Did Henry VIII Father Mary Boleyn's Children?

On March 4, 1526 Henry Carey was born. He was the second child of Mary Boleyn, who'd had a daughter, Catherine, in 1524. For five hundred years, rumors have abounded that one or both of these children were fathered by Henry VIII.

Mary likely became the mistress of King Henry around 1519, after his affair with Bessie Blount ended. She married William Carey in February, 1520 and it's assumed by some that her marriage marked the end of her affair with Henry. Mary had her first child four years later, and another child two years after that.

The alternative theory has Mary and Carey in a long-term, sexless marriage of convenience to cover Henry's illicit relationship with her. She doesn't conceive until five years into her relationship with the king, and then gives him a son two years later. In this scenario, the end of Henry's relationship with Mary coincides with the first recorded declaration of the king's interest her sister, Anne Boleyn.

Is there any evidence Henry's involvement with Mary continued after 1520 and her marriage to William Carey?

The chief evidence seems to rest on a series of grants that Henry made to William Carey between 1522 and 1526, which some argue were akin to payments for the "use" of Carey's wife.

Genealogy Magazine notes:

Mary Boleyn’s affair with the King probably commenced at about the same time: 1522. "The spate of royal grants to her [Mary Boleyn’s] husband [William Carey] in 1522, 1523, 1524 and 1525 is also suggestive." "[T]he first manors and estates, as opposed to minor keeperships and stewardships, that Mary’s husband possessed were granted to him by the crown in June 1524 and February 1526." It should be especially noted that the February 1526 grant occurred on the 20th, just twelve days before the recorded birth of Henry Carey on 4 March 1525/6. Significantly, this royal grant included the borough of Buckingham which was granted to William Carey "in tail male." It is impossible not to be struck by the coincidence of this entailment to a male "heir," just twelve days before the date of record on which William Carey’s wife gave birth to a male child said to be the king’s son.

I find no significance in the grant being "in tail male." That was a normal part of the wording of grants of the era. Secondly, there's no way Henry could have known the upcoming baby was a boy, so there's no "coincidence." Why wouldn't the king have for the birth itself if it was a celebration of his child, or waited to see if the baby turned out to be a boy if the intent was to give a grant to his son? Considering the high infant mortality of the day, and the equally high possibility the child could have been a girl or a stillbirth, it's likely the grant had nothing to do with Mary's current pregnancy.

If Henry wanted to hide his relationship with Mary, why "pay" her husband openly in the form of grants, which were recorded for posterity? Why wouldn't Henry just secretly slide some cash across the table to Carey?

There is no reason to assume that the grants were on Mary Boleyn's behalf. William Carey was Henry's second cousin, and a highly favored member of his court. He received grants in roughly the same pattern and amount as others of Henry's favorites - there was nothing unusual about this stream of gifts from the king's hands, so it did not have to be in "payment" of anything.

Another point I've seen mentioned is the dispensation Henry requested to marry Anne Boleyn. He asked in it to be freed of any impediments arising from both illicit intercourse and consanguinity, which people say wouldn't have been necessary without children from the relationship. This is incorrect. Firstly, Henry was trying to be as vague as possible in the dispensation because he didn't want to openly name Anne as the woman he was seeking to marry, and so he phrased the wording as widely as possible to cover a lot of different scenarios. Secondly, Anne and Henry were related, and so the dispensation was needed to absolve them of the blood relation of their common descent. Henry also needed a dispensation to clear himself of the illicit intercourse with her sister, whether or not there had been any children from the union.

The other "evidence" for the Carey children being Henry's comes from snippets of recorded gossip. An ambassador mentioned a promising "natural son" of Henry's in 1531, who was the son of a widow of one of his peers. But this could easily refer to Henry FitzRoy, since Bessie Blount had been widowed the previous year.

A court case in 1535 contained the following statement:

"Moreover, Mr. Skydmore dyd show to me yongge Master Care, saying that he was our suffren Lord the Kynge's son by our suffren Lady the Qwyen's syster, whom the Qwyen's grace myght not suffer to be yn the Cowrte."

However, Mary had been welcome at Anne's court and given positions of honor until she secretly re-married in 1534 and was banished because of her violation of the social order. So Anne's supposed banishment of Mary out of being unable to bear her jealousy does not seem to ring true. Secondly, Hale was confessing to slanderous talk about the king for which he was in a lot of trouble. He says he was ill and doesn't remember half of what he said.

I had several falls from my horse, from one of which I was troubled in my wits, as also by age and lack of memory.

It shows only that there was current gossip about the king's relationship with the queen's sister, nothing more. The same standard could be used to "prove" that Henry had an affair with Elizabeth Howard.

Don't see it myself, personally

The last bit of evidence centers on a supposed resemblance Henry Carey had to the king. But this, too, is easily explicable. Henry and William Carey were both descendants of the Beauforts. (William Carey's grandmother was the niece of Margaret Beaufort's father.) The Carey children had red hair, but red hair ran in the Howard family (Elizabeth Howard was Mary and Anne Boleyn's mother.) Katheryn Howard had red hair, Anne Boleyn herself may have been a redhead, and we don't know what color Mary Boleyn's hair was.

In my opinion, there isn't any conclusive evidence that Mary Boleyn's children were Henry's, and the evidence they weren't is actually stronger.

