The fact that Anne Boleyn kept Henry’s attention, and kept him faithful for six years is astonishing. But finally, on 25 January 1533, the whole charade came to an end, and Henry secretly married his pregnant mistress. It was not a grand, triumphant wedding but a quick, secret ceremony in a room at Whitehall. Once it became known, it would not be popular with the common people, especially not with the women. Anne was the first lady in English history to go from king’s lover to Queen of England. (Although Edward IV married Elizabeth Woodville for love in 1464, it is unlikely that she physically became his mistress before the wedding. Anne was already pregnant at her wedding, so there can be no doubt. I have discounted earlier examples in history, from when marriage was not clearly defined.) Henry had cared deeply for Katherine of Aragon at the beginning of their marriage and his affairs with Bessie Blount and Mary Boleyn had been of some duration – yet it was surely Anne who was the great love of his life.
That he made this commitment shows Henry’s attitude to love and marriage. He was, by this stage, essentially a one-woman man who wanted to legitimise his relationship. Yet this was not his primary incentive; fathering a boy was incredibly important to him, and it was vital that the child be born in wedlock. Henry had still not obtained an annulment from his marriage to Katherine, but this was just an inconvenience that would be dealt with by his ministers. His second marriage was not valid in the eyes of the Catholic Church or English law, but as he was the new head of the Church in England, as well as the man who made the laws, this could be flouted. The mistress was now the wife, and the wife was just a discarded mistress who had mistakenly believed for years that she was married to the king.
By February 1533 Anne had been secretly married to the king for a month. However, the court was still unaware that it had a new queen. Now that Anne’s pregnancy would soon be obvious, she decided to announce her condition in a dramatic fashion. She shouted to a man, thought to have been Thomas Wyatt, that she had
a furious hankering to eat apples, such as she had never had in her life before … the King had told her that it was a sign that she was pregnant but she had said it was nothing of the sort.
This was apparently in front of dozens of courtiers.1 After six years, Anne had finally consummated their relationship. As queen, Anne chose ‘the most happy’ as her motto. All were awaiting the birth, convinced that this child would be a boy.
Soon, the fifteen-year-old duke of Richmond returned to England and married fourteen-year-old Mary Howard, daughter of the duke of Norfolk and first cousin to Queen Anne. They were considered approximately the right age for marriage; it was thought dangerous to consummate a marriage any younger. Legally girls could be married from the age of twelve and boys from fourteen, although the couple often did not live together until they were eighteen, and this seems to have been the plan for the young duke and duchess. Henry VIII’s grandmother, Margaret Beaufort, had been thirteen when she gave birth, shortly after her fourteen-year-old husband’s death. She bore no children during her three subsequent marriages; this was probably due to the physical damage caused by giving birth before going through puberty.
Mary Howard was a compromise choice as the king’s daughter-in-law. The Howards were now the premier family in England, after the Tudors, so she was a good match for the realm’s highest-ranking noble. Yet she was not from a foreign royal house that could potentially damage the position of Henry’s children with Anne Boleyn. Supporters of Henry’s daughter, the Lady Mary, were happy to see her half-brother marrying an English aristocrat rather than a niece of Charles V, who could have dented international support for Mary’s right to the throne. Henry had never shown any enthusiasm for the Pope’s suggestion of marrying the duke of Richmond to his half-sister.2
Mary Howard was also Anne’s first cousin, so if Mary and her young husband ever challenged the rights of Queen Anne’s children, Richmond could not automatically rely on the support of his wife’s family. Mary did not even bring a dowry; this match seems to show Queen Anne’s influence; she had secured a magnificent marriage for her cousin and friend to a man who could have wed a European princess. However, Mary was not only a Howard but also the granddaughter of the late duke of Buckingham, so had some claim to the throne herself. It was still a potentially dangerous combination.
In May 1533 Anne was crowned and became the anointed Queen of England. The archbishop of Canterbury had declared Henry’s first marriage invalid and his marriage to Anne legitimate. After a coronation, a queen was considered divinely appointed to her position. The monarchy were put there by God, and those who did not fully agree with this were aware of the treason laws; they could not even criticise the king’s choices, or, after her coronation, Queen Anne. The awe-inspiring pomp and display, plus the free wine, also ensured compliance.
Some contemporary accounts say that Anne was booed by the crowds.3 Even Henry was well aware that his subjects were unhappy with his decisions. Londoners were said to have seen the entwined initials ‘H’ and ‘A’ and shouted ‘Ha! Ha!’. Some reported comments from the crowds that included ‘The Queen’s Grace was a goggle-eyed whore’4 and the abbot of Whitby denounced her as a ‘stewed [professional] whore’, and shouted ‘God save Queen Katherine, our own righteous queen’ and that he would never take ‘that whore Nan Bullen to be Queen’.5 There were allegedly ‘too many caps on heads’6 but the Venetian ambassador praised ‘the utmost order and tranquillity of the day’7 and he had little reason to be partisan.
There is evidence to dispute mass hostility to the king’s mistress becoming the queen – no doubt her swollen belly reiterated the importance of this marriage. The coronation would have been an impressive sight by any standard and many of the king’s subjects had never seen anything like it; it had been twenty-four years since Henry and Katherine had been crowned. Few people would have dared to jeer an anointed queen, even if they had doubts as to the legitimacy of her title. The truth was probably that some people grumbled, but there was no open defiance of the king’s wishes. The people came out to enjoy the show and to see the woman for whom the country had been turned upside down.
