by Alison Weir
100. L. & P.
101. Ibid.; The Complete Peerage.
102. Ibid.
103. Ibid.
6: THE ASSAULT ON THE CASTLE OF VIRTUE
1. Burke.
2. Murphy.
3. Ridley: Henry VIII; Sergeant.
4. The Book of Beauty.
5. Ridley: Henry VIII.
6. Denny: Anne Boleyn.
7. L. & P.; Elton: Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government; Warnicke: “Anne Boleyn’s Childhood.”
8. L. & P.
9. Luke.
10. Hackett.
11. Fox; Erickson: Anne Boleyn.
12. Denny: Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard.
13. Erickson: Bloody Mary.
14. Loades: The Tudor Queens, Henry VIII: Court, Church and Conflict.
15. Norton: Anne Boleyn.
16. Ibid.
17. Ives speculates that the liaison might just be dated to the 1510s; Ridley says that it was going on in February 1516, at the time of the Princess Mary’s christening (The Life and Times of Mary Tudor), and Loades states that Mary was sharing Henry VIII’s bed during the years when Anne Boleyn was at the French court (i.e., between the spring of 1515 and the spring of 1522). Plowden thinks that the affair probably began in 1519 (The Other Boleyn Girl). It has been suggested that Henry probably became interested in Mary during Elizabeth Blount’s pregnancy in 1519, and that she supplanted Elizabeth in 1519 or 1520 (Loades: The Tudor Queens; Henry VIII; Court, Church and Conflict; Cannon and Hargreaves). Denny assumes that their liaison began early in 1520: “By April 1522 … Mary had been Henry’s mistress for two years.”
It has been claimed that Reginald Pole referred to Henry being the first to spoil Mary, and some have inferred from this that the affair took place before her marriage, as Pole does not refer to her as a married woman (Beauclerk-Dewar and Powell); but Pole actually wrote that the King had “first violated and for a long time after kept [Mary] as [his] concubine,” meaning the violation came first, not that the King was the first man to sleep with her.
Several writers state that Mary was married to William Carey during her affair with the King (Lindsey; Luke; Hamer; Denny: Anne Boleyn; Jones), or that she was perhaps given Carey as a reward when Henry had finished with her (Lindsey). Jones states, as if it were an established fact, that “as soon as Henry declared his interest in her, she was found a husband,” and that the affair began either before or “shortly after” the wedding. Powell writes that she became the King’s mistress after her marriage, suggesting that the affair “almost certainly” began in 1520, either during the visit of the Emperor Charles V to England in May, or at the Field of Cloth of Gold. Van Duyn Southworth, Johnson, and Hackett suggest a date of 1520–21, Hackett romantically imagining Henry noticing Mary’s “warm consoling gaze” at the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520.
Nicholas Sander stated in 1585 that Henry brought Mary to court and “ruined her” after her father returned from France in March 1520; of course, she was already at court by then. Friedmann states that “the affair between the King and Mary Boleyn began almost immediately after she married William Carey.” Ashdown firmly states that Mary became the King’s mistress in 1521, “the same year in which she married William Carey (sic.)” (Ladies in Waiting). Ridley thinks that “she was probably Henry’s mistress both before and after the marriage” (Henry VIII). Norton states that, by the time of Anne Boleyn’s return to England early in 1522, Mary was “well-established as Henry VIII’s mistress” (Anne Boleyn). Murphy and Mathew wisely state only that the affair began after her marriage to Carey, Rex that it flourished in the early 1520s (The Tudors). Wilson writes that it started in 1524–25 (In the Lion’s Court). Warnicke dates it as late as 1525, purely on the grounds that, in that year, the King became “increasingly alienated” from Queen Katherine after her nephew, the Emperor Charles V, jilted Princess Mary in order to marry the fabulously wealthy Isabella of Portugal (“Anne Boleyn’s Childhood”). Round also suggests that the affair “may not improbably be placed as late as 1525,” the year in which Thomas Boleyn was ennobled and there was “a change in Henry for the worse” after he ceased having sexual relations with Queen Katherine. According to Round, “there is nothing to prove that [the affair] belongs to an earlier date.”
All this is speculation.
18. Ives; Haigh; Murphy.
19. Cf. Parmiter; Starkey: Six Wives; Hart; Fox; Stella Fletcher; Wilkinson: The Early Loves of Anne Boleyn.
20. Fraser.
21. Norton: Anne Boleyn. She states elsewhere that there is no evidence that Elizabeth Howard was Henry’s mistress.
22. Rex: Henry VIII.
23. Thornton-Cook.
24. Jones.
25. Hackett.
26. Hackett; Hart; Wilkinson: Mary Boleyn. Wilkinson may be correct in suggesting that Sir William Compton probably approached Mary on the King’s behalf.