Finding Mary a husband seems to have marked the end of Henry's involvement with her, as it did with Bessie Blount. There's no evidence his involvement with either woman extended after her marriage. The king was the one who decided when these women would marry - their families would not risk angering him by arranging a marriage to another man while the king was still interested in their daughter. There was no reason for the king to marry off either woman before he was "done" with her, either. He had no embarrassment in claiming Bessie Blount's bastard as his own, or he would have hurriedly tried to marry her to someone else as soon as he found out she was pregnant. Instead, he waited until after the child had been born and their affair was over.

When Mary Boleyn was widowed in 1528, the king showed little or no interest in the fate of her children until Anne Boleyn interceded and urged the king to get her father to support Mary. Author M.L. Bruce believes the Boleyn family disliked Mary because of her immoral behavior with Henry (and possibly King Francis before him.) Henry wrote to Anne, who was still recovering from the same epidemic of the Sweat that had killed her brother-in-law, and assured her that he had contacted Thomas Boleyn.

One of his statements in the letter is especially poignant, given the situation:

... for surely, whatsoever is said, it cannot so stand with his honour but that he must needs take her, his natural daughter, now in her extreme necessity.

His own "natural daughter" and "natural son" would have been in extremity, too, because of Mary's poverty if they were Henry's children. Henry was later guilty of gross, extreme hypocrisies, but it's hard to imagine that Anne wouldn't have pointed out his own honor compelled him to support the children if they were his.

The Boleyn family eventually settled a pension on Mary of £100 per year, and Mary's son, Henry Carey, became Anne's ward. She would see to his education and upkeep as a man of gentle blood, reducing Mary's financial burdens. Some have painted this in the light of Anne acquiring an "heir" for Henry if she wasn't able to provide him with her own son, but this is illogical. Wardship was simply a financial guardianship. Plenty of people actually married their wards, such as Charles Brandon marrying Catherine Willoughby, so making the boy her ward did not make him Anne's son any more than Catherine Willoughby was Brandon's daughter. Secondly, Henry Carey would still be an unacknowledged bastard, worse off than Henry FitzRoy, who at least was acknowledged by his father - it didn't matter that Anne was the sister of his mother, or that he was her ward.

One wonders what Mary Boleyn would have thought if the king wouldn't even publicly acknowledge her children, while giving his son with Bessie Blount two dukedoms in 1525, then leaving her in poverty when her husband died three years later. This disparity in the treatment of his supposed children is problematic when there's no real reason for it. I've seen explanations that he didn't really "need" a second illegitimate son, but this was at a time in his life when Henry had begun proceedings to rid himself of his wife based on the fact he couldn't have children with her.

Henry VIII was sensitive about the perception of his fertility. As soon as Bessie Blount gave him a son, Henry publicly claimed the boy and ennobled him - something no king had done for hundreds of years. Why would he not have claimed Mary Boleyn's children, as well, even if he didn't go to the extra step of ennobling Henry Carey? It seems odd that he would not even have mentioned fathering a son with Mary Boleyn when he was busy pointing out his marriage with his queen was "cursed" by God with infertility but he could easily father male children with other women.

Another bit of evidence lies in Reginald Pole's chiding letter to Henry about the hypocrisy of annulling his marriage to Katharine of Aragon in order to marry Anne when his relationship with Mary created the exact same kind of incestual relationship.

 [Anne] had learned, I think, if from nothing else, at least from the example of her own sister, how soon you got tired of your mistresses; and she resolved to surpass her sister in retaining you as her lover . . . 

Pole's letter says nothing about Henry having children with Mary, and he mentions Henry growing quickly tired of his mistress. A relationship of six years (the high end of the estimate of how long Henry's affair with Mary lasted, giving him time to father both children) doesn't really fit with Pole's description of Henry quickly tiring of a lover.

Henry never attempted to find fine marriages for Mary Boleyn's children, which one would think would be the least he could do if they were his. The two Carey children married well, but the king didn't provide Catherine with a fine dowry, or intercede to find Henry Carey a better bride than a simple country gentlewoman.

In short, Henry never behaved as an interested father toward these children, taking interest in their education or in seeing them set up with good marriages. They were on their own, as far as he was concerned. Mary Boleyn was able to fund their careers at court once she received her inheritance from the Boleyn family, and they did well, but it doesn't seem the king did them any special favors. It wasn't until the reign of Queen Elizabeth, who favored her Boleyn relatives, that Henry Carey was ennobled, being created a baron and Catherine was given important positions at court.

Henry was hypocritical at points and a sociopathic jerk, but he was proud of the children he had and saw them as extensions of himself. I doubt he would have utterly abandoned his children with Mary Boleyn. Share on Tumblr

"The Handsomest Prince in Christendom"

In April, 1509 Henry VIII started his reign on a golden wave of adulation. It's hard to reconcile the initial reports of him as the "handsomest prince in Christendom," and the glowing reports of his piety, kindness, and charm with the obese, sociopathic monster he later became.

There was always celebration at the beginning of a new reign. As Elizabeth I later noted, people tend to worship a rising sun. But Henry's ascension to the throne really must have seemed like a dawning of a new era to the English people. Henry immediately signaled that he would be an entirely different kind of ruler than his father had been. He started by executing two of his father's hated tax collectors, Sir Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley, much to the delight of the people. As with later executions, Henry used the flimsiest of pretexts - the real reason was likely that the men were trying to exert power over the young king.