During the coronation there were numerous references to virginity – which was ironic as the queen was heavily pregnant. Anne Boleyn was regularly linked with St Anne in the writings of the time. Now, as she was about to bear the heir to the throne, the association was with St Anne’s daughter – Mary, mother of Jesus. Many parts of the pageant tied in with this theme. There were also references to the virgin Aestrea with a long scroll: ‘Queen Anne, when thou shalt bear a new son of the King’s blood, there shall be a golden world unto thy people.’8
Boats filled the route along the Thames from Greenwich to the Tower of London four miles away. The cannons fired so much that every single pane of glass was shattered in the Tower and in nearby St Katherine’s Church. Anne wore her hair loose and flowing at the coronation, as only queens and unmarried women were permitted to do. All the monks of Westminster were to follow the new queen in her coronation procession, despite what had been done to the monks so the king could marry her.
Now that Anne Boleyn was finally in the position to which she had aspired, she was concerned that one of her maids of honour might become Henry’s mistress. As the ladies were from the highest families in the land, they were often clad in gorgeous clothes and had been raised to exhibit many of the accomplishments and skills which the king admired. They were often young and unmarried as many women semi-retired from the court when they had children. Anne was by now about thirty-two. These younger, nubile women had no baggage, and had not had to fight for years to be where they were. They would be a welcome diversion for a king who was widely perceived to be henpecked; a strong woman, especially an argumentative one, might be considered an interesting mistress, but a curse on a husband. Henry expected Anne to transform into a queen and fulfil that role – which did not involve criticising his infidelity.
There was no suggestion that Henry was unfaithful during Anne’s pregnancy. Their daughter, Elizabeth, was born on 7 September 1533. The common Christian belief of the time was that if the parents had been adulterous or promiscuous, then the children would not be healthy. This was because sexual intercourse had been designed solely for creating children, and if it was used wrongly then it would cause defects. This was especially the case if the couple had sex other than in the ‘missionary’ position. To have a healthy boy would prove their union was approved of by God. A healthy girl was better than nothing, but was hardly the sign they had been looking for.
After the announcement that England had a new queen, Henry had happily devoted himself to Anne – but this changed when the baby was born a girl. During Anne’s next pregnancy, Henry began to work his way through her maids of honour – many of whom lacked all honour and were certainly no longer maids. Having to spend all day playing cards, sewing and attending mass with women who were sneaking off to her husband at night would have been humiliating for the proud woman who had dominated the king’s thoughts for seven years. Katherine had accepted it stoically, but Anne was not known for her calm and composed nature.
In 1533 Chapuys was told that the king had always been inclined to amours.9 Henry was married to Anne, but he was not likely to change now that he had achieved his goal. In November 1534 Henry invited many women to court for the festivities and Chapuys reported that: ‘He is more given to matters of dancing and ladies than he ever was.’10 As Anne was now his wife, Henry expected her to act as such, which left a vacancy for a new mistress.
On 27 September 1534, Chapuys reported that the king
has renewed and increased the love he formerly bore to another very handsome young lady of the Court; and whereas the royal mistress, [Anne Boleyn] hearing of it, attempted to dismiss the damsel from her service, the King has been very sad, and has sent her a message to this effect: that she ought to be satisfied with what he had done for her, for, were he to commence again, he would certainly not do as much; she ought to consider where she came from and many other things of the same kind. Yet no great stress is to be laid on such words … [Anne] knows perfectly well how to deal with him.11
This woman sounds like a genuine danger to Anne’s position; she was said to be close to the Lady Mary, and Chapuys wrote that during this affair many courtiers made an extra effort to pay court to the king’s elder daughter. According to Chapuys, the handsome young lady had written Mary a letter, describing herself as ‘her true friend and devoted servant’.12 He believed that this unnamed lady was a positive influence on Henry, and that Mary’s conditions improved at this time. The relationship seems to have ended soon after. She is referred to as a previous mistress of Henry’s, but we have no further clue as to her identity. This relationship was significant enough that it was well known abroad. Charles V wrote:
It is said that the English nobles are ill-disposed towards Anne on account of her pride and the insolence and bad conduct of her brother and relations. For the same reason the King’s affection for her is less than it was. He now shows himself in love with another lady, and many nobles are assisting him in the affair.13
Chapuys did not fully agree. He replied to the emperor:
With regard to the Lady it is quite true that occasionally this king seems to be angry with her, but, as I have already observed in some of my previous dispatches, such outbreaks are merely lovers’ quarrels, of which no great notice need be taken, unless, indeed, the King’s passion for the young lady, about whom I once wrote to Your Majesty, should continue and wax stronger than it is at present … I hear from the Grand Esquire (Guildford) that upon the Lady [Anne] addressing certain remonstrances to the King, and complaining that the young lady in question did not treat her with due respect in words and deeds, the King went away in a great passion, complaining loudly [about Anne] … Rochford’s wife was dismissed from court owing to the above.14
The ‘very handsome’ young lady’s name is unfortunately not recorded in any surviving documents. Chapuys’ portrayal of the lady, both in looks and personality, is very different to his description of Jane Seymour or Bessie Blount. She was certainly one of Anne’s attendants, and to contact the Lady Mary and insult Queen Anne shows confidence; Chapuys also wrote that she had the support of many courtiers. But this level of hostility to Anne’s reign is what Chapuys wished to hear, and what he paid his informants to tell him. Therefore we can be unsure as to whether this mistress’s influence was as great as he reported it to be.