27. Hobden.
28. Jones.
29. Hart.
30. Loades: The Tudor Queens.
31. L. & P.
32. Luke.
33. Four Years at the Court of Henry VIII.
34. English Historical Documents, 5, 1485–1558.
35. L. & P.
36. Ibid.; Herbert.
37. Wilkinson: Mary Boleyn.
38. L. & P.
39. Cavendish: The Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey.
40. Wyatt.
41. For this pageant, see Hall and L. & P.
42. Wilkinson: The Early Loves of Anne Boleyn. Although it has long been assumed that the Countess of Devon was Katherine of York, Wilkinson is correct in identifying her as Gertrude Blount, whose mother-in-law, Katherine of York, daughter of Edward IV and aunt of Henry VIII, would surely have been referred to as the Dowager Countess. Besides, Katherine of York was then forty-three, and rather old to be dancing in a court pageant.
43. Tallis.
44. Luke.
45. Bruce.
46. Wilkinson: Mary Boleyn.
47. L. & P.
48. Murphy.
49. Fox.
50. For example, Friedmann; Michael Clark; Erickson: Anne Boleyn; Hackett; Starkey: Six Wives; Martin Hume; Albert; Norton: Anne Boleyn; Sergeant; Murphy; Powell; Varlow: The Lady Penelope.
51. Hackett.
52. Varlow: The Lady Penelope.
53. Ibid.; Bagley; Bruce; Jones.
54. Chapman.
55. Ibid.
56. Ibid.
57. Ibid.
58. Ibid.
59. Ibid.; The Complete Peerage.
60. State Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII.
61. L. & P.
62. Ibid.
63. Ball.
64. L. & P.
65. Ibid.
66. Ibid.
67. Powell.
68. L. & P.
69. Childe-Pemberton.
70. Ibid.; Murphy.
71. Murphy.
72. Norton: Anne Boleyn.
73. Six Wives.
74. L. & P.
75. Erickson: Anne Boleyn.
76. Norton: Anne Boleyn.
77. L. & P.
78. Lofts.
79. L. & P.
80. Ibid.
81. Ibid.
82. Ives; Warnicke: The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn; Friedmann; Hoskins; Loades: The Six Wives of Henry VIII; Jones; Fox; Stella Fletcher; Hutchinson; Varlow: The Lady Penelope.
83. Plowden: The Other Boleyn Girl.
84. L. & P.; Ives.
85. L. & P.
86. Which I have not been able to trace; it is not to be identified with Wickford, as that name derives from the Saxon word wic, meaning a dwelling place, fort, or spring, and all early versions of the name Wickford are spelled with an i.
87. L. & P.
88. Ibid.
89. Ibid.
90. Ibid. The annuity of £100 came “out of the Earl of Derby’s land.”
91. Ibid. Herbage was the right to graze cattle, and panna
ge the right to allow pigs to go into woodland to root for masts and nuts.
92. Robinson; V. C. H.: Wiltshire.
93. L. & P.
94. Ibid.
95. V. C. H.: Essex.
96. L. & P.
97. Ibid.
98. Hoskins says 1527, but in L. & P. this grant is correctly listed in the early months of 1526, as Warnicke (The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn) and others have rightly accepted.