His father's court had been business-like and austere. Henry decided to raise the prestige of England in the eyes of the world by turning it into a bejeweled spectacle of music, art, sport, and pageantry. Because of his father's careful fiscal policies, Henry began his reign as one of the richest monarchs in Europe. Henry struck open the coffers and spent lavishly. He began a massive palace-building and renovation project that was still underway at the time of his death.

He announced his intention to marry his brother's widow, Katharine of Aragon, gallantly rescuing the princess from the isolation and penury forced on her by his father. It was a very popular decision, and the couple was cheered by massive crowds whenever they appeared in public. It was this gallant prince that Katharine fell in love with. It was a love she would profess until her dying day.

In the beginning of their marriage, Henry behaved very romantically toward his queen, riding in jousts wearing her colors, calling himself "Sir Loyal Heart." He wrote Katharine love songs with lyrics like, "I loved truly where I did marry." Henry played pranks where he would burst into her room dressed as a highwayman and demand to dance with the queen. Katharine always pretended to be surprised when he removed his mask.

The Italian ambassador, Sebastiano Giustiniani, wrote a description of Henry in the beginning of his reign:

His Majesty is the handsomest potentate I ever set eyes on; above the usual height, with an extremely fine calf to his leg, his complexion very fair and bright, with auburn hair combed straight and short, in the French fashion, and a round face so very beautiful, that it would become a pretty woman, his throat being rather long and thick. He was born on the 28th of June, 1491, so he will enter his twenty-fifth year the month after next. He speaks French, English, and Latin, and a little Italian, plays well on the lute and harpsichord, sings from book at sight, draws the bow with greater strength than any man in England, and jousts marvellously. Believe me, he is in every respect a most accomplished Prince ...

The young king had little interest in political or administrative matters. He left most of that to his ministers, who found they had to bring papers to him to sign while he was at mass, while they had a "captive audience," to to speak. Henry resented when the duties of kingship cut into his time for sport and "pastime with good company."

Four years after the first dispatch above, Giustiniani described Henry again:

His Majesty is twenty-nine years old and extremely handsome; nature could not have done more for him. He is much handsomer than any other sovereign in Christendom; a great deal handsomer than the king of France; very fair, and his whole frame admirably proportioned. On hearing that Francis I wore a beard, he allowed his own to grow, and, as it is reddish, he has now a beard that looks like gold. He is very accomplished, a good musician, composes well, is a most capital horseman, a fine jouster, speaks good French, Latin, and Spanish; is very religious,--hears three masses daily when he hunts, and sometimes five on other days. He hears the office every day in the queen’s chamber,--that is to say, vespers and compline. 

He is very fond of hunting, and never takes his diversion without tiring eight or ten horses, which he causes to be stationed beforehand along the lines of country he means to take; and when one is tired he mounts another, and before he gets home they are all exhausted. He is extremely fond of tennis, at which game it is the prettiest thing in the world to see him play, his fair skin glowing through a shirt of finest texture. He gambles with the French hostages, to the amount occasionally, it is said, of from six thousand to eight thousand ducats in a day.

Since the king always won his competitions, he considered himself an exceptional athlete. When he lost a wrestling match with another king, Francis I, the stunned Henry insisted Francis must have cheated.

Some of Henry's pursuits were intellectual. He studied Greek for a time, and discussed mathematics and astronomy with scholars. He was also interested in theology and was credited with writing a defense of the seven sacraments in response to Martin Luther's Ninety-Five Theses.

For this work, the pope awarded Henry the title of Defender of the Faith. Henry retained it even after he broke England's relationship with Rome and it passed down through the line of British monarchs. Queen Elizabeth II still uses the title today.

The Venetian ambassador, Ludovico Falieri, wrote:

In the 8th Henry such beauty of mind and body is combined as to surprise and astonish. Grand stature, suited to his exalted position, showing the superiority of mind and character; a face like an angel's, so fair it is; his head bald like Cæsar's, and he wears a beard, which is not the English custom. He is accomplished in every manly exercise, sits his horse well, tilts with his lance, throws the quoit, shoots with his bow excellent well; he is a fine tennis player, and he practises all these gifts with the greatest industry. Such a prince could not fail to have cultivated also his character and his intellect. He has been a student from his childhood; he knows literature, philosophy, and theology; speaks and writes Spanish, French, and Italian, besides Latin and English. He is kind, gracious, courteous, liberal, especially to men of learning, whom he is always ready to help. He appears religious also, generally hears two masses a day, and on holy days High Mass besides. He is very charitable, giving away ten thousand gold ducats annually among orphans, widows, and cripples.

(The cynic might note that, based on the quote above this one, his charity equalled little more than the amount he is reported as gambling away in a day's time.)

For the first years of his reign, everything seemed blessed. Henry was charming and generous when things were going his way, but when life began to play out in a direction he did not like, the ugly side of Henry's personality took over. Military disappointments, his lack of a male heir with Katharine, aging and gaining weight...