Despite Henry’s commitment to Anne, she could not accept sharing her husband’s affections. Cromwell praised ‘the great modesty and patience she [Katherine] had shown … the King being continually inclined to amours’.15 Anne did not have his first wife’s ability to turn a blind eye. In October 1534 Viscountess Rochford, Anne’s sister-in-law, was dismissed from court for conspiring against Henry’s lover. Although we do not know the details of this plot, Henry was clearly showing Anne who was in charge. At the same time, Anne lost another ally from her household when her sister, Mary, was banished for secretly marrying a commoner. Within only a year of achieving their goal, the Boleyns did not seem to be in a much better position than before.
We hear little about Mary Boleyn during the reign of her sister. We can see from the records that in November 1530 Henry gave his wife twenty pounds to retrieve a jewel from Mary. This may have been gambled during cards or could have been a family gem that Anne particularly wanted. By 1534 Mary had been a widow for six years. Perhaps her family felt that once Anne was established as queen, they would be in a stronger position to arrange a glittering match for Mary. Perhaps she refused to marry or she was simply forgotten about in the excitement over her sister’s elevation. If so, this would have been unusually short-sighted for a shrewd man like Thomas Boleyn.
In 1534 Mary secretly married William Stafford, a commoner. Her new husband was distantly related to the late duke of Buckingham and Henry’s ex-mistress, Anne Stafford, but he was not a gentleman. He had been born around 1500 in Blatherwycke, Northamptonshire, and was the second son of Sir Humphrey Stafford and Margaret Fogge, the daughter of Sir John Fogge of Ashford – minor gentry. Stafford is listed as an attendant at Queen Anne’s coronation. He may have first met Mary there, or in Kent, where his mother’s family were based, as were the Boleyns. It is most likely that they met when he was part of the group who went to Calais in 1532 to meet Francis I. She only informed her family when her pregnancy could no longer be concealed. The Boleyns would never have accepted Mary marrying so far beneath her. Anne had, on several occasions before this, used her influence with Henry to help Mary, but this was not acceptable behaviour for the sister of the Queen of England; it reflected badly on Anne and confirmed people’s opinions that Mary was a wanton who could not control herself.
Without her family’s support, Mary had to beg for help from Henry’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell. Her letter survives and is worth quoting in full.
Master secretary,
After my poor recommendations, which is smally to be regarded of me, that [I] am a poor banished creature, this shall be to desire you to be good to my poor husband and to me. I am sure that it is not unknown to you the high displeasure that both he and I have, both of the king’s highness and the queen’s grace, by reason of our marriage without their knowledge, wherein we both do yield ourselves faulty, and acknowledge that we did not well to be so hasty nor so bold, without their knowledge. But one thing, good master Secretary, consider; that he was young, and love overcame reason. And for my part I saw so much honesty in him, that I loved him as well as he did me; and was in bondage, and glad I was to be at liberty; so that, for my part, I saw that all the world did set so little by me, and he so much, that I thought I could take no better way but to take him and forsake all other ways, and to live a poor honest life with him; and so I do put no doubts but we should, if we might once be so happy to recover the King’s gracious favour and the Queen’s. For well I might a had a greater man of birth and a higher, but I ensure you I could never a had one that should a loved me so well nor a more honest man; and besides that, he is both come of an ancient stock, and again as meet (if it was his grace’s pleasure) to do the King service, as any young gentleman in his court.
Therefore good master secretary, this shall be my suit to you, that, for the love that well I know you do bear to all my blood, though, for my part, I have not deserved it but smally, by reason of my vile conditions, as to put my husband to the king’s grace that he may do his duty as all other gentlemen do. And, good master secretary, sue for us to the king’s highness, and beseech his highness, which ever was wont to take pity, to have pity on us; and that it will please his grace of his goodness to speak to the queen’s grace for us; for, so far as I can perceive, her grace is so highly displeased with us both that, without the king be so good lord to us as to withdraw his rigour and sue for us, we are never likely to recover her grace’s favour: which is too heavy to bear. And seeing there is no remedy, for God’s sake, help us, for we have been now a quarter of a year married, I thank God, and too late now to call that again; wherefore of is the most alms to help. But if I were at my liberty and might choose, I ensure you, master Secretary, for my little time, I have tried so much honesty to be in him, that I had rather beg my bread with him than to be the greatest Queen in Christendom. And I believe verily he is in the same case with me; for I believe verily he would no forsake me to be a king.
Therefore, good master secretary, seeing we are so well together and does intend to live so honest a life, though it be but poor, show part of your goodness to us as well as you do to all the world besides; for I promise you, you have the name to help all them that hath need, and amongst all your suitors I dare be bold to say that you have no matter more to be pitied than ours; and therefore, for God’s sake, be good to us, for in you is all our trust.
And I beseech you, good master secretary, pray my lord my father, and my lady to be good to us, and to let me have their blessings and my husband their good will; and I will never desire more of them. Also, I pray you, desire my lord of Norfolk and my lord my brother to be good to us. I dare not write to them, they are so cruel against us. But if with any pain I could take with my life I might win their good wills, I promise you there is no child living would venture more than I. And so I pray you to report by me, and you shall find my writing true, and in all points which I may please them in I shall be ready to obey them nearest my husband, whom I am bound to; to whom I most heartily beseech you to be good unto, which, for my sake, is a poor banished man for an honest and godly cause. And seeing that I have read in old books that some, for as just causes, have by kings and queens been pardoned by the suit of good folks, I trust it shall be our chance, through your good help, to come to the same; as knoweth the (Lord) God, who send you health and heart’s ease. Scribbled with her ill hand, who is your poor, humble suitor, always to command,
Mary Stafford16
If Mary ever expressed these sentiments to her sister, it is no wonder she was banished. Mary had disobeyed the queen’s wishes and was declaring that she was happier than Anne, despite Anne’s crown and, technically at least, Anne having all that she had set out to achieve. This letter depicts an articulate and passionate woman, not the ‘runt of the litter’ as she has sometimes been portrayed. Anne did not take Mary back as her lady-in-waiting and so was without this potentially useful ally at the time that she needed friends most.
