by Alison Weir
Thomas Boleyn’s heir and namesake lived until 1520, and it is probably fair to say that George’s other older brother, Henry Boleyn, was still alive when he was born in 1502–1503; had he not been, this third son might also have been named after the King. Instead, it seems likely that he was called after England’s patron saint, St. George, as the name does not appear elsewhere in the Boleyn family tree, and that he was born around that saint’s day, April 23.67
These estimated dates of birth suggest that Mary, Thomas, and Henry were the three oldest children, born before 1501 (but not necessarily in that order), and Anne and George the two youngest. There were probably others, given that their mother had a child “every year,” so this sequence cannot be conclusive. What it, and the other evidence, does suggest is that Thomas Boleyn and Elizabeth Howard married some years earlier than 1500, and that Mary Boleyn was born between 1496 and 1501.
The surviving Boleyn children were probably born at Blickling Hall in Norfolk. Prior to his death in 1505, their grandfather, Sir William Boleyn, resided mainly at Hever—he is referred to in old records as “Sir William Boleyn of Hever Castle,”68 and Thomas and his family appear to have lived in the manor house at Blickling. Anne Boleyn’s chaplain, Matthew Parker, who was born in Norfolk, was to refer to himself as her “countryman,” and Sir Henry Spelman, a Norfolk antiquarian writing in the reign of Anne’s daughter, Elizabeth I, wrote: “To Blickling was decreed the honor of Anne Boleyn’s birth.” Given that Anne and Mary were almost certainly born before late 1505 / early 1506, when their father left Blickling for Hever, Mary is likely to have been born at Blickling too; it is also possible, although less credible, that she came into this world in the old manor house at Mulbarton, near Norwich, another Boleyn property in Norfolk, which was part of the Hoo inheritance, and would be sold by Thomas Boleyn in 1535. The Boleyns, like the Pastons and the Heydons, owned a house in Norwich itself, by the River Wensum in King Street, the site of which is next to the fifteenth century house now known as Dragon Hall,69 which could also have been Mary’s birthplace; and of course, she could have been born at Hever Castle, although this is less likely, unless she arrived when her parents were visiting.
The Blickling Hall of the Boleyns no longer exists. The absence of a license to crenellate, and Leland’s description—as Griffiths points out, he used the word “fair” to describe decorated houses—suggest that it had no defensive features and was probably a manor house like the one of molded brick and tile that survives at East Barsham, Norfolk, which was built around 1520. Possibly Sir William Boleyn or his son, Thomas, carried out improvements at Blickling. Their house was surrounded by yew hedges that still survive today, and was acquired in a decaying state from Sir Edward Clere by the Hobart family in 1616. By 1619 it had been largely demolished to make way for the present Jacobean house. Parts of Sir Geoffrey Boleyn’s house—the western service range and sections of the north wing, including the parlor, withdrawing chamber, and one end of the long gallery—were incorporated into the new one and survived until 1767. These parts, including a gabled building with Tudor windows in the north wing, can be seen in eighteenth century prints by Edmund Prideaux. The old moat is now a flower garden.
By November 1501, possibly through the influence of his Howard in-laws, Thomas Boleyn had begun to make his mark at court. That month, he was present at the wedding of Henry VII’s heir, Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales, to a pretty, golden-haired Spanish princess, Katherine of Aragon, which was celebrated in great splendor in London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral.70 In August 1503, after Arthur had tragically died at just fifteen, and his younger brother Henry, now twelve years old, had been made Prince of Wales in his stead and betrothed to the widowed Katherine, Thomas Boleyn was among the escort appointed to conduct the King’s daughter Margaret to Scotland to marry King James IV.71 In 1507, Thomas held the post of “yeoman of the Crown” at the port of (King’s) Lynn in Norfolk.72
Sir William Boleyn died on 10 October 1505, and was buried in Norwich Cathedral, in a plain tomb bearing the Boleyn arms, which had been built as a family mausoleum by his mother in 1463, after lightning struck the spire and a great fire had damaged the presbytery.73 His sister Anne is buried nearby, her tomb marked by a brass.
