by Alison Weir
Henry might have finished with Mary Boleyn, but he could not have known that their affair was to have complicated repercussions, and that he was to have bitter cause, in the short term, to regret it—and, in the longer term, to be thankful that it had happened.
Sometime after 1522, William Carey had been promoted from Esquire of the Body to the important and prestigious post of Gentleman of the Privy Chamber.56 This was a significant promotion, a further indication of the high regard in which Carey was held by Henry VIII. As has been noted, in January 1526, under Cardinal Wolsey’s reforms of the royal household enshrined in the Eltham Ordinances, which were approved that month by the King, William Carey features high on the list of members of the King’s household; despite the Cardinal’s purges, he was one of six Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber allowed to remain in post, alongside Sir William Taylor, Sir Thomas Cheyney, Sir Anthony Browne, Sir John Russell, and Sir Henry Norris.57 The fact that Carey was retained in this office after his wife’s liaison with the King had ended and Henry began courting Anne Boleyn is proof that his rise at court was due chiefly to his own merits.
The post of Gentleman of the Privy Chamber had been established in 1518. The King’s Gentlemen were with him twenty-four hours a day, whether “waking, sleeping, eating, drinking, working, [or] relaxing”; they were mostly “expert and superbly qualified manipulators,”58 and among the most influential people at court—which was why Wolsey feared their influence.
On May 12, 1526, William Carey received the last of the grants made to him by the King; an unforeseen tragedy would preclude him from receiving any more, although it is more than likely that they—and a knighthood at the very least—would have come his way. He was appointed “Keeper of the manor, garden, tower &c. of Pleasance, East Greenwich, and of East Greenwich Park”;59 this effectively made him responsible for Greenwich Palace—Henry VIII’s birthplace and one of his most important and favored residences—and its environs, with the right to lodgings there whenever he needed them.
On that same date, Carey was assigned the keepership of “the manor and park of Ditton, Bucks., and all foreign woods belonging to the same, with 3d [£4] a day.”60 Ditton Park was another royal property, often used as a nursery palace for Princess Mary; later, in 1533, it would be given to Anne Boleyn as part of her jointure as queen. Some authors have seen these two last grants as tokens of gratitude on the part of the King to a man who had so patiently been cuckolded,61 but they assume that Mary’s affair with Henry had only just ended, when the likelihood is that it had finished more than two years earlier. It is possible, even likely, that the grants were discreet provision for the upbringing of the King’s bastard daughter, made to ensure that she would be brought up in sufficiently royal surroundings.
By 1527, William Carey was a man of moderate substance, with a landed estate worth £333.6s.8d (£107,500), as assessed that year for a subsidy.62 Yet he was not rich in terms of income. Even with board and lodging provided, it was expensive to keep up appearances at court, with the cost of decking oneself out in appropriate dress being very high. Sumptuary laws restricting the wearing of fine materials and jewelery to the upper ranks of society were strict, but a gentleman like William, attending on the King in his privy chamber, would be permitted—indeed expected—to be well turned out, in silk shirts, gold, and silver ornaments, furs and good-quality fabrics, and of course, he would need armor for jousting. A man’s worth was judged on outward display, and no doubt there was competition when it came to raiment and the furnishing of courtier lodgings. And a courtier’s wife, like Mary, would have had to be provided with attire that reflected her own status and her husband’s rank.
In the spring of 1527, as Keeper of Greenwich Palace, Carey was involved in mounting a lavish reception there for the French ambassadors who had come to negotiate a “Treaty of Eternal Peace” between England and France, which would be sealed by the marriage of the Princess Mary to Henri, Duc d’Orléans, the second son of François I. The German artist Hans Holbein, recently arrived in England, executed his first royal commission for this occasion, designing at Greenwich two triumphal arches and painting a ceiling showing the earth environed by the seas, and a vast picture depicting—somewhat tactlessly—Henry VIII gaining victory over the French. He also executed portraits of all the prominent courtiers who were responsible for organizing the ceremonies and celebrations to mark the event, and he probably painted William Carey too.63
As Carey’s wife, Mary Boleyn was no doubt present at the tournaments, recitals, masques, dances, and plays that were put on at Greenwich and Hampton Court to entertain the ambassadors. And no doubt she, like everyone else, was shocked when the celebrations were abruptly curtailed when news arrived that the city of Rome had been brutally sacked by mercenaries in the pay of the Emperor Charles V, and that the Pope himself was now the Emperor’s prisoner.