Mary appears only to have argued with her family when it came to her choice of men. A woman who chose to marry for love in an age where this was considered sheer madness was either very brave or very stupid. One married to ensure that one’s children would have enough income not only to keep them in the style to which the nobility were accustomed, but also to ensure that they never had to work. Marrying below one’s station could cause problems for one’s descendants for generations. This determination to be with the one she loved (or inability to control her lust), and her friendly and easy-going manner may have seemed endearing and refreshing to Henry, who lived in a court of vultures. If so, this was only during their affair; later, he had even less sympathy than Anne for Mary when she got herself into trouble.
The timing was upsetting for the Boleyns. Now Anne was finally crowned and the mother of the king’s child, Mary could have made a magnificent match. The Boleyns had climbed to the top through good marriages – she had just taken the whole family down a peg. They had all been benefiting from Anne’s marriage, but the new Mrs Stafford was now in financial trouble. Her long, eloquent appeal to Cromwell was to no avail. Cromwell insisted that Thomas Boleyn should help, but he refused. Eventually, Anne was the first to relent. She sent Mary a golden cup and some money. However, there is nothing to suggest that the sisters ever saw each other again.
After her dismissal, Mary seems to have settled down to country life and very little more is mentioned of her. She probably lived at the family residence in Rochford, Essex for the rest of her life. There is no mention of her visiting her doomed brother and sister; no mention of her writing to them or to her parents about them. At a distance from the court, Mary was safe from accusations of intrigue and being arrested along with her siblings – like Bessie Blount, she was living away from the seat of power – and thus had ceased to be of any consequence. Only recently have people thought to research this woman, so attractive she enticed two kings; so close to the centre of power, yet seemingly indifferent to it.
Mary and William Stafford are said to have had a boy in 1535, who died as a child.17 There are also rumours of a daughter named Anne, perhaps named defiantly after her aunt. Banished to the countryside, the couple lived a happy and simple life away from the chaos of court. Her pursuit of love rather than riches made her the most successful of the Boleyns – she managed to survive Henry’s wrath against the rest of her kin.
The contrast between the Boleyn sisters was never clearer than when Henry allowed Anne to be executed on phoney allegations of adultery. Mary and her husband, banished from court, avoided all the schemes that Mary’s two siblings were fatally the victims of. Mary, like her mother and father, is not known to have made any contact with Anne or George after their arrests; it would have been foolhardy to have done so. Both Boleyn girls had gone against the social norms when arranging their marriages – Anne by aiming too high, Mary by aiming too low – but it was very clear who had received the happier ending.
In April 1538 Elizabeth Boleyn died and her husband followed her in 1539. The Staffords benefited somewhat from the deaths of Mary’s parents and siblings. Although Mary no longer had what was left of the family’s influence to rely on, she was heir to many of their possessions. She inherited these, including those that had been in jointure to her sister-in-law, Jane, Lady Rochford, and the lands of Mary’s paternal grandmother, Margaret Butler. Mary died on 19 July 1543. Her husband benefited little from her inheritance as the majority went to her son, Henry Carey. Nevertheless, Mary was able to leave her husband several manors around Rochford, Essex, where they had settled.
This marriage gave Stafford great opportunities for advancement, even after his sister-in-law’s fall. He was knighted on 23 September 1545 towards the end of Henry VIII’s reign. He had earlier been given minor positions at court; in 1540 he was made a gentleman pensioner; in 1541 he became an esquire of the body, and during Edward VI’s reign he was a standard bearer. He continued his military career, fighting in France in 1544 and in Scotland the following year, where he served under Edward Seymour, earl of Hertford and the uncle of the young Prince of Wales. This connection helped him progress at court when Seymour took control of the Council during the early years of Edward VI’s reign. Stafford was also acquainted with Lord Clinton, the husband of the late Bessie Blount, who he accompanied to France in 1551 to attend the christening of a French prince. His Protestant beliefs would have brought him closer to both these men.
Stafford became a Member of Parliament, along with his stepson, Baron Hunsdon, and managed to keep his position after the fall of Edward Seymour, ingratiating himself with the new duke of Northumberland. He later became lord of Chebsey. He married his kinswoman Dorothy Stafford, the daughter of Henry Stafford, 1st Baron Stafford, within a year of Mary’s death, and had five children by her. In March 1554, early into Queen Mary’s reign, he took his wife and several relatives to Geneva, Switzerland, where John Calvin was based, and other English religious refugees followed. His son’s godfather was Calvin himself. Stafford died on 5 May 1556 in Geneva. His wife returned to England after his death, with her children, despite John Calvin’s insistence that the children remained with him. Dorothy Stafford served Queen Elizabeth for forty years.
Anne Boleyn’s line died out with her virgin daughter, but Mary’s descendants prospered. She is an ancestor of Winston Churchill, Charles Darwin, Vita Sackville-West and Thomas West, Baron de la Warre, who Delaware State in the U.S.A. is named after. Diana, Princess of Wales, and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the wife of George VI are also descended from her. Anne Boleyn may be famous as the mother of Elizabeth I, but Mary’s descendants include Elizabeth II.
