References & Background Notes

Notes of particular interest are in bold.

The historical novel that sparked off this research is The Other Boleyn Girl, by Philippa Gregory, Harper Collins, London, 2001. Of the references at the end of the book, most of them have been read by myself, and notes from those that refer to Mary’s and Henry’s affair are summarised below.

Anne Boleyn, Mary Louise Bruce, Pan Books, London, 1972, British Library Shelfmark X.708.12609.

Page 10: Mary Boleyn was born about 1504, George about 1503, and Anne was “the youngest”.

Page 15: Mary was initially in the Court of the Archduchess of Austria.

Page 23: “Warm hearted and ductile, Mary made the mistake of scattering her favours too widely and making her affairs too public. It was one thing to be the King’s Mistress; quite another to be known to be at everyone’s disposal. Even at the lascivious French Court there was a code of discretion; Mary had offended it. She was either sent or withdrawn hastily to England.”

Page 24: [Marriage to William Carey] “It was a sorry match for a Boleyn but Mary had spoiled her chances for a good one.”

Page 65: “[King Henry] also considered making [FitzRoy, Henry’s son by Elizabeth Blount] his heir. Creating him Duke of Richmond in 1525 at the age of six, he gave him Henry VII’s title and a household larger than Princess Mary’s…”

Page 101: [After Carey’s death in 1528] “William Carey’s … offices reverted ‘in the King’s gift’. The King generously distributed these sources of income and Mary, his widow, was left destitute. Despite their relationship of several years, Henry felt no lingering affection, no obligation; he scarcely even remembered Mary.”

Page 105: Eleanor Carey, William Carey’s sister, a Nun at a convent, confessed to Wolsey to having two illegitimate children by two priests, as well as an affair with a third man.

Tudor England, John Guy, OUP, 1988.

Page 116: “Henry may have had a child by … Mary Boleyn”.

Page 117: Accepts Henry’s consanguinity with Mary Boleyn, in consequence of the relationship with Anne, Mary’s sister.

The Tudor Court, David Loades, Batsford, 1986; seen at Richmond Reference Library, November 7, 2001.

Only mention that is useful is: A divorce was prepared against Anne Boleyn based on “consanguinity” with her sister Mary.

My deduction is that consanguinity would have only been provable in court if there had been children attributable to King Henry. In other words, this strongly suggests that it was, or would be, believed and accepted that Mary’s children were Henry’s.

Henry VIII and His Queens, David Loades, Sutton, 2000.

Page 21: Refers to the affair, but doubts children were Henry’s. No reason given.

Page 26: Mary was “probably the elder” [with respect to Anne] by two years.

1994 Edition:

Page 34: “William Carey received generous Royal grants every year from 1522 to 1525, which is suggestive.”

Pages 33-4: Gives dates of Henry’s and Mary’s affair as 1519-1525.

Sex In Elizabethan England, Alan Haynes, Sutton, 1997.

Four references to Mary Boleyn, including her affair with Henry.

Anne Boleyn, E.W. Ives, Basil Blackwell, 1987.

Pages 17-20: Long discussion of the relative ages of the Boleyn children, and argues conclusively that Mary was older than Anne, p.20.

Page 20: “Mary… was for a time Henry VIII’s mistress. Of this there can be no doubt, despite efforts to prove to the contrary” [my italics – HAF]. “Perhaps Henry realised that it was much safer to risk begetting children whose paternity could be denied than bastards who only emphasised his lack of legitimate heirs.”

Page 39: Mary Carey at the Field of The Cloth of Gold.

Page 122: Eleanor Carey, sister-in-law of Mary, was a nun who had had two children by priests.

Page 287, note 45: “Tree ring dating, however, shows that the surviving portrait of William Carey must be a later copy, or even an enlargement of a miniature.” Suggests the artist of the original was one of the Horneboltes of Ghent, Gerald the father, or his children Lucas or Susanna; refers to J. Fletcher, A Portrait of William Carey, and Lord Hunsdon’s Long Gallery, Burlington Magazine, 123, (1981), p.304.

The History of England, John Lingard, Vol. IV, 1849. British Library Shelfmark RB 23 A17107 & 9595.d.1.

Pages 474-475: To Elizabeth Tailbois succeeded in the King’s affections Mary Boleyn… She retained for some time the fickle heart of her lover¹, but Henry at length treated her as he had treated so many others²… Footnote 1: …repeated the assertions of Cardinal Pole in his private letter to Henry in 1535: Didicertat (Anne Boleyn), opinor, si nulla alia ex re, vel sororis suae exemplo, quam cito te concubinarum tuarum satietas caperet – Soror ejus est, quam tu violasti primum, et dui postea concubinae loco apud te habuisti -. Ab eodem pontifice magna vi contendebas, ut tibi liceret ducere sororem ejus, quae concubina tua fuisset. – Pol. f. lxxvi, lxxvii. This is very poor Latin, which translates as follows: Put aside earnestly Anne Boleyn, I say. If for no other reason than for the sake of her sister whom I proclaim a sufficiency of mistresses captured you. She [Anne] is the sister of her [Mary] whom in the first place you violated and secondly you kept [Mary] by you afterwards in the place of mistress. You contended with great force with the Pope so that you would be allowed to marry the sister [Anne] of her [Mary] who had been your mistress. Tr: R. Jeffreys. Footnote 2: There is, however, reason to believe that he provided a husband for Mary Boleyn. At her marriage with William Carey, of the Privy Chamber, the King honoured the ceremony with his presence, and made his offering at the alter. “Saturday (31^st January, 1520/21 at the marriage of M. Care and Mare Bulleyn, vi s viii, d”. See extract from The Household Book in Sir Frederic Madden’s privy purse expenses of Queen Mary, App. p. 282. The date is of importance.