It was during the festivities at Greenwich that one of the French ambassadors ventured to question the legitimacy of the Princess Mary—or so Henry VIII later claimed. The ambassador did not give offense, but merely voiced a concern with which the King had become increasingly preoccupied.
For some years now—long before his eye had lighted upon Anne Boleyn, and perhaps even Mary Boleyn, for he insisted he had first raised the matter with his confessor in 1522—Henry had been fretting about the validity of his marriage. Katherine was his brother Arthur’s widow, and although she had sworn that Arthur had left her a virgin, the Book of Leviticus prohibited a man from marrying his brother’s wife; those who did, it warned, would be childless. With only one daughter surviving from Katherine’s six pregnancies, Henry considered himself as good as childless—and professed himself in dread lest he had offended God by this marriage.
By 1527, with Katherine no longer fertile, he was genuinely desperate for a son to succeed him, and passionately in love with Anne Boleyn. He was also conscious of the unpalatable fact that Anne was forbidden to him, just as he believed Katherine to be, for, thanks to his affair with Mary Boleyn, he had placed himself in the same degree of first collateral affinity to Anne as existed—so he was protesting—between himself and Katherine, and created “an adamantine Levitical barrier.”64 More so, in fact, because Katherine’s first marriage had not been consummated, whereas Henry had had sexual relations with Mary, and therefore any marriage between him and her sister would have been incestuous without doubt.65 The impediment in Leviticus was categorical: “Thou shalt not take the sister of thy wife as a concubine, nor uncover her turpitude whilst thy wife still liveth.” It did not actually matter that Mary had never been Henry’s wife; what counted was the “unlawful intercourse” that had taken place between them. It was that which had created the affinity. This was Mary Boleyn’s greatest historical significance.
But Henry was determined to marry Anne, and in 1527, he commenced proceedings to have his union with Katherine annulled, and thus embarked on his celebrated—some would say infamous—“Great Matter,” which would end in the Reformation and the severance of the English Church from that of Rome. Those events are beyond the scope of this book, but as they form the backdrop to Mary’s story, they will be referred to where appropriate.
With Pope Clement VIII still a captive of the Emperor, Katherine’s nephew, there was little chance of a “divorce” being granted, but the King was nevertheless optimistic. One thing was troubling him, though. In September 1527 he had sent his secretary, Dr. William Knight, on a secret mission to Rome to discuss his “Great Matter” with Pope Clement VII. After Knight had left, the King, clearly worried about the canonical difficulty in marrying Anne, evidently realized that he should have been more specific about his relations with Mary Boleyn, so in late October or early November he drafted a bull of dispensation himself, its object being to remove the impediment of “affinity arising from illicit intercourse in whatever degree, even the first,” in respect of any marriage the King might make in the event of his union with Katherine being annulled. Neither Mary Boleyn nor Anne was
named. The reason for his discretion, and for the need for secrecy to be maintained, was that the last thing Henry wanted was the Pope or anyone else pointing the finger and saying that his scruples over his marriage “had little to do with God and more to do with Anne Boleyn.”66 It was essential, now more than ever, that his affair with Mary Boleyn did not become common knowledge.
The granting of this bull would allow the King to marry Anne, as soon as he was free, despite the affinity that his adultery with her sister had brought into being.67 Henry sent this document after his secretary, with instructions to maintain all secrecy concerning it, and his covering letter is testimony to how secret his affair with Mary had been kept:
I do now send you a copy of another [bull] which no man doth know but they which I am sure will never disclose it to no man living … Desiring you heartily to use all ways to you possible to get access to the Pope’s person and then solicit this bull with all diligence; and in doing so, I shall reckon it the highest service you ever did me … This bull is not desired except I be legitimately absolved from the marriage with Katherine.