Many have proposed it was his jousting accident in 1536 that changed Henry from an affable, genial prince to the paranoid tyrant, but the red flags were always there. Henry was always cruel and ruthless when he didn't get his way. It was just that in the first years of his reign, he faced little opposition.

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January 24, 1536: The Accident That Changed Henry VIII

Henry c. 1537, via Wikipedia

January 24, 1536 was a date that changed Henry VIII, and not for the better.

Katharine of Aragon had died earlier in the month and Henry was in a jubilant mood. Her death ended more than a decade of dispute over the validity of their marriage, and he had told Ambassador Chapuys that Henry's contentious relationship with Katharine's nephew, the Emperor, could be restored to friendly relations. His wife, Anne Boleyn, was pregnant again, and this child would surely be his longed-for heir.

January seems to have been one long celebration for the king, with dancing, feasts, and now a joust. Henry decided that he would compete in it himself.

I imagine his courtiers tried to talk him out of it. Henry was now over forty, and heavier than he had been in his athletic youth. But Henry was very sensitive about his physical prowess, perhaps even more now that his child with Anne Boleyn had been another girl.

Photo by by mharrsch, 
Creative Commons license

He rode out onto the field in his shining armor, its massive codpiece a visual boast of his virility. His horse was armored, too. The crowd would have cheered him wildly. Anne Boleyn was not present, so it's likely Henry tipped his lance to another lady to tie on her favor. Possibly Jane Seymour.

The chronicles don't record who his opponent in this match was. Henry had once been injured before riding against Charles Brandon, so I made him the man who rode against the king in this scene in Under These Restless Skies.Whomever it was, they must have been horrified when their lance shattered against Henry's armor, driving him from his horse. Then, to the terror of the audience, the heavy armored horse collapsed on top of the king, knocking him unconscious.

They carried the unresponsive Henry to the palace and checked his injuries. A sliver of the lance had pierced his leg, but otherwise, his injuries were all internal, which his doctors could not treat. For several hours, he lay unconscious while the helpless courtiers fretted and planned for what they would do if he died. Who would they support? Elizabeth or Mary?

When the king finally woke, he was a changed man. As historian Lucy Worsely stated:

We posit that his jousting accident of 1536 provides the explanation for his personality change from sporty, promising, generous young prince, to cruel, paranoid and vicious tyrant. From that date the turnover of the wives really speeds up, and people begin to talk about him in quite a new and negative way. After the accident he was unconscious for two hours; even five minutes of unconsciousness is considered to be a major trauma today.

The signs of Henry's sociopathic personality were always there, but after the accident, Henry's cruelty increased. His temper was wildly erratic. He suffered from headaches, and the wound in his leg that never properly healed. At times, it would seal over, but then it would open again, draining malodorous pus. He put on more weight as his exercise decreased due to the pain, which probably aggravated his condition further.

The accident forced Henry to acknowledge some hard truths he had been able to ignore until now. He was aging, and no longer the young, athletic prince who could shake off injury. He was having problems in the bedroom, as George Boleyn would tactlessly reveal during his trial. And despite two marriages and at least ten pregnancies between them, he had no male heir. Both of his daughters, Elizabeth and Mary, were seen as illegitimate by the factions that would have pulled England into civil war had he died on that field.

Only days after the accident, Anne Boleyn "miscarried of her savior" as it has been written, losing a three or four month old male fetus. Anne's own fall would be swift and brutal only a few months later. The king would no longer allow anything to stand in the way of what he wanted.

In 1540, Charles de Merrillac would write of Henry:

This prince seems tainted, among other vices, with three which in a King may be called plagues. The first is that he is so covetous that all the riches in the world would not satisfy him. Hence the ruin of the abbeys, spoil of the churches that had anything to take… Everything is good prize, and he does not reflect that to make himself rich he has impoverished his people… Thence proceeds the second plague, distrust and fear. This king, knowing how many changes he has made, and what tragedies and scandals he has created, would fain keep in favor with everybody, but does not trust a single man, expecting to see them all offended, and he will not cease to dip his hand in blood as long as he doubts his people...The third plague, lightness and inconstancy, has perverted the rights of religion, marriage, faith, and promise…

What a far cry from the young Henry, described as pleasant, generous, and noble of virtue! Susana Lipscomb in her book 1536: The Year That Changed Henry VIII, writes:

Injuries to the king’s pride became commensurate with treason, which expanded both in its legal definition and in the range of behaviours it covered in practice. Treason was no longer just a case of threats to the Crown; it also meant letting the king down or failing to conform to his will.

It was up to people like the king's musicians and Will Somers to try to distract him from his pain and soothe his temper when the king flew into a rage. Will was reportedly very good
at it. He could get Henry laughing when no one else could, and distracted the king with riddles and rhyming games. But even he felt the lash of Henry's temper on occasion. At least once, Henry was physically violent with Will, who made a joke of it when he repeated the story, but none the less, it illustrated the way the court had to walk on eggshells around the tyrant Henry had become. Share on Tumblr

Was Having an Heir Henry VIII's Primary Motivation?

Some people explain Henry VIII's matrimonial turmoil by saying, "Henry VIII needed a son! He did all of these things because he had to have an heir for England." But is that actually true? Was Henry's foremost thought having heirs for the kingdom to prevent civil war?