The Earlier Tudors, J.D. Mackie,OUP, 1952, seen at Richmond Reference Library, November 7, 2001.

Page 323: States that Henry had “already possessed” Mary Boleyn and her mother. [Much later, Henry denied possessing Elizabeth Howard Boleyn, the mother, at the time of Anne of Cleves’ divorce. – HAF]

Page 325: Strongly implies that Mary was more important than Henry’s other mistresses, and that she was on a par with Elizabeth Blount, whose son Henry FitzRoy was later created Duke of Richmond. [Elizabeth was unmarried, and Henry FitzRoy was King Henry’s first male offspring, so it is easier to see why he was acknowledged as the King’s son. Henry VIII would have needed Henry FitzRoy much more that Henry Carey, Mary Boleyn Carey’s son, because FitzRoy was much older, and later King Henry had a legitimate male heir, Edward, later Edward VI. So Henry Carey was not really needed as an “illegitimate male heir” who could later possibly be legitimised. – HAF]

The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Antonia Fraser, 1988.

Page 101: States categorically that Mary Carey’s children were not Henry’s, but gives no reason, and only states that the affair was over by the time they were born. Her logic is that Henry would have been just as glad to have an (illegitimate) male heir in Henry Carey as he had been in Henry FitzRoy (Elizabeth’s illegitimate son by King Henry). But this is unconvincing; two illegitimate male heirs could have been no more use to Henry than one. [See notes in reference above, J.D. Mackie.]

Tudor Women, Queens and Commoners, Alison Plowden, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979.

Page 42: Referring to the Court of Francis I, “Rarely did any maid or wife leave that court chaste” – Sieur de Brantôme.

Page 45: King “Henry was notoriously stingy towards his mistresses.”

Page 76: Canon Law made no distinction between a licit and an illicit sexual connection, so Henry’s affair with Mary Boleyn made Anne Boleyn his sister-in-law.

The House of Tudor, Alison Plowden, Sutton, 1998.

Page 263: Mary Boleyn’s grandson, Robert Carey, attended Queen Elizabeth on her deathbed in 1603 (at Richmond Palace), and was waiting under the window to receive the Royal Signet taken from the dead Queen’s hand, to carry it on wild horseback to the waiting King James in Scotland. [Robert Carey was first cousin to our ancestor Anne Knowles, who married Thomas West, Lord Delaware.]

Henry VIII, J.J. Scarisbrick, Yale English Monarchs, Yale University Press, 1997.

Page 148: Offers a contemporary eye witness account from a friar that Henry Carey was indeed “the King’s Bastard” and quotes in footnote 2: “L.P., viii, 567”, which (page 531) is State Papers of Henry VIII, Folio Volumes (S.P.2), Folio Series L, viii, 567. Warnicke gives this reference as: Letters & Papers, Foreign & Domestic of the Reign of Henry VIII, Ed. J. S. Brewer, J. Gairdner, and R. H. Brodie, 21 Volumes, London, 1862-1932. Available at the PRO.

The Reign of Henry VIII, David Starkey, Collins & Brown, 1991.

Page 71: An unfinished portrait of William Carey; page 6: artist unknown, from a private collection.

Henry VIII A European Court in England, Ed. David Starkey, Collins & Brown, 1991. In an article by David Starkey himself, he states, p.57, under the (second) portrait of William Carey:

William Carey (c.1500-1528), a distant cousin through the Beauforts, became keeper of Greenwich Palace in 1526. A gentleman of the Privy Chamber in 1519, he married Mary Boleyn in 1520 and when Anne replaced her sister as the King’s mistress, seemed destined for greatness. But in 1528 he died of the sweating sickness.

This painting is identified by an Elizabethan copy which includes the sitter’s coat of arms. The copy was made after the original had been subjected to overpainting. Instead of a book, the copy shows him holding a pair of gloves and the dress becomes Elizabethan. These changes, removed from the present picture when it was cleaned, were made because (as the cleaning also revealed) the original painting had been left unfinished. Finally the cleaning uncovered an underpainting which resembles Holbein’s drawing of ‘M Souch’ [Zouche], p.101.

This underpainting, and the fact that the date of the sitter’s death coincided with Holbein’s departure from England at the end of his first visit, must lead to speculation that the painting was his, but despite the sensitive rendering of the face, an unknown French or Flemish artist (though not a Horenbout) cannot be ruled out. Artist Unknown, 16^th Cent., Oil on Panel, 790x660, private collection, and quotes the reference J. Fletcher, A Portrait of William Carey and Lord Hunsdon’s Long Gallery, Burlington Magazine, 123, (1981), p.304.

The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Alison Weir, Pimlico, 1997.

Page 134: Henry Carey, in 1533 (age 7) claimed he was “our Sovereign Lord the King’s son”. [Clearly he was prompted by someone.]

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