 a licence to alienate the manor of High Roding in Essex, but this did not take effect, presumably because his wife objected. Nor did the Staffords go on being frozen out of the court. ‘Young Stafford that married my lady Cary’ was one of those gentlemen appointed to attend of Anne of Cleves when she arrived to marry King Henry in January 1540, while Catherine Carey, then aged thirteen, was named among the ladies of the new Queen’s Privy Chamber.[115] Mary was now at last in control of William Carey’s estate, and she and her husband disposed of quite a lot of it by sale over the years 1539 to 1543. In October 1542 they were pardoned for having alienated 700 acres at Fulborne in Cambridgeshire without license.[116] Although Mary did not occupy any position in the Queen’s chamber, William Stafford was a gentleman Pensioner by 1540, and a Esquire of the Body by 1541. He was also named to lead 100 footmen in the ‘army for Flanders’ which was notionally assembled in July 1543, and actually served in the Boulogne campaign of the following year, when he was accompanied by six men.[117] Intriguingly, a William Stafford, who was probably the same man, was imprisoned in the Fleet in April of that year for having eaten meat in Lent. This William Stafford was discharged by the council on 1 May, and his brush with the law does not seem to have done him any harm at all. Presumably his evangelical attitude was sympathetically regarded by the dominant party.[118] This modest level of favour continued and in May 1543 he and his wife were granted livery of the lands of Margaret Boleyn, deceased, who was Mary’s grandmother, and had outlived her son and grandson. Mary’s son, Henry, being still underage, the lands were allowed to come to her. At the same time the Staffords received livery of the lands of Jane Rochford, George’s widow, who had been executed in 1542 and whose possessions were in the hands of the Crown by virtue of her attainder.[119] Perhaps the Duke of Norfolk was now reconciled to her marriage, because someone was looking after their interests, and it was not Thomas Cromwell, who had fallen to the executioners axe in 1540. At some point before July 1543 Mary, but not her husband, was granted the wardship of William Bailey, together with lands in Wiltshire, Kent and Hertfordshire.[120]
Mary died at Rochford Hall in July 1543, and the legal position in respect of her estate appears to have been exceedingly complex. Lands held jointly with William remained to him, but those which were in her name alone reverted to the Crown, together with the wardship of Henry and Catherine, who were seventeen and fifteen respectively at that point. Catherine may already have been married to Sir Francis Knollys, because her wardship does not feature in the records, and Henry was taken into the royal household, where he appears in 1545. Presumably his estates were released to him at about that time. As might be expected from his brush with the Act of Six Articles, William emerged as a Protestant once Henry was dead, and warmly supported the policy of the new Protector, the Duke of Somerset. He had by that time acquired something of a reputation as a soldier, having served in 1544 as a member of the Royal Household. He also went briefly to Scotland in 1545, in a punitive raid which the Earl of Hertford (as Somerset then was) had launched in September. On the 23rd of that month he was knighted.[121] As a known supporter of the regime, Somerset found a place for him in the parliament of 1547, in which he sat for the borough of Hastings – a town with which he had no known connection. At the age of about thirty-five, his career was taking off, and from 1548 to 1553 he served as Standard Bearer of the Gentlemen Pensioners, a position of some standing in the court. Nevertheless he seems to have gone on selling lands, because in February 1544 Sir John Gresham and Sir John Williams were granted lands in Kent ‘lately held by William Stafford and Mary his wife’, which had been purchased by the King. In 1545 he was released of a debt of 200 marks to the Crown, which also suggests continued financial difficulties, as well as the favour which was already developing.[122] At some time between 1545 and 1550 he married again, his second wife being Dorothy, the daughter of Henry Stafford, first Lord Stafford, and hence a distant kinswoman, who presented him with three sons to continue his line. Dorothy was also a daughter of Ursula Pole, granddaughter of George, Duke of Clarence, so these sons would have had a distant claim to the throne. The child which Mary had been carrying in 1534 presumably died, and his first wife may well have been too old to conceive again. In 1551 he was sufficiently well known to accompany the Marquis of Northampton when he went to France to bestow the Order of the Garter on King Henry. As late as 24 June 1554 he was paid £900 in respect of his services; services which presumably dated back to before July 1553.[123]
Sir William was distinctly uncomfortable with the restored Catholicism of Mary’s reign, and when it became obvious that persecution was looming, at the beginning of 1555, he quitted the realm without license and went with his extended household to Geneva, where he was received as a resident on 29 March. Apparently he soon became embroiled in the politics of the city, and was set upon and almost killed in the aftermath of the May rising of that year, for which reason he was shortly thereafter permitted to wear a sword. When the English congregation was organised on 1 November 1555, William and his household became members, and his son John, to whom Calvin stood as godfather, was the first child to be baptised there on 4 January 1556.[124] He must presumably have had an agent or agents in England to make sure that the revenues of at least some of his lands reached him in exile, because an establishment of some half a dozen people, with their servants, would have been expensive to maintain. He had lost his position as Standard Bearer of the Gentlemen Pensioners at the beginning of the reign, but was presumably one of those who benefited when a government bill for the confiscation of the property of all such exiles, as he was defeated in the House of Commons in November 1555. The Privy Council was sufficiently interested in him to attempt to prevent other money from reaching him ‘by exchange or otherwise’ in May 1556, but by the time that order was enforced (if it was), Sir William was dead. He died on 5 May 1556, and afte
r a quarrel with his brother over the custody of young John, Dorothy withdrew to Basle, taking the child with her. She was received as a burgher of her newly adopted city on 3 November 1557.[125] She returned to England in January 1559, to an appointment as Elizabeth’s Mistress of the Robes, and died at a very advanced age in 1607.