Henry stopped sleeping with Katharine of Aragon around 1524 after he was told by physicians it was unlikely she would have any more children. Though he toyed with the idea of taking another wife as early as 1520, he didn't get serious about seeking an annulment until 1527 when he became obsessed with Anne Boleyn. He married Anne in late 1532 and three years later, after Anne miscarried a son, Henry had her executed on trumped-up charges of adultery.

His execution of Anne cannot be put down to his quest for an heir. Anne was still obviously fertile. He had no reason to believe a subsequent pregnancy would not be successful. She was not yet twenty-eight years old when she died, and according to the standards of the day, she had a few more fertile years left. But Henry despised his wife by this point and wanted to marry Jane Seymour - who was roughly the same age as Anne.

Jane Seymour died from complications after childbirth, giving Henry his heir. But he needed a "spare," and so the search for a new wife began before Jane was even in the ground. Henry himself had been the "spare," and he well knew that royal families could not rely on a single prince to continue the dynasty.

But Henry thought he should be an exception to a thousand years of royal marriage customs in which profitable unions were arranged by ambassadors and finalized by proxy before the bride was dispatched to her new homeland. Henry tried to convince ambassadors to send him eligible princesses so he could look them over in person before deciding if he'd marry them, something that would be humiliating in the extreme for the princesses who were rejected, and for their home countries. The French ambassador wryly suggested Henry might want to also "try" them and keep the one that was the sweetest. It's recorded that Henry at least had the grace to blush at that, but he whined,

"I trust to no one but myself. The thing touches me too near. I wish to see them and know them some time before deciding."

Cromwell convinced him of the political benefits and Henry married Anna von Kleefes, a princess from a small, but strategic, German duchy. Anna came from a very fertile family. Her grandfather was nicknamed "the babymaker" because he fathered a whopping sixty-three illegitimate children, aside from the four legitimate ones he had with his wife.

However, Henry disliked Anna and sought to divest himself of her as soon as possible. Had his primary desire been heirs for his kingdom, Anna would have been a perfect choice, a young, healthy woman of royal blood from a very fecund line. But Henry didn't even attempt to have children with her. 

His primary concern in this matter was not the good of his kingdom. Henry's actions were a shocking violation of royal marriage protocol. He lowered England's prestige in the eyes of the world, and put his nation at risk of war.

Had he wanted to seek the hand of another princess, it would have been very difficult to convince other countries to send him a wife when he might reject her - as he tried to do with Anna - or dissolve the marriage. England's king could not be trusted to do the right thing by their princesses.

While he waited for his annulment from Anna, Henry's interest had been drawn to one of her ladies in waiting. But Henry wasn't the only one who had lusted after Katheryn Howard. His "rose without a thorn" had been plucked before Henry discovered her.

Henry didn't bother with a trial that time. Katheryn was executed by Bill of Attainder, and it became illegal for a woman to conceal her sexual history once the king had expressed an interest in marrying her. It's recorded by Chapuys that Henry lashed out at his council and blamed them for this long parade of "ill-conditioned wives."

His final wife was Kateryn Parr, not the best choice for a baby-maker. Kateryn had been married twice before, and neither marriage had resulted in a pregnancy. She was thought to be infertile as a result. No one was surprised when her marriage to Henry produced no children, but they were surprised when she remarried after Henry's death and became pregnant by her next husband. 

Henry's marital tribulations were not because of his quest for children, but because of his personal desires. He chose his wives based on emotion. To modern people, that seems reasonable, but for his era, it was considered a foolish reason to select a spouse. Parents could have pointed to Henry's own matrimonial turmoil as an example of the results of choosing a spouse on such an ephemeral basis.

His rejection of Anna von Kleefes because he wasn't attracted to her was bizarre. Every royal marriage started out with people who weren't attracted to one another. Henry himself wasn't very concerned with whether his sister, Mary Tudor, would be attracted to her husband when he married her off to the elderly French king. But Henry thought he should be an exception to a thousand years of royal marriage tradition.

By marrying his wives' ladies in waiting, he lowered the prestige of his royal blood, and weakened his line's claim to the throne. The Tudors were already considered upstarts with a shaky claim, and the reason his father chose Katharine of Aragon to marry his son was because of the stability conferred by her impeccable royal lineage. Katharine actually had a stronger claim to the English throne than the current heir, Arthur Tudor. It's probably why Henry thought it was a good idea to marry Katharine himself, after his brother died. Thus, Henry's claims of concern that not having heirs might lead to civil war are weakened by the fact he married his subjects. As Elizabeth I knew, marrying a subject and favoring one noble family over another was a way to invite conflict into a nation.

Elizabeth may have later bragged about her blood being purely English, but she might have been stronger if she could have called on the assistance of family in other countries. That was the purpose of royal marriage: to create strong alliances between countries. But Henry's marriages were for reasons of personal satisfaction which brought little or no benefit to his nation.

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Anne Boleyn's Pets

Photo by mynameisgigi.com, CC license

Pourquoi was Anne Boleyn's lapdog. Some sources claim he was a Havanese, a dog breed that originated in Cuba, closely related to the Bichon. Havanese dogs are known to have a charming habit of tilting their heads in an inquisitive fashion, which may have been the root of Pourquoi name: For What? in French. The name is most commonly rendered in English as "Purkoy," a phonetic spelling which was also used in Old French.