Most of the king’s mistresses had been the queen’s ladies. Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour and Catherine Howard had all been serving their predecessors when they had caught Henry’s eye. Anne Stafford, Jane Popincourt, Bessie Blount, Mary Boleyn and Elizabeth Carew all served the first Queen Katherine, and Mary Shelton and the ‘handsome young lady’ served the first Queen Anne; Anne Bassett and Katherine Willoughby served more than one of his queens. Anne Boleyn does not seem to have expected the king to be unfaithful. This situation could, understandably, be very awkward for both wife and mistress. Different queens reacted to these challenging circumstances in different ways. Henry was no longer so attractive – by 1535, we know he had a fifty-four-inch waist. But there were still many benefits to being close to the king.
In this year, a French admiral was the guest of honour at a court celebration. Apparently, Admiral De Brion was talking to the queen and realised that he did not have her full attention as she was looking about the hall. She then burst out laughing, though apparently with tears in her eyes. The admiral was shocked, and asked: ‘How now, Madam! Are you amusing yourself at my expense or what?’ Anne explained, ‘He went to fetch your secretary, but he met a lady, who made him forget the matter!’18 Anne clearly felt humiliated by her husband’s attentions to other women and did not hide her emotions. This was the normal situation for the wife of a prince. Katherine of Aragon had been raised as a princess and had felt sure that she would remain the first lady in the kingdom, however many lovers Henry had. But Anne was now in a very different position and her ego was used to Henry’s absolute devotion. For the new queen, it was a bitter blow.
The ‘handsome young lady’ seems to have been forgotten by Henry within months, but it was clear that sooner or later he would begin an affair with another woman and it was important that, unlike the last mistress, this woman would not be pushing for improved relations with Katherine and Mary. Anne must now have been very concerned about the influence Henry’s lovers could have over him. Detested by many at court, with most of Christendom insisting that she was merely Henry’s mistress and many ladies hoping to oust her from her position, it is unsurprising that she was described at this time as bad-tempered and unpredictable. Henry had proved once that he was willing to discard his wife for another woman – and Anne, daughter of an Englishman, would be far easier to discard than Katherine, daughter of Spain had been. A dangerous precedent had been set. In February 1535 Anne was once again pregnant and sexually unavailable, and Henry was attracted to the perfect candidate to overthrow the queen.19
On 25 February 1535 Chapuys wrote: ‘The young lady who was lately in the King’s favour is so no longer. There has succeeded to her place a cousin german [first cousin] of the concubine, daughter of the present governess of the Princess.’20 (This could possibly refer to Elizabeth Carew, who was both a first cousin of Anne Boleyn’s and the daughter of Mary’s governess, Margaret Bryan. Elizabeth has been linked to Henry in other documents. However, Chapuys later makes it clear that it is ‘Mistress Shelton’, daughter of Anne Shelton and the woman in charge of running Mary’s household, who he was referring to.) This was Mary Shelton, daughter of Anne, Thomas Boleyn’s sister, and Sir John Shelton, commander of Princess Elizabeth’s guard. The family had a respectable lineage. The Shelton line could be traced back centuries; Nicholas de Shelton had been involved in the signing of the Magna Carta and conspiring against King John. For many years it was thought that Chapuys, in his writings, was referring to Margaret, or Madge, Shelton. Mary did have both a sister and a sister-in-law called Margaret; the confusion was probably caused by how the ‘y’ was written, making ‘Mary’ look like ‘Marg’ for Margaret. However, it is clear from two contemporary sources which name is correct, and that it was Mary who was Henry’s lover.*
Mary Shelton’s dates of birth and death are disputed. She was probably born around 1520 and died around 1570, though she could have been born as early as 1512 and Remley suggests she died in 1560. When she married in 1557/8 she was still fertile, indicating a date of birth no earlier than 1520. Although she may have been fertile in her forties, marriages were not usually contracted for women of this age unless they were particularly wealthy. This would make her at most fifteen when she had her affair with the king. Her second husband is thought to have been born around 1528,21 so an earlier birth date is unlikely.
Mary had nine siblings: three brothers and six sisters. Along with John, Anne, Ralph, Gabriella, Elizabeth, Margaret, Thomas and Emma, she was brought up at Shelton Hall, Shelton, Norfolk, which is now in ruins. Mary’s parents married in 1512, but we do not know when she was born. She did not marry until around 1545 so was probably very young in 1533 when she became a maid of honour, possibly the minimum age of twelve or thirteen. Her close friends at court, Mary, duchess of Richmond and Lady Margaret Douglas, were born around 1520 and so we can assume that Mary Shelton was of a similar age.
The Sheltons were some of the many enjoying the benefits of being closely related to the queen. Mary and her family were therefore indebted to Queen Anne and would hopefully support her rather than put forward a rival. This is why some historians think it highly convenient that Henry’s new mistress was a member of the Boleyn family and that perhaps Anne herself arranged for her cousin to try to attract the king, to lure him away from someone who was more of a threat. This is a possibility – the reformers were probably concerned, and rightly so, about the influence the conservative ‘handsome young lady’ could have on Henry and so may have tried to counter this.
