MARY BOLEYN : MISTRESS OF KING HENRY VIII

First published in January of 2012, a month dedicated to Mary Boleyn as Mistress of the Month.

Go to January 2012 using archives on the side bar of the start page to read all the posts about Mary Bolyn (aka Mary Boleyn).

HENRY VIII had so many mistresses, including Elizabeth Blount before her, and Mary's sister Anne Bolyn was one of them too. Mary is the one who had a happy ending to her life - marriage to a man she loved who loved her without so very many complications - and who SURVIVED. Anne's the one who married the King and got beheaded.

Henry married Anne after he finally gave up on his wife of many years, Katherine of Aragon, try as the poor woman did, to give him a legitimate MALE heir. (We know so many men still dwell on having a son!)

Then, unhappy with a mistress as wife, it was Anne Bolyn that he sent to the block - beheading!

Mary seemed to have survived all this and have his child, a daughter named Katherine Carey, while she was married to William Carey. Henry sent William Carey off somewhere so he wouldn't interfere in their affair. She was devastated when the King dumped her for her sister.

Because of their daughter, Katherine Carey, there are a few people alive today who are blood related to Henry. If the book author Alison Weir is right, today's decedents of Mary Bolyn include Camilla Parker Bowles and Princess Diana!

Alison Weir's latest book called "MARY BOLEYN - Mistress of Kings" is fascinating. She has to tease out the details but is good at pointing out where other authors of the subject have run on assumptions. The term Kings is used because Mary may have been the mistress of the French King Francois I when she was a young teenager at his court. (The subtitle "The Great and Infamous Whore" turns out to be wrong)!

Mary, for all the details and historical research Weir did, remains a bit of a mystery. Was she simply compliant? Yet twice she married for love! Was she boring and without opinion or is it that she knew how to survive?

The book came out 2011 published by Ballantine Books and should be on your mistress bookshelf!

C 2012-2014  Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

MARY BOLEYN : ALISON WEIR BOOK EXCERPT : KING HENRY VIII

page 147 (Who is the father of Katherine Carey?)

"Given that Henry probably did not begin pursuing Mary until 1522, we could hardly expect to find William Carey (her husband) refraining from intercourse with his wife in the first two years of their marriage. During Mary's second marriage, she is known to have born only one child in nine years. This suggests that, like her mother and sister, she suffered miscarriages or gave birth to unrecorded children who were stillborn or died young - or that, if she was as fertile as her who offspring, who had twenty-eight children between them, she resorted to some form of contraception... Certainly Henry was still sleeping with the Queen, hoping to conceive an heir, during his affair with Mary. He continued to have sexual relations with Katherine until 1524, and even after 1525, by which year she was "past the ways of women," he still shared her bed on occasions.

MARY BOLEYN : ALISON WEIR BOOK EXCERPT : ON CONTRACEPTION in the TUDOR PERIOD

135-136 from Alison Weir's book on Mary Boleyn

"Since intercourse was supposed to be purely for procreation, contraception was frowned upon, although rudimentary forms of it were known and practiced. Henry VIII's fifth wife, Katherine Howard, for example, admitted that she knew of ways to prevent a pregnancy. Rarely were these methods effective, for many relied purely on superstitions and folk remedies, such as drinking the urine of a sheep or hare before having sex, or taking various herbs, or on coitus interruptus. Other methods of preventing pregnancy included inserting pepper or a sponge soaked in vinegar into the vagina, sealing the cervix with beeswax, having anal sex, or doing some "hard pissing" after intercourse. Condoms as a method of birth control were unknown prior to 1564. Contraception, then as now, was frowned upon by the Church, and because it was often unreliable, if it was used at all, Royal love affairs often lead to the birth of bastard children. But although the moralists might claim that it "impoverished the pubic weal" there was no great stigma attached to illegitimacy and little harm in acknowledging natural children; indeed royal bastards often enjoyed high status and political importance. It was not until the advent of Puritanism in the last 16th century that attitudes to illegitimacy changed and there was greater disapproval..."

MARY BOLEYN : ALISON WEIR BOOK EXCERPT : ABOUT ELIZABETH BLOUNT

Elizabeth Blount was Henry's first mistress, during some of his marriage to his Queen, Katherine of Aragon, who had many pregnancies but not a living male heir. Elizabeth gave birth to a son - who lived - but could not be heir. Henry recognized him though and gave him the name Henry Fitzroy (Fitzroy means of the King).

Page 43 -44

"Elizabeth Blount certainly resided for a time at Jericho (a monastery), for around June 1519 - and possibly on June 18, if her child was ennobled on his sixth birthday in 1525 - she gave birth there to a son, "a goodly man child of beauty like to the father and mother." The infant was given his father's Christian name and the old Norman - French surname of Fitzroy... The tragedy was that this son was born out of wedlock. By then Queen Katherine's catastrophic obstetric career had ended In failure. Of her six pregnancies, only one daughter, the Princess Mary, born in 1516, had survived. For a king who needed a son to succeed him, this was a dynastic disaster, for there was a widespread conviction that women were not meant to wield sovereign power, that it was against all laws both natural and divine. The birth of a living son to his mistress was a triumphant vindication for Henry. It proved that he could father boys, and that the fault did not lie with him... It probably signaled the end of his affair with Elizabeth Blount. In accordance with the convention that it was unsafe and ungodly to have sex during pregnancy, he had probably stopped sleeping with her months before, an there is no evidence that they resumed having relations after the birth... "(Circa early 1500's.)

MARY BOLEYN : MISTRESS OF KING HENRY VIII MISTRESS OF THE MONTH

HENRY VII had so many mistresses, including Elizabeth Blount before her, and Mary's sister Anne Bolyn was one of them too. Mary is the one who had a happy ending to her life - marriage to a man she loved who loved her without so very many complications - and who SURVIVED. Anne's the one who married the King and got beheaded.

Henry married Anne after he finally gave up on his wife of many years, Katherine of Aragon, try as the poor woman did, giving him a legitimate MALE heir. (We know so many men still dwell on having a son!)

Then, unhappy with a mistress as wife, it was Anne Bolyn that he sent to the block - beheading!

Mary seemed to have survived all this and have his child, a daughter named Katherine Carey, while she was married to William Carey. Henry sent William Carey off somewhere so he wouldn't interfere in their affair. She was devastated when the King dumped her for her sister.

Because of their daughter Katherine Carey there are a few people alive today who are blood related to Henry. If the book author Alison Weir is right, today's decedents of Mary Bolyn include Camilla Parker Bowles and Princess Diana!

*****************

Alison Weir's latest book called "MARY BOLEYN - Mistress of Kings" is fascinating. She has to tease out the details but is good at pointing out where other authors of the subject have run on assumptions. Kings is used because Mary may have been the mistress of the French King Francois I when she was a young teenager at his court. (The subtitle "The Great and Infamous Whore" turns out to be wrong)!

Mary, for all the details and historical research Weir did, remains a bit of a mystery. Was she simply compliant? Yet twice she married for love! Was she boring and without opinion or is it that she knew how to survive?

The book came out 2011 published by Ballantine Books and should be on your mistress bookshelf!

Linking to the Alison Weir site that has more details!