Pourquoi was given to Anne by Honor, Lady Lisle. Honor was a very ambitious woman who strove to advance her family by cultivating a close relationship with the queen. She was born Honor Grenville and her second husband was Arthur Plantagenet, the bastard son of King Edward IV. (Arthur was Henry VIII's uncle, half-brother of Henry's mother, Elizabeth of York.) Honor traveled with Anne on that momentous visit to Calais in 1532, and remained behind in the city when her husband was appointed governor. Honor kept up with the comings and goings of the court through letters to her family and friends, 3,000 of which are preserved in the National Archives as the Lisle Letters. They form an incredible archive of information about the royal court.

Pourquoi is mentioned in the letters by John Husee in the winter of 1533. He requests Lady Lisle send her dog "Purquoy" to him, because Lord Francis Bryan is asking about him two or three times a day. Did Bryan and the Lisles think Anne would like Pourquoi? The king had recently been given one of their spaniels via a friend. Henry Norris wrote to the Lisles to tell them the king had personally thanked them, a pretty big deal when you consider the dozens of gifts a king got every day; mentioning one of them and the giver by name was thrill. And so perhaps they thought gifting a dog to the queen would be equally as efficacious in getting her attention.

Francis Bryan took Pourquoi to court, and Anne Boleyn seems to have fallen in instant love with the dog. Bryan reported the dog hadn't been in his hands for more than an hour when the queen took it from him, and she sent the Lisles her "hearty thanks" for the dog.

But if Honor thought this gift would lead to the long hoped-for appointments for her daughters at court, she was sadly disappointed. She sent the queen gifts of live quail, a cage with a songbird from her own chamber. Her agent wrote to tell Honor the bird did not cease to give Anne "rejoicing" from its pleasant songs, which should be a comfort to Lady Lisle. But the "comfort" Honor sought was not on offer: Anne had no places open for the Plantagenet girls in her retinue. It wasn't until the reign of Jane Seymour that Lady Lisle got her wish.

Pourquoi would have had a diet of bread, which people of the Tudor age thought would keep a dog gentle and discourage his hunting instincts. Daily, he would have been perfumed and brushed, or had his fur rubbed with a "hair cloth" to remove any stray fur that could adhere to his mistress's fine gowns.

Sadly, Pourquoi died in December, 1534. Margery Horseman, one of Anne's ladies, wrote to the Lisles that the dog had "fallen from a window" and her ladies were so afraid of Anne's reaction, they asked the king to break the news to her.

As usual, Ambassador Chapuys is gleeful in reporting any misfortune that comes Anne's way in his letters to the Emperor. He makes a callous joke of it later, saying that news of a military disappointment for one of their allies made the king and queen look like dogs that had fallen from a window. Some have taken this to indicate Chapuys may have had something to do with the dog's "accident" but I think it's unlikely.

The Lisles discussed the possibility of getting Anne another dog, but were told Anne did not want one. It doesn't appear Anne ever replaced Pourquoi. As any dog-lover knows, a beloved pet can't be "replaced" in your heart. Perhaps, Anne felt the same way.

The Lisles cast about for ideas and proposed getting Anne a monkey, but were told Anne could not abide the sight of the beasts. Some writers have speculated Anne disliked monkeys because they were imported from Katharine of Aragon's native country, Spain, but perhaps she simply didn't care for them regardless of their origin.

Anne had another dog, a hunting greyhound named Urian, given to her  in 1532 by William Brereton. Brereton had named the dog after his older brother before giving it to the queen. Later writers believed "Urian" was a Satanic name, tying it in with the spurious posthumous claims Anne had been charged with witchcraft. But "Urian" was a common name of the time, with no evil connotations.

Urian was involved in an unfortunate incident during Anne's last progress. Urian escaped his handlers and, along with another dog, ripped out the throat of a cow grazing nearby. The king's accounts record reimbursement for the cow's owner. One imagines Anne didn't do much cuddling of that particular dog!

Henry had passed an ordinance in 1526 that the only dogs allowed at court were ladies' lapdogs. So many dogs were at court that their waste was becoming a real nuisance. Part of the problem was pets sometimes weren't housebroken - a servant cleaned up after them. But if a servant didn't see the mess before someone stepped in it... With hundreds of dogs in the palace, "accidents" could quickly become a real problem. Smaller dogs were easier to deal with.

Only nobles were allowed to have large dogs, so owning a greyhound, mastiff, or a wolfhound was a symbol of status. A commoner with a large dog was assumed to be poaching large game. There was a hoop in each district, and a dog belonging to a commoner had to be small enough to fit through the hoop.

Some courtiers could obtain special permission to keep their large dogs at court, but they had to be housed in the kennels to keep the palace "sweet, wholesome, clean and well furnished, as to a prince's house and state doth appertain."

Henry himself kept spaniels, beagles and hunting greyhounds. His fool, Patch, is recorded as sleeping among the spaniels in the king's chamber. His greyhounds wore iron collars, some with toretts (spikes) on them. Sixty-five dog leashes were inventoried as being among the king's possessions when he died.