Thomas Boleyn’s financial problems were solved by his father’s death, for he inherited the family wealth and lands, including the manors of Blickling, Calthorpe, and Wickmere, which had been purchased by Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, and were all located north of Aylsham in Norfolk. Not far off were Heydon and Baconsthorpe, where there were Boleyn family connections, and nearby lived other relatives, the Calthorpes, the Sheltons, and the Cleres. Blickling, the family seat, was by far the most important Boleyn property in the area. To the south lay Norwich, and the nearby manor of “Micklebarton” (listed in Domesday Book as “Molkebertuna”) or Mulbarton, which was also part of Thomas Boleyn’s inheritance; on occasion he may well have stayed in the original moated manor house on the site of the Elizabethan Old Hall.
Thomas Boleyn also came into possession of other manors in Norfolk: Filby on the Norfolk Broads, bought by his father in 1501; Stiffkey, on the marshes between Wells and Blakeney; Hoe, or Hoo, just north of East Dereham, as distinct from the manor of Hoo in Bedfordshire, which he also inherited; and West Lexham, near Castle Acre; there was also Cockernhoe in Hertfordshire (now part of the urban sprawl of Luton), an estate of the manor of (Great) Offley, three miles to the north, which Thomas sold in 1518, both also from the Hoo inheritance; Seal (near Sevenoaks), purchased by Sir Geoffrey in 1463, and Hever Castle, both in Kent.74 The Boleyns probably never resided in most of the manors Thomas inherited, but would have lived off the profits instead.
This was the close-knit social milieu in which Mary and her siblings spent their early years, the kind of society described so vividly in the letters of the Paston family. But for all their long tenure there, the Boleyns have left few traces in Norfolk, apart from a few graves.
Thomas Boleyn received royal license to take possession of his estates in February 1506.75 Under the terms of his father’s will, he was to pay his widowed mother, Lady Margaret, 200 marks (nearly £2,000) yearly for her maintenance. By February 1506 he had left Blickling,76 which he seems to have been happy to abandon (and for which he paid 3s.6d. [£85] every thirty weeks for castle guard to the Bishop of Norwich77), and moved with his family, taking his mother with them, to Hever, which was more convenient for London and the court; in 1538 he would tell Thomas Cromwell that he had lived “these thirty-three years” in Kent.78
Mary Boleyn was between five and ten years old when she came to live in the thirteenth century castle at Hever, where she would spend the remainder of her formative years. Set amid parkland and forest in the beautiful, undulating Kentish countryside, three miles southeast of Edenbridge, it was—and still is—an idyllic place. Originally a fortified farmhouse and keep built around 1270 by the Norman de Hever family, it was not crenellated until 1384, when it was owned by Sir John de Cobham. The oldest surviving parts are the thirteenth century three-story gatehouse, outer defensive wall and moat, and the fourteenth century battlements.
In 1462–63, Mary’s great-grandfather, Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, had begun converting the castle into a moated manor house; his works were carried on by his son, Sir William Boleyn, and some can still be seen today: the ceiling in the room now called “King Henry VIII’s Bedchamber” dates from 1462, while the main doorway from this period still survives opposite the one created by Geoffrey’s grandson, Sir Thomas Boleyn, who began making further improvements as soon as he acquired the castle. Around 1506 he installed mullioned windows, added the present entrance hall, the staircase gallery above it, and a ninety-eight-foot-long gallery above the great hall (which had hitherto had exposed rafters). This is one of the earliest examples of a long gallery in England.
But the Hever that Mary grew up in was not the Hever we know today, for the decaying castle—which had reverted to use as a farmhouse—was extensively altered and refurnish
ed in the early twentieth century by the American business magnate, William Waldorf Astor, who substantially remodeled the interior and replaced the courtyard facades. A drawing executed by Joseph Nash between 1838 and 1849 shows the courtyard as it was before a disastrous earlier restoration in 1898, when its old mullioned windows were removed and a timber-framed cladding was attached to the walls. In Tudor times there was a brick bridge across the moat.