If this was true, it was a dangerous game to play. Mary was an individual, not merely a member of her family, and could have been dazzled by the possibilities on offer. Anne’s extended family were also disappointed that they were not receiving greater financial benefit from the royal marriage, and may have felt that Henry would be more generous to the family if he was infatuated with a more compliant member of it. If this was arranged, Anne was unlikely to have been involved. It does not seem to have been in the queen’s character to hope her husband would become attracted to another woman, especially one who was very like her, but twenty years younger. Her passionate and furious responses to Henry’s infidelity with the unnamed lady and Jane Seymour show us that she wished to be the only woman in Henry’s heart. Anne declared to Henry that ‘whenever she hears of his loving another woman but her, she is broken-hearted’.22
Although they were cousins, this did not mean that their families were allies – not all Boleyns supported the queen and so she could not rely on Mary Shelton’s loyalty. When Anne was arrested, five women were chosen to be her attendants in the hope they would report her words, so they could be twisted into evidence against her. Among these five were Mary’s mother, Lady Shelton, and Anne’s aunt by marriage, Lady Boleyn. Anne complained to Kingston, the lieutenant of the Tower, that it was ‘a great unkindness in the King to set about me as I never loved’. Kingston replied that they had been chosen by the king because he thought them ‘honest and good women’ and not out of malevolence.23 We should not, however, tar Mary with the same brush as her mother – she was not among the women selected.
It has also been alleged that the duke of Norfolk – always ready to offer up one of his relatives to the king – was concerned that the Howards were losing their influence and so tutored Mary Shelton to attract the king. This is almost as unlikely; Mary was Anne’s first cousin through the Boleyn side, not the Howard, and so he would have had less to gain. Yet the duke was a religious conservative and came to dislike his niece. He was not gaining as much as he would have liked from Anne’s position; he once called her a ‘grande putaine’ (great whore).24 Therefore, he may have been part of a group hoping to keep the king happy with another woman, who was the close friend of his daughter, Mary, duchess of Richmond and was a part of the Howards’ network. It is likely that Henry noticed the attractive newcomer on his own.
Lady Shelton was in a difficult position, running the household which included the Princess Elizabeth, heir to the throne, and her half-sister, the Lady Mary, who had been stripped of her title and inheritance but could still be reinstated. John and Anne Shelton tried not to offend anyone, while still reaping the benefits of being the aunt and uncle of the queen. Anne Shelton was criticised by the duke of Norfolk and by Queen Anne for treating the Lady Mary with too much respect. In 1535 there were rumours of a plot to poison Mary, and Chapuys told Lady Shelton that if anything were to happen, she would be implicated. Had Mary Shelton kept Henry’s attention, she could have been a serious threat, as she had access to both the king’s daughters. It is likely that Anne found it difficult to keep her temper around Mary once she knew the truth about the girl’s relationship with her husband – and Anne could make her ladies’ lives very difficult if she chose to.
Mary seems to have been a beautiful girl; she was probably only a teenager when she was Henry’s lover. Christina, duchess of Milan, was famed for her beauty and the king considered marrying her in 1538. In the reports, Christina was described as ‘very high of stature … a goodly personage of body, and competent of beauty, of favour excellent, soft of speech, and very gentle in countenance … she resembleth much one Mistress Shelton, that sometime waited on Queen Anne’.25 According to Chapuys, this affair lasted from February 1535 for six months.
Mary seems to have happily accepted the role of mistress and not pressed for more. Yet Henry viewed his relationships as private, and was not always the best target for a gold-digger. He did give presents, titles and grants of land to his lovers’ relatives – but never enough to sustain them. It is even possible, with the exception of the women he married, that the gifts given to his lovers’ families were earned by their hard work for the king – not solely because their relative had attracted him. It was only the unattainable Anne Boleyn who came close to achieving the level of influence and financial standing that was normal on the Continent for a king’s paramour, and her refusal to accept just these gifts and to hold out for marriage led indirectly to her death. Yet Henry was, at times, exceptionally generous to his lovers – in 1532 he became the first king of England to give his mistress, Anne Boleyn, a title, and he was the first to give a dukedom to his illegitimate son. But if a woman was hoping to snare Henry now, she would go for a crown. Other women would be more ambitious than Mary Shelton, as Anne would soon discover.
Chapuys also hinted at other sexual relationships that the king was conducting. In the summer of 1535 the king stayed three nights at Wulf Hall, the home of the Seymour family – although it is unlikely that he began his pursuit of Jane Seymour at this point. Throughout this period, the most influential woman in the king’s life was still his wife. He no longer wanted her to play the part of political adviser, as he had allowed during their courtship, but she was still a force to be reckoned with. We know of one argument between his spouse and his sweetheart. Apparently
a book of prayers which belonged to one of her maids of honour called Mistress Mary Shelton [was] presented unto her highness wherein were written certain idle poems … the queen her majesty, calling her before her presence, wonderfully rebuked her that would permit such wanton toys in her book of prayers … and upon this occasion commanded the mother of the maidens to have a more vigilant eye to her charge.26
It may not have been just notes in her prayer book that Anne wanted the mother of the maids to watch her for. Yet Anne and Henry had sat passing love notes to each other in mass before they married. Perhaps this was Anne’s real concern – that Mary’s poetry was for the king.
This flirtatious behaviour, the type that one can imagine the young Anne Boleyn having indulged in, was no longer appreciated by the queen – at least not in others. She had not only become embittered from eight years of constantly trying to hang on to her power, she was now only thirty-four in an era where ninety per cent of English people died before they reached forty – and life expectancy was thirty. She was aware of the danger that alluring young maids of honour could pose for their ageing queen. Anne, like her predecessor, tried to ensure that her ladies were respectable and devoutly religious.
The ladies-in-waiting to Katherine of Aragon had been expected to pray with her for hours every day; Anne Boleyn’s attendants did this, but were also kept busy sewing for the poor. Secular poetry, in particular tales of romance, was frowned upon as an improper use of a woman’s time and a possible tool for corruption. Thomas Wyatt had already broken down some of these taboos, but tales of past kings and queens and religious writings remained the only fully accepted writing at court. We must judge Mary and her group by the standards of their time and it was highly controversial, and potentially dangerous, to be writing such verses.