Henry's two favorite dogs, Cut and Ball, kept getting lost. Fortunately, Henry's lapdogs wore collars of velvet and kid leather with gold and silver Tudor rose and portcullis emblems on them, so the dogs could be instantly identified as belonging to the king. The king's accounts show payments of rewards to people who found them and returned them to the palace. They were given the large sum of fifteen shillings, which was the equivalent of a couple of hundred pounds today.


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When Did Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII Marry?

Their marriage literally changed the world, but no one is certain when it occurred. All of the records of the marriage of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn -assuming there were any - were destroyed, either intentionally after Anne's execution, or by Time's indifferent hand.

There are two dates proposed as the date of Henry and Anne's marriage: November 14, 1532 and January 25, 1533.

Two chroniclers of the day, Nicholas Sander and Edward Hall, claim that Henry and Anne were married on November 14, 1532, right after their return from Calais. During that trip, Francis, King of France, had tacitly recognized Anne as Henry's consort, a very significant win in the battle for their union's legitimacy.

Historian David Starkey agrees with this date. It seems to coincide with the beginning of the couple’s physical relationship. (Coincidentally, November 14 was also the day that Katharine of Aragon wed Arthur Tudor in 1501.) Traditionally, the Protestant faction favored this date because it would mean Henry and Anne's daughter, Elizabeth, was conceived in wedlock. Sander's agreement with the November date is interesting in this case, because he hated Elizabeth, and if he felt he could have tarnished her with the accusation of illegitimacy, it seems odd he wouldn't have taken the chance.

The second date is January 25th, 1533, a ceremony performed in the pre-dawn hours in the gatehouse at Whitehall Palace. According to NASA, January 25, 1533 was a new moon. I wonder if it that date was chosen because their movements to the gatehouse would be under the cover of darkness?

Nicholas Harpsfield writes a narrative of the marriage in which Henry basically bullies Dr. Rowland Lee into performing the service, lying about having a license from the pope. Cranmer wrote a letter citing this date:

But now, sir, you may not imagine that this coronation was before her marriage; for she was married much about St Paul’s Day last, as the condition thereof doth well appear, by reason she is now somewhat big with child.

He goes on to write it was done so privately that Cranmer himself didn't know it had happened until two weeks after the fact.

Why the discrepancy in the dates? How can two sets of chroniclers confidently assert two dates so many months apart? Were there really two ceremonies?

Some scholars assert that the first ceremony was merely some sort of betrothal/formal commitment ceremony, after which Anne Boleyn felt it was safe to "give in" and begin a physical relationship with the king.

But why would they have a ceremony that wasn't necessary? All of Europe already knew of their intention to marry, and that intention alone was binding. Henry had even gotten a dispensation from the pope (before he decided the pope had no such authority) to marry a woman whose sister he had slept with: Anne. Had Henry and Anne broken up, both would have needed a dispensation to marry others, simply based on the strength of what had already transpired.

I, personally, do not believe Anne Boleyn would have slept with the king without a marriage ceremony. Nor do I agree with the assessment that Anne was holding on to her virginity only as a way of propelling herself to the throne, and that she “gave in” to the king during this trip to France because she could trust that the crown was safely within her grasp. Whatever her flaws, Anne was a deeply religious woman and I don’t believe she would have slept with the king without being married to him, no matter what assurances she had. Henry, too, wouldn't have wanted to begin a physical relationship with Anne before they were safely married.

Once he had committed to marry her, Henry wanted his heirs to be born in lawful wedlock. He even staged a monarch's coronation for Anne, to ensure no one could challenge his heir, born to an anointed queen. Getting her "knocked up" before they were lawfully married would have been a disaster. He would not have wanted any hint of illegitimacy to hang over his child's head.

The second wedding was performed once it was discovered that Anne was pregnant. They decided to allay any doubts Anne was his wife by having another wedding on what was indisputably English soil in front of a handful of select witnesses, including Charles Brandon, Henry Norris, William Brereton, and Anne Savage.

The secret wedding after the return from Calais had stayed too secret. The second wedding was also kept a secret until after it was done - they didn't want anyone trying to stop them before the deed was accomplished. And so, they slipped out of Whitehall before dawn, through the moonless dark to the gatehouse, and there they married again, this time, intending to let the "secret" slip when it was expedient to do so. By April, everyone knew Anne and Henry were wed.

Henry didn't do things by half measures. His wife was double-married and in a few months, she would be doubly-crowned, first as a consort and also as a monarch in her own right.

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September 7, 1533: The Birth of Elizabeth I

It must have been miserable!

Anne Boleyn had "taken to her chamber" on August 26, 1533 to be sealed away from the world until after the birth of her child. She was led in a solemn procession to her chamber door, where she drank a goblet of spiced wine, and then proceeded inside with her ladies. The door was sealed shut; no men could enter until after the birth of the new heir.

Anne had no choice but to obey the conventional rules for royal childbirth. They had been codified by the king's grandmother, Margaret Beaufort, when she wrote Ordinance as to What is to be Made ​​Preparation Against the Deliverance of the Queen, as Also for the Christening of the Child of Whom She Shall Be Delivered for the delivery of the child of her daughter-in-law Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry VII.

The Ordinance is minutely detailed, down to specifying the colors of the fringe on the bedspread of the queen. You can read the whole Ordinance here.