In December, Cardinal Wolsey—who was clearly privy to his master’s concern—wrote to Sir Gregory Casale, Henry VIII’s envoy at the Papal court in Rome:
Though the King does not fear the consequences which might arise, yet, remembering by the example of past times what false claims have been put forward, to avoid all color or pretext of the same, he requests this of the Pope as indispensable.
But the Pope was of course a prisoner of the Emperor, Katherine’s nephew, whose mercenary troops had sacked Rome the previous May. In December, Charles ordered Clement not to annul his aunt’s marriage, effectively tying the Pontiff’s hands. But dispensations such as Henry had requested were commonly granted,68 and Clement had no wish to alienate the King of England, who had always shown himself to be a good, devout, and loyal son of the Church. That month, he escaped to Orvieto, where he set up his court, and when Dr. Knight arrived and was received in audience, Clement—as a sop to the English—sanctioned the bull authorizing Henry VIII to wed within the prohibited degrees, should the occasion arise, provided his first marriage was proved unlawful.
On January 1, 1528, the dispensation was issued, specifically allowing Henry, whenever he was free to marry again, to take to wife any woman, “in any degree [of affinity], even the first, ex illicito coito [arising from illicit intercourse].”69 Effectively, Clement, who—for fear of Charles V—could not bring himself to annul Henry’s marriage to his sister-in-law, was actually giving him permission to marry not only the sister of his former mistress, but even his mother or his daughter. In 1533, Dr. Pedro Ortiz, a Spanish doctor of theology who was sent to Rome by the Emperor to defend Queen Katherine’s interests, was in no doubt as to why the bull had been granted, and reported: “It is certain that some time ago, [Henry VIII] sent to ask his Holiness for a dispensation to marry [Anne Boleyn], notwithstanding the affinity between them on account of his having committed adultery with her sister.”70
Given that, for the present, there was no realistic prospect of the Pope annulling Henry’s marriage to Katherine, the bull was utterly worthless.71
On March 3, 1528, there is a mention of William Carey in a letter sent from Windsor Castle by Thomas Heneage, one of his fellow gentlemen in the Privy Chamber, to Cardinal Wolsey: “Mr. Carey and Mr. [Anthony] Browne are absent, and there is none here but [Henry] Norris and myself to attend the King in his bedchamber, and keep his pallet. Every afternoon, when the weather is fair, the King rides out hawking, or walks in the park, not returning till late in the evening. Today, as the King was going to dinner, Mistress Anne spoke to me, saying she was afraid you had forgotten her, as you had sent her no token. I was requested by my lady her mother to give her a morsel of tunny [tuna].” This is one of the few references to Elizabeth Howard, Lady Boleyn being at court. She was there at this time as a chaperone for Anne.
Anne Boleyn was always actively promoting her family connections, and clearly she felt the need to court the support of her brother-in-law, the influential William Carey. It has been said that, although Carey was married to her sister and thereby aligned with the Boleyn faction, he also owed a debt of gratitude and allegiance to his powerful patron, Henry Courtenay, who was supporting Katherine of Aragon, which would have placed Carey, and Mary too, in an invidious position involving a conflict of loyalties;72 but in fact Courtenay openly (if not inwardly) supported the King until the late 1530s, and even his wife, Gertrude Blount, a friend of Queen Katherine, was not to engage in subversive activities until after Anne Boleyn became queen in 1533. Thus, in the spring of 1528, when Anne was afforded an ideal opportunity of securing Carey’s allegiance, she seized it, not in order to wean him from his affinity with the Courtenays, but purely because he was an influential courtier who was useful to the Boleyns.