99. L. & P.; these lands would be sold off in 1552 and 1553 by William’s son, Henry Carey.
100. Hall.
101. For example, Bowle; Ridley: Henry VIII; Chapman; James.
102. S. C.
103. Hall.
104. L. & P.; Cotton mss. Vespasian; The Antiquarian Repertory.
105. L. & P.
106. Erickson: Anne Boleyn.
107. L. & P.
108. Erickson: Anne Boleyn; Jones.
109. Carlton.
110. Luke.
111. Friedmann.
112. Wyatt.
113. Powell.
7: LIVING IN AVOUTRY
1. For a broader discussion, see Given-Wilson and Rickman.
2. S. C.
3. L. & P.
4. Barbara Harris.
5. V. C.
6. Wilkinson: The Early Loves of Anne Boleyn.
7. Brysson Morrison.
8. Ridley: Henry VIII; Wilkinson: The Early Loves of Anne Boleyn.
9. Wilson: In the Lion’s Court.
10. Murphy.
11. Luke; Denny: Katherine Howard.
12. Erickson: Anne Boleyn.
13. Lindsey.
14. Varlow: The Lady Penelope.
15. Claremont.
16. Bruce.
17. Luke.
18. Chapman.
19. Erickson: Bloody Mary.
20. Fraser.
21. Brysson Morrison.
22. Martin Hume.
23. Chapman.
24. Ibid.
25. Wilkinson: The Early Loves of Anne Boleyn.
26. Denny: Anne Boleyn; Wilkinson: The Early Loves of Anne Boleyn.
27. Hart.
28. Benton Fletcher.
29. L. & P.; Hoskins; Wilkinson: Mary Boleyn. Wilkinson sees this grant as marking the end of Henry VIII’s affair with Mary Boleyn.
30. Powell.
31. Hoskins.
32. Colvin.
33. Ibid.
34. Dixon.
35. L. & P.
36. Not Cardinal Wolsey, as Hart suggests.
37. Hart.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. Tallis.
41. Friedmann.
42. Denny: Anne Boleyn.
43. Norton: Anne Boleyn; Mathew.
44. Sergeant.
45. Luke.
46. Ibid.
47. Bruce.
48. Warnicke: The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn.
49. Denny: Anne Boleyn.
50. Luke.
51. Contrary to Hart’s claim that “we have no evidence of her ever exercising patronage.”
52. Hostillers’ Books, Durham Cathedral Muniments.
53. L. & P.; Dugdale; Ives; Douglas Richardson; Craster. Thomas Gardiner was the son of William Gardiner of London by Helen (or Ellen), a bastard daughter of Henry VIII’s great-uncle, Jasper Tudor, Earl of Pembroke, and thus cousin to the King.
54. Hutchinson.
55. Lacey.
56. Jones.
57. Bruce.
58. Erickson: Bloody Mary.
59. Hart.
60. Bagley.
61. L. & P.
62. Wilkinson: Mary Boleyn.
63. Starkey: Six Wives; Luke.
64. Beckingsale.
65. Loades: The Tudor Queens; Hoskins; Hart.
66. Flügel.
67. Warnicke: “Anne Boleyn’s Childhood.”
68. Hoskins.
69. Loades: The Tudor Queens, The Six Wives of Henry VIII.
70. Murphy.
71. Ibid.
72. Loades: Mary Tudor.
73. L. & P.
74. S. C.
75. Hackett.
76. Smith: Henry VIII: The Mask of Royalty.
77. S. C.
78. Ibid.; L. & P.
79. Puttenham. A varlet was an attendant or page, but the word could also mean a rascal or knave.
80. Hoskins.
81. L. & P.
82. State Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII.
83. L. & P.
84. Ibid.
85. Erickson: Anne Boleyn.
8: HIDING ROYAL BLOOD
1. Not 1529–30, as was once claimed, or 1526, as claimed by Bernard (Anne Boleyn), or 1525, the date sometimes given, since her brother was almost certainly born that year, while Jones is incorrect in saying that Mary “finally became pregnant in June 1525,” and in claiming that there is still “some dispute” as to which of her children was born first.
2. There is no evidence that the child was christened Katherine Mary Carey, as Tunis calls her; middle names were virtually unknown in early Tudor England.
3. Bruce.
4. Hoskins and Wilkinson (Mary Boleyn) give the year as 1526. Hoskins has argued that the grant of February 1527 (sic.)—which in fact belongs to 1526—marks the first birthday of Mary’s son, yet it is far more likely that Henry Carey was born in 1525. Murphy has muddled the dates, saying that Henry was born in 1524 and Katherine in 1526. Rootsweb and other websites claim that Henry was born—and later married—at Hengrave Hall in Suffolk, but I can find no contemporary evidence for this, and no link between the Careys and Thomas Kytson, the wealthy cloth merchant who built Hengrave between 1525 and 1538. Nor can I find any evidence to support Claremont’s claim that there was a second daughter from the marriage called Mary.
5. L. & P.
6. Starkey: Six Wives; Bernard: Anne Boleyn; Fox. Bruce gives the date incorrectly as 1524, Erickson (Anne Boleyn) as 1522 or thereabouts, Loades (The Six Wives of Henry VIII) as 1527, while Beauclerk-Dewar and Powell assert that “the uncertain date of [Henry Carey’s] birth makes it possible, though not probable, that he had been conceived when Mary Boleyn was Henry VIII’s mistress.”