The group of courtiers Mary associated with were well-educated in the humanist tradition, reformers who debated theology and wrote secular poetry. If Mary was the flighty young woman she has sometimes been portrayed as, she would never have been accepted into the social circle of scholars and poets. Her two closest friends at court were Lady Mary Howard and Lady Margaret Douglas. These women were socially superior to Mary – Margaret Douglas was the king’s niece, the daughter of his sister Margaret, and Mary Howard was the duchess of Richmond and Somerset, the daughter of the duke of Norfolk, the king’s daughter-in-law, and another first cousin of Queen Anne. These three friends were very popular at court, but their friendship did put each other at risk – all three women liked romance. Margaret Douglas was brought up at the English court, and as she was now at a good age to marry, she could be a useful diplomatic pawn for her royal uncle. Mary Howard, who may have caught the king’s eye later in his reign, was a very similar character to Queen Anne. These women were heavily involved in the writing of what is now called ‘the Devonshire MS’, which was once wrongly believed to have belonged to Anne Boleyn.
In this book, the earl of Surrey, his sister Mary Howard, Margaret Douglas, the poet Thomas Wyatt and several others wrote verses, as it was passed around the court, and in particular between the Howard kin. You were to read and enjoy the poems, and then add a composition of your own or a poem you liked that was not already there. Mary Shelton was by far the most industrious writer in the book and seems also to have played the role of editor. Her writing shows an articulate and forthright woman, defending her gender.
Mary copied into the manuscript poems by Chaucer, but not verbatim. She adjusted them, often putting a female slant on them, several of them critical of men who boast of their affairs with women, and of the double standard which meant that the woman was shamed by the liaison and the man was not. She may well have been related to John Skelton, poet laureate to Henry VII and tutor to Henry VIII. His origins are unclear, but on Skelton’s retirement he settled in Diss, Norfolk, near the Sheltons’ lands. If she was, then there was a family tradition of poetry.
This shows that Mary Shelton, unlike other of Henry’s lovers such as Jane Seymour and Catherine Howard, was both literate and literary. This love of poetry seems to have also been a love of poets; it is thought that Mary’s paramours included at least two of the prominent bards of the age, Thomas Clere and Henry Howard, earl of Surrey.27 The group’s writing seems to have been more than an enjoyable educational pursuit – it was also used to convey messages of lust and love from one member of the group to another. Mary Shelton appears to have copied into the manuscript a series of poems written between Margaret Douglas and Thomas Howard while they were both being held in the Tower of London, charged with illegally contracting marriage.
Mary Shelton was around sixteen years old when she attracted the king. Another man admired her, who had also fallen for the allure of her elder cousin – Thomas Wyatt. Wyatt has gone down in history not only for his innovative secular poetry but also for his pursuit of Anne Boleyn, which he had to swiftly end when the king showed his desire for her. He wrote many poems about ‘Brunet’, who is widely believed to have been Anne. In 1536 Wyatt was arrested along with Anne and was lucky to escape being executed as one of her alleged lovers.
In the Devonshire manuscript, there is a record of another woman Wyatt pursued: Mary Shelton. He wrote a poem, the first letter from each stanza spelling out SHELTUN, as he once had done for ANNA. In this he writes that he is ‘suffering in sorrow’ and wishes for the woman to ‘ease his pain’, but although he is being rejected, he ends each stanza with ‘to serve and suffer still I must’. A reply was written directly under the poem, rejecting him and signed ‘Mary Mary Shelton’.28
Mary appears to have loved the pageantry and display of the court. And although she was young, she was clearly interested in the men of the court and had a powerful effect on them. At the time of her relationship with the king she was betrothed to Henry Norris, a trusted courtier. But neither Mary nor Norris seemed in a rush to marry and she enjoyed spending time with her friends, writing romantic poetry and indulging in courtly love. Mary’s flirtatious nature was partly responsible for sending both her fiancé, Henry Norris, and a man who was courting her, Francis Weston, to the scaffold – accused with the queen of treason and adultery.
Norris was around forty-five, much older than his teenage fiancée, and already had a son and heir. He would often have slept in Henry’s room or a side room, and would have delivered vital and personal messages for the king. As Henry’s Groom of the Stool he would have known most of the king’s secrets and would have been well aware of his fiancée’s relationship with the monarch. There are suggestions that Norris had helped the king arrange clandestine liaisons with other ladies.29
Like his predecessor in the post, Sir William Compton, Norris was a go-between for the king and his lovers. This may have made him less inclined to marry Mary – either through concern about her promiscuity or through fear of offending the king. If the affair continued, even sporadically, Norris would have been well aware of this and Chapuys would probably not have known. This engagement should have been a way to cement the Sheltons’ ties with the monarch and gain further favour; it ended as a mess Mary had to distance herself from. Henry’s relationship with Mary ran its course within a few months, and her family did not greatly benefit from it. Anne was soon pregnant again and Henry was looking for a new mistress. This time his affection grew for a far more dangerous rival among Anne’s ladies-in-waiting – Jane Seymour.
Mary was intelligent, but could be reckless. Her friendships with Margaret Douglas and the Howard family got her into trouble repeatedly, first after helping to arrange the illicit marriage of Margaret, the king’s niece, to Thomas Howard. Mary was lucky that Henry remembered her with fondness – she could have gone to the Tower, as Margaret and Thomas Howard did just a month after the execution of Anne Boleyn. But Mary was careful in May 1536; she would doubtless have been alarmed at the arrests of her fiancé, her cousins and her friends and realised that there was a chance that she, or her immediate family, could be implicated.
