Things You Need to Stop Believing about Mary Boleyn

Was Mary Boleyn really the “pretty” Boleyn sister? Did she have a long love affair with Henry VIII?

In this video, I’m diving into 11 major misconceptions about Mary Boleyn’s life, from her rumoured relationships to the true nature of her family’s ambitions.

Get ready to uncover the real story behind the myths you’ve heard in books and movies. From mistaken identities to misunderstood motives, we’ll set the record straight on one of the Tudor era’s most mysterious figures.

Transcript:

In today’s video, we’re diving into some of the biggest myths surrounding Mary Boleyn, the lesser-known Boleyn sister. You’ve probably heard tales of Mary as the “pretty” one, or maybe you’ve read that she was Henry VIII’s long-time mistress, or even his one true love. But how much of that is actually true?

I’ll be breaking down 11 common misconceptions about Mary, including myths about her relationships, her family, and her reputation. From the claim that she was a pawn in her family’s ambitions to the rumours about her children being fathered by the king, get ready to discover a very different version of Mary Boleyn than the one you think you know.

Let’s get started and separate fact from fiction!

1. That Mary Boleyn was the pretty Boleyn sister – I’ve lost count of the times I’ve read online that Mary was the pretty Boleyn, that she took after the Howards and was fair of hair and skin, an English rose, while Anne was said to be dark-haired, sallow-skinned and far from the Tudor ideal of beauty.
   Well, people need to stop believing that because we don’t actually know what Mary looked like, or her mother, Elizabeth Howard, or her maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Tylney. We have some portraits said to be of Mary, but we don’t know for sure that they’re her, and even they differ and don’t give us much idea.
2. That her family pimped her out to the king – There is a long-held belief that the Howards and Boleyns conspired to gain favour from the king by pushing the Boleyn girls at him. Thomas Boleyn and Thomas Howard get a lot of hate online for that, yet there’s no evidence that they pushed Mary or Anne at the king, and both men were already high in favour with the king. It makes great fiction, mind you.
3. That she had a long affair with Henry VIII and that she was his true love – I think this comes from Philippa Gregory’s depiction of Henry VIII’s relationship with Mary Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl. In the book and the film, they have a long love affair, they have strong feelings for each other. However, in reality, we know absolutely nothing about their relationship apart from the fact that they went to bed together at least once. That’s it.
4. That her children were the king’s – I handled this topic recently in my video “Henry VIII and Mary Boleyn’s Children – Was He Their Father?” so I’ll give you a link to that, but, as I said, we know nothing about Henry and Mary’s relationship, only that they had sex at some point between Mary returning to England from France, probably in 1515, and Henry becoming involved with Anne in around 1526. Mary’s children, Catherine and Henry, were born on 1524 and 1526 respectively, while she was married to William Carey, so they’re more likely to have been her husband’s.
5. That Anne stole her son – I think Philippa Gregory has to take credit for this one too. Obviously, she was writing fiction, but, as always, some readers take it as fact and believe that after Mary was widowed that the childless and jealous Anne swanned in and grabbed Henry Carey. Nope! When Mary was widowed, Anne was granted the wardship of Henry Carey, something that helped Mary as Anne became responsible for the little boy’s upkeep and education. It relieved Mary of a financial burden. It obviously helped Anne too as while he was her ward, she benefitted from the proceeds of any lands or property he owned and would be in charge of any marriage negotiations. It was a win-win situation for Anne, Mary, and for little Henry, who ended up being educated by the renowned French scholar and reformer Nicholas Bourbon along with the likes of Henry Norris’s son.
6. That Mary was the nice Boleyn girl – Oh yes, Mary was the nice, caring, humble Boleyn girl who really loved the king, while Anne was ambitious, spiteful, always plotting and didn’t love anyone expect herself. Again, those are the Mary and Anne of fiction. I think Anne WAS ambitious and Mary DID write a beautiful letter to Thomas Cromwell regarding her love for William Stafford, her second husband, and how she’d rather be with him and beg for bread than be the Queen of England, but that doesn’t mean Anne was the devil and Mary an angel.
   We have very little evidence of Mary’s character. A letter, a few things people said, circumstantial evidence… those don’t really add up to give a clear picture of her, do they? She’s a frustratingly shadowy character.
7. That she was the mistress of Francis I – I’ll hold my hands up and say that when I first began writing about the Boleyns, I took it for granted that Mary had been the mistress of two kings, but when I started digging into it, I found that the evidence used to support the idea that Mary slept with the French king wasn’t what it seemed.