7. Hoskins; Hilliam; Waldherr; Carlton; Erickson: Anne Boleyn, The First Elizabeth; Denny: Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard; Tunis; Jones; Hart; Fox; Stella Fletcher; Bernard: The King’s Reformation. Warnicke (The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn) claims the son was the King’s child, on the grounds that Mary had been Henry’s mistress in 1525.
8. Hackett.
9. Rex: Henry VIII.
10. Starkey: Six Wives; Wilkinson: Mary Boleyn.
11. Jones.
12. Powell.
13. Hoskins.
14. Doran.
15. Martienssen.
16. L. & P.; Douglas Richardson, in a letter to the author; Levin.
17. Michael Clark; Sergeant.
18. Warnicke: “Anne Boleyn’s Childhood.”
19. V. C.
20. Wilkinson: Mary Boleyn.
21. Cf. Plowden: The Other Boleyn Girl.
22. L. & P.; Aungier.
23. It is clear that Hale was not referring to Henry Carey being banished from the court because the boy was “an idiot,” as Erickson claims (Anne Boleyn); there is no evidence whatsoever for this.
24. L. & P.
25. Bernard: Anne Boleyn.
26. Mattingly.
27. L. & P.
28. Hoskins; Varlow: The Lady Penelope.
29. Hoskins: Lady Antonia Fraser’s views regarding the Careys’ paternity and Anthony Hoskins’s paper.
30. Rex: Henry VIII; Starkey: The Reign of Henry VIII.
31. Bagley.
32. L. & P.
33. If the landowner had no son, his property went to his legitimate brothers or nephews (Barbara Harris).
34. Barbara Harris.
35. For example, Wilkinson: Mary Boleyn; Hoskins.
36. Murphy; Harleian mss. Hart gives the date incorrectly as
1532.
37. Hoskins; L’Estrange.
38. Hoskins.
39. Wilkinson: Mary Boleyn.
40. See Weir, The Lady in the Tower, for a fuller discussion.
41. Wilkinson: Mary Boleyn.
42. For a fuller discussion of the subject of Henry’s alleged impotence in 1536, see Weir: The Lady in the Tower.
43. Wilkinson: Mary Boleyn.
44. Hoskins.
45. Murphy.
46. Hoskins.
47. Murphy.
48. V. C.
49. Denny: Katherine Howard.
50. Ibid.; Hoskins; Hart.
51. Hoskins: Lady Antonia Fraser’s views regarding the Careys’ paternity and Anthony Hoskins’s paper.
52. For example, Loades: Henry VIII: Court, Church and Conflict; Fraser.
53. For this dictionary, see Varlow: “Sir Francis Knollys’s Latin Dictionary: New Evidence for Katherine Carey,” The Lady Penelope.
54. Ibid.; Croft and Hearn.
55. Croft and Hearn.
56. Diana Scarisbrick.
57. Varlow: The Lady Penelope.
58. Varlow: “Sir Francis Knollys’s Latin Dictionary: New Evidence for Katherine Carey.”
59. Private collection, on loan to Shakespeare’s Globe, London.
60. Varlow: The Lady Penelope.
61. Ives; he asserts that the affair ended in or before 1526 and that Henry Carey was Mary’s first child.
62. Varlow: The Lady Penelope.
63. Ibid.
64. Ibid.
65. Hughes.
66. Hoskins: Lady Antonia Fraser’s views regarding the Careys’ paternity and Anthony Hoskins’s paper.
67. Wilkinson (Mary Boleyn) has suggested that a miniature attributed to Levina Teerlinc of Lady Katherine Grey with her son, Edward Seymour, at Belvoir Castle, Rutland, is in fact a likeness of Katherine Carey, but the sitter in that portrait is clearly the same lady as depicted in another Teerlinc miniature in the Victoria and Albert Museum, whose identification as Katherine Grey is based on a very early inscription on the back. Moreover, she has a circular miniature of her husband, Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, attached by a ribbon to her bodice.
68. By, for example, Warnicke: The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn.
69. Varlow: “Sir Francis Knollys’s Latin Dictionary: New Evidence for Katherine Carey”; Jones.
70. The Lady Penelope.
71. The Complete Peerage; Dictionary of National Biography; Gerald Paget; Hoskins; Jones.
72. Cited by Beauclerk-Dewar and Powell; see their book for Perrot, also Turvey; Barnwell.
73. L. & P.
74. Beauclerk-Dewar and Powell.