The present dining hall was then the great hall (not paneled until 1906); a nineteenth century narrative painting, The Yule Log, by Robert Alexander Hillingford (on display at Hever), shows the Boleyns’ great hall with its screens passage still intact, as it was before the restorations. In Mary’s day the present library was probably a steward’s office, the morning room was probably the private parlor, and the Edwardian great or “inner” hall was the kitchen, which had a large fireplace and a well sunk in the floor. The long gallery was not paneled until Elizabethan times; another of Nash’s drawings shows it much as it was in the late sixteenth century. There was stained glass in the Tudor castle, but the only piece that survives is now in the elaborately reconstructed minstrels’ gallery above the dining hall. The Tudor stables with their oak balcony and a large ancient barn were demolished in 1898; the balcony and the roof tiles were later incorporated into William Waldorf Astor’s Tudor Village. The gardens were extensively remodeled, and the lake dug, in the early 1900s, so they could not, as has been imaginatively claimed, have “provided a romantic setting for visits paid by the King to Anne Boleyn.”79
By 1509, Thomas Boleyn had begun his long career at court when he was appointed “Esquire of the Body” to Henry VII, a post that brought him into daily contact with the King. The four Esquires of the Body enjoyed great influence, and were usually able and cultivated knights who took turns to wait on the King day and night in his bedchamber, helped him dress, attended to his daily needs, and informed the Lord Chamberlain “if anything lack for his person or pleasaunce. Their business is in many secrets.”80 This was naturally a position of great honor and trust, and its occupants were often able to enjoy manifold benefits from being in such close proximity to the monarch. This gave them a distinct advantage over other courtiers, and opportunities to sue for favors for themselves—and for others at a price—and express persuasive opinions. Thus early on did Mary’s father become influential at court.
Elizabeth Howard, who was rarely at court, would from now on have been the guiding figure in her childen’s daily lives, and a far less distant one than Thomas Boleyn, who was often away from home, either at court or on the King’s business, and who, in the manner of Tudor fathers, would have had much influence over, yet little hands-on involvement with, the rearing of his children. Thomas was in his element at court, where there was every chance that he could fulfill his ambitions. He can have had little idea of where those ambitions would take him and his family.
I: THE ELDEST DAUGHTER
1 Loades: Henry VIII: Court, Church and Conflict
2 Blomefield
3 The Complete Peerage
4 Griffiths
5 For Blickling Hall, to which there are many references in this chapter, I am indebted in several instances to the paper of Elizabeth Griffiths, who discovered that Sir Geoffrey Boleyn built a house on the site. The date 1452 is inferred from internal evidence in The Paston Letters; Blomefield gives it as 1450.
6 Wilkinson: Mary Boleyn
7 Ibid.; Griffiths; Leland
8 The Paston Letters; National Archives: Ancient Deeds: C.137,862,5972
9 The Paston Letters
10 The Complete Peerage; his will was proved on July 2 that year.
11 Stow
12 Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem: Henry VII
13 Ibid.; her age is given as twenty or more in the inquisition postmortem on her mother, taken in November 1485.
14 The Complete Peerage.
15 The Oxford Companion to Irish History
16 Michael Clark
17 Harleian mss.
18 Calendar of Patent Rolls: Henry VII: 1485–1509; Blomefield
19 L. & P.; in 1529, at the legatine court convened at Blackfriars to try Henry VIII’s nullity suit against Katherine of Aragon, Boleyn gave his age as fifty-two.
20 Calendar of Patent Rolls: Henry VII: 1485–1509; Wilkinson: Mary Boleyn; Griffiths; The Crown and Local Communities in England and France in the Fifteenth Century
21 Meyer
22 L. & P.
23 Cited by Ives.
24 Brewer
25 L. & P.
26 Surrey is known to have been resident at Sheriff Hutton Castle only between 1489 and 1499, when he was serving as Lieutenant of the North. Anne Bourchier had married Lord Dacre probably in 1492; Elizabeth Tylney died in 1497. Her daughters Elizabeth and Muriel are given their maiden name and style, so were not yet married when the poem was written (Muriel married before 1504). For Skelton and this poem, see Rollins; Tucker; Morley and Griffin; Brownlow in Skelton, John: The Book of the Laurel; The Complete Peerage.
27 L. & P.
28 For example, Anne Boleyn; Jones
29 For example, Warnicke: The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn; Claremont
30 For example, Loades: The Six Wives of Henry VIII; Plowden: The Other Boleyn Girl; Wilkinson: Mary Boleyn
31 Not her son, Henry, as Hart states.
32 Round is incorrect in asserting that Hunsdon was mistaken here, and that Boleyn was created Lord Rochford to him and his heirs male, and Earl of Wiltshire and Ormond to him and his heirs general; the earldom of Wiltshire was granted to him in tail male, the others in tail general; see The Complete Peerage.