   The first piece of evidence is that Rodolfo Pio, Bishop of Faenza and the papal nuncio at the French court, wrote of how Francis I “knew” Mary, and he means knew in a rather intimate way, as “a great prostitute and infamous above all”. But, in the same letter, he claimed that Anne Boleyn had pretended to miscarry a son in January 1536 and that her sister had helped her cover it up, which, of course, isn’t true, so why should we believe his other statement, particularly when he was someone who disliked the evangelical Anne and her family, and everything they stood for. Then, we have William Rastell writing in his 1557 biography of Sir Thomas More of how Anne Boleyn had a bad reputation in France, being called the “Hackney of England” and the king’s “mule”, and Nicholas Sander, writing in the 1580s, repeating Rastell’s words about Anne being the “royal mule”, but they’re talking about Anne, not Mary, and I disagree with those who assume that as these comments were untrue about Anne that they must, therefore, have been about Mary. They are clearly Catholic propaganda attempting to blacken Anne’s name.
8. That she chose love over ambition – As I mentioned, following her banishment from court after her secret marriage to William Stafford in 1534, Mary wrote to Thomas Cromwell of her love for her husband, but the purpose of the letter was to ask Cromwell to help her get money from her family. I love my husband, my family were nasty for banishing me for my disobedience, I’ve chosen him over them, love over court life, but can you just help me get some money out of the queen and my father, please? Hmmm.
   And Mary may well have found happiness away from court in her final years, but she was ambitious enough to want her daughter to serve a queen at court in 1539, a place she knew was dangerous. It was worth it to obtain a good marriage for her daughter.
9. That Mary tried to intervene for Anne and George in 1536 – I don’t actually see this myth too much online, but it very occasionally rears its ugly head. It’s based on The Other Boleyn Girl, where Mary tries to intercede with her former lover, Henry VIII, on behalf of Anne and George in May 1536 to try and save her siblings. Unfortunately, she didn’t succeed in fiction and it’s just not true. We don’t know where Mary was in May 1536, she may not have even been in the country as Stafford was a soldier in Calais. There’s certainly no record of her being anywhere near court.
10. That Mary took custody of Elizabeth in May 1536 – In the movie version of The Other Boleyn Girl, following Anne Boleyn’s execution in May 1536, Mary manages to take custody of her niece, Elizabeth, the king and Anne’s daughter, and they head off into the sunset. Of course, this is completely untrue. Elizabeth was in a royal household away from court and being very well supervised. There’s no evidence that Mary ever met Elizabeth, although I hope she did. Thankfully, both of Mary’s children, Catherine and Henry, became close to Elizabeth and served her loyally when she became queen.
11. That Mary Boleyn had four children: Catherine and Henry Carey by her first husband, William Carey; and then Edward and Anne Stafford by her second husband, William Stafford. Wikipedia states that Mary “may” have had children with Stafford, but some genealogy websites state it as fact. Wikipedia cites Kelly Hart, author of “The Mistresses of Henry VIII”, as the source for Mary having children by Stafford, so I checked Hart’s book. Hart writes that Mary and Stafford “are said to have had a boy in 1535, who died as a child”, citing “Anne Boleyn: A Chapter of English History 1527-1536, volume 2, by Paul Friedmann. I checked Friedmann’s 19th century work, and he writes, “Fair widow Carey had fallen in love with William Stafford, a soldier of the retinue of Calais, and it was afterwards pretended she had married him. However this may have been, she was about to bear him a son.” That’s all Friedmann says. Now, while Mary was described as being pregnant when she visited Anne at court in September 1534, there’s no record of what happened to that baby. She may have had a stillbirth or the baby died not long after the birth, but we don’t know the gender or if the baby lived long enough to be baptised. There is no record.
    As for a daughter, Anne, Hart writes, “There are also rumours of a daughter named Anne, perhaps named defiantly after her aunt”, but Hart gives no reference for this and I’ve never come across any mention of rumours in 16th century sources.
    Perhaps there has been confusion due to the fact that after Mary’s death in 1543, Stafford took a second wife, Dorothy, in 1545, and they had children together, including a son named Edward, although their six children didn’t include an Anne.

As you can see, Mary Boleyn’s life has been clouded by centuries of myths and misconceptions, often fuelled by historical fiction and incomplete sources. While she remains a fascinating figure, mainly due to the fact that she’s so shadowy, it’s essential to separate the facts from the fictions we’ve been fed. Mary wasn’t just “the pretty sister” or simply a pawn in her family’s ambitions; she was a woman whose life was more complex than we give her credit for. By peeling back these layers of myth, we can better understand her true role in Tudor history as a member of the Boleyn family, king’s mistress, and the mother of two loyal servants to Elizabeth I.

Henry VIII and Mary Boleyn’s Children – https://youtu.be/l4kvjTbAosc