Mary later attended Catherine Howard up until her arrest, and then spent time at Kenninghall, Norfolk, on the estate of her friend Mary Howard. There Mary Howard, Mary Shelton and Margaret Douglas, spent much of the next year, until there was again a queen to serve. Sir John Shelton, Mary’s father, died on 21 December 1539, aged sixty-two. The family then suffered financial problems which seem to have put any marriage for Mary on hold. Mary went instead to a convent at St Helen’s, Bishopsgate, which was popular with gentlewomen. By 1545 their situation had improved and Mary was engaged to Thomas Clere, in what seems to have been a love match. Unfortunately, Clere died on 14 April 1545, although he left ‘lands in Hockham Magna … [to] … Mary [Shelton]’ in his will.30 Surrey immortalised their love in his elegy to Clere: ‘Shelton for love, Surrey for Lord thou chase.’31 Mary was now around twenty-six years old and soon married her cousin, Sir Anthony Heveningham, a gentleman from Suffolk. Their children included Arthur and Abigail Heveningham, and through Arthur, Mary is thought to be an ancestor of Diana, Princess of Wales.
This was not the end of scandals involving Mary. Shortly before Henry’s death, her long-term friend Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, was arrested. It was recommended that: ‘It may please your good lordships to examine Mrs Heveningham, late Mary Shelton, of the effect of the earl of Surrey his letter sent unto her, for it is thought that many secrets have passed between them before her marriage and since.’32 Some have suggested this source is hinting at a love affair between the two. This may have been the case, but although the two had maintained a friendship for at least twelve years, there is no evidence that this had developed into a romance. She managed to survive Surrey’s arrest and execution unscathed. Her husband died around 1557 and Mary married Philip Appleyard; she was then aged around thirty-eight. Mary died three years later, in 1560, during Elizabeth I’s reign. The Shelton family had remained close to Elizabeth through the reigns of her two siblings and were rewarded for their support when she inherited the throne.
Throughout 1535 and 1536, Katherine of Aragon was exiled to remote castles, without any contact from her beloved daughter or husband. Even after Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn, Katherine of Aragon had her staff’s clothes embroidered with entwined H’s and K’s. Henry and Anne’s relationship had undergone a transition but it still seemed strong. He had been madly, slavishly in love with the tempestuous and uncontrollable Anne Boleyn from 1526 to 1535. The royal couple seem to have enjoyed drama – the theatrical conflicts, the passionate reconciliations – ‘as usual in such cases, their mutual love will be greater than before’.33 But now Henry was no longer so besotted, and was finding it difficult to accept Anne’s behaviour. He would have compared this to Katherine’s dignified manner and his second wife would have been seen as lacking; the qualities that had attracted him to her were unsuitable in a queen and she had not yet given him a male heir. But in November 1535, Anne was pregnant for the third time and his relationship with Mary Shelton appeared to have come to an end. There was nothing to suggest that Anne was in a particularly precarious position. But Henry could not have two ex-queens still alive, and so rejecting Anne at this point could only have meant reconciliation with Katherine.
1.Cit. Friedmann, Anne Boleyn: A Chapter of English History 1527–36, p.190
2. L&P, IV, pt. II, no.2210
3. L&P, VI, no.585
4. L&P, VIII, no.196
5. L&P, V, no.907
6. Cronica del Rey Enrico, p.17–18
7. CSP, Venetian, 1527–33, 912
8. Cit. Ives, Anne Boleyn, p.284
9. L&P, VI, no.241
10. Cit. Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, p.274
11. L&P, VII, no.1193; Chapuys to Charles V; CSP, Spanish, 1534–35, no.90
12. CSP, Spanish, V, pt. I, p.264; CSP, Spanish, IV, pt. II, p.789
13. CSP, Spanish, 1534–35, no.88; L&P, VI, no.1054
14. CSP, Spanish, 1534–5, no.118
15. L&P, VI, no.556; Cromwell to Chapuys, 29th May 1533
16. Wood, Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies, pp.194–7; L&P, VII, no.1655
17. Friedmann, Anne Boleyn: A Chapter of English History 1527–36, II, p.13
18. CSP, Spanish, V, pt. I, p.376
19. CSP, Spanish, 1534–35, p.260–9
20. L&P, VIII, no.263
21. Heale, Women and the Courtly Love Lyric: The Devonshire MS
22. CSP, Spanish, 1536–38, no.29; Chapuys to Charles V
23. Cavendish (Singer, ed.), The Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey, pp. 451–60
24. Cit. Froude, The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon, p.401
25. Cit. Wilson, In the Lion’s Court: Power, Ambition and Sudden Death in the Reign of Henry VIII, p.428; John Hutton to Cromwell, December 1537
26. Camden Miscellany, 4th series, 39, pp.62–3
27. L&P, XXI, pt. I, no.1426
28. For more information on this, see Herman, Rethinking the Henrician Era, p.50
29. L&P, VI, no.923
30. L&P, XXI, pt. II, no.332
31. Cit. Remley, (Herman, ed.), Rethinking the Henrician Era: Essays on Early Tudor Texts and Contexts, p.45
32. L&P, XXI, pt. I, no.1426
33. CSP, Spanish, IV, pt. II, p.33
* Her sister-in-law was Margaret Shelton, née Parker. Her sister Margaret married Thomas Wodehouse of Kimberley, Norfolk.