On this day in Tudor history, 19th July 1543, in the reign of King Henry VIII, Mary Boleyn died.
Mary Boleyn is known for being Henry VIII’s mistress at one point, and you can find out a bit more about her in this edition of #TudorHistoryShorts…
You can find out even more about Mary Boleyn in the playlist of videos below or in our Mary Boleyn category of posts – click here.
Transcript of short video:
On 19th July 1543, Mary Boleyn died. It is not known where she was laid to rest.
Mary was the daughter of Thomas Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire and Ormond, and his wife, Elizabeth Howard. She was the granddaughter of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, and sister of Queen Anne Boleyn and George Boleyn, Lord Rochford.
At the time of her death, Mary was married to William Stafford, but had previously been married to William Carey, a member of Henry VIII’s Privy Chamber and an Esquire of the Body. She had two children during the course of her first marriage: Catherine and Henry. Carey died of sweating sickness in 1528 and in 1534 Mary married Stafford secretly and without her family’s permission.
I actually watched ‘Spencer’ yesterday whilst I was stuck inside away from the blistering heat, it was free on prime video so I thought why not? Kristen Stewart was brilliant as the forsaken Princess Diana she had her mannerisms the way she stood, and even managed to sound like her, it was set in the year 1991 during Christmas at Sandringham, and really the movie focused more on Diana’s loneliness and her battle with her mental health issues, her bulimia and increasing loneliness within the gilded cage, but what struck me was the references towards Anne Boleyn, on arriving at Sandringham she found a biography of Anne on her bed, called simply ‘Anne Boleyn life And Death Of A Martyr’ and she was flicking through it and realised she was related to her, it then saw her haunted by visions of Anne and their stories became immersed, both unhappy wives, both deserted by their husbands, it showed Diana in the fields of her old childhood home in Norfolk close to the Sandringham estate dressing a scarecrow with one of her fathers old coats, she said to him ‘why did you not tell me we were distantly related to Anne’, it showed Diana in a dream dining with the royal family and Anne was sitting opposite her, it showed Anne telling her that the king gave Jane Seymour a locket with his picture the same he had given to her, she told Diana to run, one critic said these references to Henry’s dead queen were absurd but I found it very refreshing, because the film makers brought an old story into a current one and Diana is after all, Anne’s niece by descent of her sister Mary, and I actually googled the author of this biography which was very old, I was very disappointed when I found it was in fact fiction, at the end of the movie it showed Diana telling her boys to leave the annual shooting and to get in the car with her, they were racing towards London with the radio blaring and I thought ‘ good for you’, Anne we saw no more of and Mary Boleyn we didn’t see at all, but as the video explains she is somewhat of a mystery and will sadly, always remain so, as Claire states, part of her fascination is that we know so little about her, but what is the most fascinating thing about her is that so many important people descend from her, and that her blood runs in the veins of our current royal family, the Seymours who shamelessly seized their advantage with the fall of Anne have no link at all, so in the end the Boleyn’s shamed and disgraced did triumph, the falcon still rides high.