On April 24, Wolsey had learned that Dame Cecily Willoughby, Abbess of Wilton, had died.73 St. Edith’s nunnery at Wilton was an ancient and rich foundation, as well as fashionable and aristocratic,74 and its Abbess enjoyed great prestige and standing. Most of the convent favored the election of the Prioress, Dame Isabel Jordan, an “ancient, wise, and very discreet” woman,75 to the vacant abbatial chair, but two of William Carey’s sisters, Anne and Eleanor, were nuns at Wilton, and their brother, John Carey, was keen to see Eleanor promoted to be head of the house; it was not Mary Boleyn76 who nominated her, as has been claimed. One of Wolsey’s correspondents had warned him that “there will be great labor made for Dame Eleanor Carey, sister of Mr. Carey of the court.”77
It may have been at the behest of John Carey—or of Mary Boleyn,78 for it seems that she was actively pressing her sister in this matter79—that Anne immediately recommended to the King that he put pressure to bear on the convent to have Dame Eleanor elected Abbess, and Wolsey promised the Careys that he would push for her election as Prioress, in the event of her not being elected Abbess; the letter clearly states “Prioress” rather than “Abbess,” the former being the subordinate office.80 For the present, however, Dame Eleanor would have to be patient, as a prescribed interval had to be observed between the death of the Abbess and the election of her successor.
Late May 1528 saw the worst ever outbreak of the “sweating sickness,” an epidemic peculiar to Tudor times, which had first appeared in 1485, the year in which the Battle of Bosworth had been fought and the Tudor dynasty established. Some had seen it as the judgment of God on the victor, the usurping Henry VII. It had reappeared in 1508 and 1517, and its return in 1528, at a time when Henry VIII was pursuing his collusive suit, was seen as ominously significant. Abroad, the disease was called “the English sweat” because it was more prevalent in England.
The sweating sickness was deadly, and no respecter of persons; it could kill with terrifying speed. “One has a little pain in the head and heart. Suddenly, a sweat breaks out, and a physician is useless, for whether you wrap yourself up much or little, in four hours—sometimes within two or three—you are dispatched without languishing.”81 Victims might suffer violent sweats, virulent fever, shivering fits, tachycardia, pain in the back, stomach, and limbs, vertigo, rashes, headaches, and nervous prostration, and many succumbed on the first day. A man could be “merry at dinner and dead at supper.”82 There was no cure, and only those who survived the first twenty-four hours could hope to live. Needless to say, the disease brought panic in its wake: one rumor might cause “a thousand cases of sweat,”83 and some people “suffered more from fear than others did from the sweat itself.”84
Today, it is impossible to be certain what the “sweating sickness” actually was, as no cases were reported after the last outbreak in 1551. Some have speculated that it was a miliary fever such as malaria, or a particularly virulent form of “prickly heat,” or even what later came to be known as “trench fever,”85 while another suggests it was a strain of influenza or typhus, or “a viral infection transmitted by rats.”86 Given that bacteria can mutate, it may even have been
a simple infection that, with time, ceased to be fatal.
The King had a horror of illness: he was “the most timid person in such matters you could meet with,”87 and the very words “sweating sickness” were “so terrible to His Highness’s ears that he dare in no wise approach unto the place where it is noised to have been.”88 No one who had come into contact with an infected person was permitted to approach the court.
Henry was therefore aghast to learn of this latest outbreak. In great fear, he dismissed most of his courtiers and servants and left Greenwich Palace for Waltham Abbey in Essex, taking Queen Katherine and Anne Boleyn with him. In London, the epidemic raged, with forty thousand cases reported. Nor was Waltham safe. George Boleyn (who was to recover) sickened there of the sweat, and on or shortly before June 16, learning that one of Anne’s maids had also succumbed to the disease, Henry uprooted himself “in great haste” and rode off to Hunsdon House, twelve miles away, having sent Anne home to her father at Hever, because she was “suspected of having been infected.”89
At Hunsdon, Henry remained isolated in a tower with his physicians. “The King shuts himself up quite alone,”90 no doubt fretting about his beloved. Each day, his household became further diminished, as more and more of his attendants were sent away, and wherever he went, he had his lodgings “purged daily with fires and other preservatives.”91
Wolsey, seeing the epidemic as the manifestation of God’s wrath, begged his master to abandon all thoughts of divorce, but “the King used terrible words, saying he would have given a thousand Wolseys for one Anne Boleyn. “ ‘No other than God shall take her from me!’ ” he shouted.92 But God, it seemed, was not on Henry Tudor’s side, for by June 22 the King had been given the dreaded news that Anne and her father had fallen victim to the sweating sickness and taken to their beds at Hever. Immediately, Henry sent his own physician, Dr. William Butts, to attend her.
