Mary Boleyn was the sister of Queen Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII who paved
the way for the Queen to not follow in her footsteps.
Mary Boleyn was the mistress of King Henry VIII, and she was known to have been a beautiful
young woman who took to the King’s bed with little in the way of reward.
Many men would encourage their wives and daughters to captivate Henry VIII and to sleep with
him, but Mary Boleyn was considered a rather tragic figure as she would be cast aside and
thrown away when the King did not want her.
She was also believed to have been used by the King, but Mary herself was known for being
headstrong, and very devoted in what she believed was right.
But what is the story of her terrible treatment?
Mary Boleyn arrived in Paris with her sister as her father had become an English ambassador
to France and the Boleyn girls would be involved with the French royal courts.
Mary was rumoured to have been romantically involved with the French King Francis, and
the pair may have had an affair.
He called her, ‘His English Mare,’ and said she was ‘a very great whore, the most
infamous of all,’ tarnishing the reputation of Mary.
It was also said of Mary that, ‘Francis said also that they are committing more follies
than ever in England, and are saying and printing all the ill they can against the church and
‘that woman’ pretended to have miscarried a son, not being really with child, and to
keep up the deceit would allow no one to attend on her, but her sister whom the French King
knew here in France, a great prostitute and infamous above all.’
The slander continued about Mary Boleyn, and when she came to England her reputation had
also come to the English court.
However Mary then married William Carey, and he was well liked by Henry VIII.
Henry attended the wedding and he gave the couple a huge cash gift, and the wedding occurred
in the Chapel Royal at Greenwich palace.
It’s known that Mary Boleyn became the King’s mistress following Mary’s wedding.
The king probably liked what he saw in Mary and also heard about her reputation and the
rumours of promiscuity.
But she was now becoming a royal mistress, and was taking to the King’s bed, a position
which many women at court were actually jealous of.
Mary was regularly summoned to the King’s bedchamber during his marriage to his first
wife Catheirne of Aragon.
But some historians have claimed that Mary fathered children with Mary Boleyn, and that
she had the King’s children.
Her first born child was a son who she named Henry and many believed that the King was
the son, and that the child was named after him, but this would have made the boy an illegitimate
heir to the throne.
Others have also said that Mary’s daughter Catherine could have been fathered by the
King, and she later would become a Lady of the Bedchamber to Elizabeth I, and if this
was true she would have been half sisters of the Queen.
But these dates of birth coincide with when it is known that Mary Boleyn was a royal mistress,
and she would have slept with the King around this time.
However regarding Mary Boleyn’s time as a royal mistress, many men around her gained
wealth and favour for her activities inside of the bedroom.
Her father got a lot of power through these liaisons and her uncle would also become the
King’s most senior advisor and close friend.
But her father also was made a Knight of the Garter, and the treasurer of the royal household
who was in charge of the money that court spent.
There was one woman though who was a Boleyn who did not benefit from Mary’s antics and
that was her sister Anne who would see what Mary was doing, and she would realise that
if she captivated the eye of the King, then she wanted power.
She wanted guarentees that she would be written into the history books, and she certainly
was.
However Mary Boleyn at some point during the pregnancy of her second child was then cast
aside.
The King got bored with her, and he saw her pregnancy as an issue, and he did not want
to carry on their relationship.
But he then turned towards the other Boleyn Girl Anne.
Anne Boleyn viewed Mary’s affair as a mistake with the King, and Anne would refuse to take
to the King’s bed until he was made a Queen and this playing hard to get would frustrate
Henry VIII greatly.
Henry would then to secure Anne’s hand in marriage plunge his country into religious
turmoil and would split from Rome and Anne was cunning and she knew what she wanted.
But Anne would become Queen, and Mary would then die in obscurity.
She following being ousted from the King’s bedchamber later met and married an Essex
man named William Stafford, and he was a man considered of lower status than Mary, and
this caused chaos.
Mary married for love and followed her heart, but this was deemed not good enough for the
sister of the Queen, and the whole Boleyn family were outraged and they banished Mary
and she would never return to court.
Mary suffered financially because of this, and she begged Thomas Cromwell to speak to
the King for financial help.
Henry VIII did not care at all, and he was not bothered but Anne would later pity her
and she sent some money but they refused to allow her to come back to the royal court.
The sisters would not meet again, as Anne Boleyn was executed on the 19th May 1536.
There are little records that survived after Anne’s execution about Mary’s life, but
it’s believed she died on the 19th July 1543, with a shadow of the status that she
formerly had.
But Mary Boleyn was a woman who was considered a royal mistress to one of the most brutal
Kings to have ever ruled over England.
She experienced a significant amount of derogatory comments throughout her life, but she was
a woman who had very little choice as when the King came calling for her, she could not
turn it down.
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