33 Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth
34 Round
35 The Complete Peerage; Broadway. On the death of Queen Elizabeth in March 1603, George Carey became sole heir to Thomas Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire and Ormond, and when he died without male issue six months later, his daughter Katherine Carey inherited his claim to the earldom. When she died in 1635, her son, George Berkeley, born in 1613, succeeded her in her apparent right to the earldom of Ormond, even though that earldom was in fact still held by the Butlers.
36 Ms. in the Chapter House, Westminster Abbey
37 Tallis; Bernard: Anne Boleyn; Sergeant
38 Sergeant
39 The Complete Peerage; Starkey: Six Wives
40 Ives; Calendar of the Close Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office: Henry VII. I am indebted to Douglas Richardson for kindly drawing my attention to this reference.
41 Barbara Harris
42 Ibid.
43 As before, I am grateful to Douglas Richardson for this information.
44 Ives
45 Warnicke: “Anne Boleyn’s Childhood”
46 Warnicke: The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn; Wilkinson: Mary Boleyn
47 Bell. For a fuller discussion of the examination of the bones, see Weir: The Lady in the Tower.
48 For example, Warnicke: The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn; Jones
49 The best source is The Complete Peerage.
50 Paget: “The Youth of Anne Boleyn”; Warnicke: ‘Anne Boleyn’s Childhood.” For the full text of the letter, in context, see p. 51–52.
51 Ives; Bernard: Fatal Attractions
52 S. C.
53 Round
54 Plowden: The Other Boleyn Girl
55 Powell
56 Hughes
57 Powell
58 Ibid.; Mongello
59 Powell states that Mary Boleyn was born around March 25, 1498, “at the same time as the Princess Mary,” but the latter had been born two years earlier.
60 Powell
61 Brewer, in L. & P.; The Complete Peerage
62 Somerset: Ladies in Waiting; Hoskins; Hackett; Williams: Henry VIII and His Court. Tunis has Mary born in 1504 at “Hever Castle in Chilton Foliat,” but Hever is in Kent, not Wiltshire, while Chilton Foliat was possibly the birthplace of Mary’s first husband, William Carey.
63 Warnicke: The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn
64 Bernard: Anne Boleyn
65 Metrical Visions
66 Ambassades en Angleterre de Jean du Bellay
67 Powell
68 Blomefield
69 Ibid.; Griffiths; Shelley
70 L. & P.
71 The Rutland Papers
72 Calendar of Patent Rolls: Henry VII: 1485–1509
73 Calendar of the Close Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office: Henry VII; Griffiths; Norwich Cathedral: Church, City and Diocese, 1096–1996
74 Calendar of Patent Rolls: Henry VII: 1485–1509; Calendar of the Close Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office: Henry VII; L. & P.; Blomefield. Sir William’s will is given in Testimenta Vetusta.
75 Calendar of Patent Rolls: Henry VII: 1485–1509
76 Calendar of the Close Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office: Henry VII, where he is described as “late of Blickling, Co. Norfolk.”
77 Blomefield
78 L. & P. This overturns John Newman’s assertion that Hever was never the Boleyns’ chief residence, as they did nothing to “transform their house into a worthy expression of their ambitions.” But the works at Hever carried out by Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, and, more importantly, by Sir Thomas, prove rather the contrary. Moreover, there are very few references to Thomas Boleyn being in Norfolk during the reign of Henry VIII.
79 Norton: Anne Boleyn
80 Cited by Norris.
About the Author
ALISON WEIR was born in London, England, and educated at the City of London School and the North Western Polytechnic (Department of Teaching Studies), where history was her main subject. But her passionate interest in history had arisen some years earlier, when after reading her first adult historical novel at the age of fourteen she took up genealogy and history as hobbies. After some years of employment in the Civil Service (including a spell working on the in-house magazine of the Cabinet Office in Whitehall), Alison published her first book, Britain’s Royal Families, in 1989, and has since written nine other historical works, among them The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Elizabeth the Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry VIII: King and Court, and The Princess in the Tower, as well as her first novel, Innocent Traitor, about Lady Jane Grey. She currently has three more books in preparation. From 1991 to 1997, she ran her own school for children with special needs. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences, and is married with two adult children. She lives in Surrey, England, and her hobbies and interests include genealogy, art, foreign travel, rock music, reading, films, poetry, and eating out.