The walls - and even the ceiling - were covered with tapestries, and the floors were laid with layers of rugs. All of the tapestries were required to have pleasant scenes, because if the expectant mother saw an ugly or deformed face, it was believed her child could be born with the same deformity.

Every window was covered over with a tapestry nailed down to keep out the foul "miasmas" in the air, except for one tapestry left partially unfastened, so the queen could lift the corner to allow in some daylight when it pleased her. Even the keyhole on the door was covered.

Anne followed these rules obsessively, not just because of her queenly status, but because if something went wrong, she would have been blamed for it, and any deviation cited as the cause.

It was late summer, and since the windows were sealed against any cooling breeze, it must have been stifling. The incense and heavy perfumes - thought to purify the air of foul miasmas - probably didn't help.

Boredom had to have set in, as well, though the women played cards, read, played musical instruments and embroidered while they waited for the birth. Anne had to be anxious - kings usually took a mistress while their wives were expecting. Sexual intercourse during pregnancy was not only considered sinful, it was thought to induce miscarriage.

Anne had a chapel set up in her chambers, complete with a baptismal font in case the infant was dying and needed emergency baptism. As she prayed for a safe delivery, did her eyes drift to that grim reminder of mortality?

Traditionally, a woman went into confinement about a month before the child was due, and remained inside the lying-in chamber until she was "churched" about forty days after the birth. Fortunately for Anne, her confinement was much shorter than expected. Everyone was shocked when she went into labor a scant two weeks after taking to her chamber.

The birth itself went well. Like almost every other aspect of life, Tudor royal births were semi-public events. All of Anne's ladies in waiting and maids of honor watched as she was settled on a cot where most of her labor would occur.

There were no painkillers available to Tudor women. Wealthy ladies used to send for relics of the saints which were said to reduce the pain of childbirth and ensure a healthy child. Henry's mother, Elizabeth of York, sent a girdle (belt) to a church to be wrapped around the statue of a saint. When the labor began, it was taken off the statue and brought to her, and she laid it across her belly.

But by this time, many of the famous relics had been denounced as frauds and removed from the churches. Anne had only the prayers of her ladies for assistance, and her "gossips," who told entertaining stories to try to distract the laboring woman from the pain.

When the actual birth itself was near, Anne was transferred to a "groaning chair." It was a slightly-slanted wood chair with a cut-out seat. The midwife held her hands below to catch the emerging child.

At three o'clock, the baby was born, and to her parents' dismay, she was a girl. Henry must have been stunned. For Anne Boleyn, he had destroyed a thousand years of English religious tradition and defied the crowned heads of Europe, only to get another worthless girl. So confident was he that Henry had birth announcements drawn up, announcing the arrival of his prince, with only the date left blank for later insertion. He had believed God would show his approval of Henry's actions by sending him his heir, and he had believed what the fortune tellers promised him. Later, he would tell the Imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, that those soothsayers' predictions had induced him to marry Anne, and when their prognostications turned out to be false, he thought it meant his marriage was null and void.

The alteration is on the third line down.

There must have been many who laughed behind their hands at this outcome. All this for another girl! But Henry gritted his teeth and smiled. The child was healthy; the next one would be a boy. They named her Elizabeth, after her grandmothers, Elizabeth of York and Elizabeth Howard Boleyn.

The celebratory jousts were cancelled, and the birth announcements were altered. A tiny "s" was slipped in to turn the word "prince" into "princes," an acceptable spelling of princess at the time, though people must have squinted to read it.

Anne was tucked into a great bed of estate, covered with cloth of gold and ermine. There, she would receive the congratulations of the court and foreign dignitaries. She would still have to remain in seclusion until after she'd been "churched," ritually blessed and allowed to rejoin court life.

Neither of her parents attended Elizabeth's christening three days after her birth. You can read a first-hand account of the christening here. The Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, Agnes Tilney Howard, carried the baby into the chapel of the Observant Friars in Greenwich Palace, accompanied by a huge procession of the highest nobles of the land, bearing torches and candles. The baby wore an elaborately embroidered gown made for her by her mother. It supposedly still survives at Sudeley Castle, having been given to Kateryn Parr and passed down through her descendants.

A wetnurse was selected for the baby. There's an apocryphal tale that Anne Boleyn wanted to nurse the baby herself, but the king refused. I included it in Under These Restless Skies, but it's likely not factual. Anne would have wanted to become pregnant again as soon as possible, and nursing was known to reduce fertility.

Selecting a wetnurse was a difficult task. She had to be of fine moral character, because vices were thought to be transmitted through the milk. It was better to have a nurse who had given birth to a boy herself, because it was believed the milk a woman produced for a boy was of better quality. Her diet had to be carefully monitored to ensure she made the best milk possible.

The baby would have been tightly swaddled and dressed in fine clothing, miniature versions of the bejeweled gowns worn by the lords and ladies of the court. Her rattles would have been made of solid gold and ivory. Tiny rings would have adorned her fingers, and pearls gleamed from the brim of her cap.

The baby was soon sent off to her own household in the country, complete with hundreds of servants as befitted the royal heir.

Anne kept close tabs on her daughter, visiting her as frequently as possible, and writing every day to her nursemaids to see how she fared. She sent the baby sumptuous gowns, likely made by her own hands. Historians note Anne seems to have been very affectionate and attentive to her baby, more so than usual. Share on Tumblr