William Carey (courtier)

• 1. Introduction

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  William Carey died on the 22nd of June 1528, and the man who recorded his passing captured something strange about the moment. Brian Tuke, Henry VIII's secretary, wrote to Lord Legat the very next day, describing how he had only recently spoken with Carey in person. Carey had been cheerful, mentioning he had visited his wife at Plashey and was planning to ride out and hunt. Then, within hours, he was gone. Tuke concluded his letter with a simple plea: "Our Lord have mercy on his soul; and hold his hand over us." The sweating sickness took Carey quickly, as it took so many at the Tudor court.

  Carey was not a king or a cardinal, but he sat at the very center of one of the most turbulent periods in English history. He was a favourite of Henry VIII, a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, an Esquire of the Body to the King. His wife was Mary Boleyn, the royal mistress. His sister-in-law was Anne Boleyn, who would become Henry's second queen. His family tree connected him to dukes, earls, and to the king himself. The questions worth asking are these: who exactly was William Carey, how did he navigate a court built on shifting loyalties, and what became of the family he left behind when the sweat came for him so suddenly?

• 2. Roots and Royal Kinship

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  William Carey was born around 1495, the second son of Sir Thomas Carey of Chilton Foliat in Wiltshire, who had died by 1500. His mother was Margaret Spencer, daughter of Sir Robert Spencer and Lady Eleanor Beaufort. That Beaufort connection ran deeper than it might first appear. Eleanor was the daughter of Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset. Edmund's brother John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset, was the father of Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby. Margaret Beaufort was the grandmother of King Henry VIII himself. This made William Carey and Henry VIII third cousins by blood.

  On his father's side, the family had deep Devon roots. The Cary family had anciently held the manors at Cockington and Clovelly in Devon, and William's grandfather Sir William Cary of Cockington had been an eminent Lancastrian. These were not the grandest titles in England, but they were old, legitimate, and respected. Such lineage mattered at the Tudor court, where a man's ancestry could open doors his own merits might not.

  Carey's family web extended further still. His maternal aunt was Catherine Spencer, who became Countess of Northumberland. Through her, Carey was first cousin to Henry Percy, 6th Earl of Northumberland. That same Henry Percy had once been a suitor to Anne Boleyn before the king's interest put an end to the courtship. The Carey family sat, perhaps uncomfortably, at the intersection of nearly every significant relationship at court.

• 3. Marriage and the King's Favour

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  On the 4th of February 1520, William Carey married Mary Boleyn, the elder daughter of Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, and his wife Elizabeth Howard. The couple owned property at Aldenham in Hertfordshire but spent the majority of their time at court, where proximity to the king was the currency of advancement.

  Shortly after the wedding, Mary became Henry VIII's mistress. The arrangement brought the Boleyn family considerable rewards in the form of land grants. Carey personally benefited as well, receiving manors and estates from the king during the period the affair was ongoing. Whether Carey accepted this arrangement with equanimity, resentment, or calculation is not recorded, but the grants he received suggest he was not left empty-handed.

  Henry's favour towards Carey may have had other foundations as well. The king was notably athletic, and Carey appears to have shared his enthusiasm for riding, hunting, and jousting. At the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520, the great diplomatic pageant staged between the courts of England and France, Carey distinguished himself in the jousting. That same year of his marriage, competing before two royal courts on one of the most spectacular stages of the age, Carey made his mark as a man capable of performing under pressure.

• 4. Patron of Flemish Art

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  Among the less-discussed aspects of Carey's life is his role as an art collector and cultural intermediary. He was a noted collector, and it was Carey who introduced Lucas Horenbout, the celebrated Flemish artist, to England in the mid-1520s. Horenbout was already famed on the continent, and bringing him to the English court was no minor act of patronage.

  Horenbout went on to work directly for Henry VIII, contributing to the visual culture of the court at a formative moment. Portrait miniatures, a format at which Flemish artists excelled, became a significant part of how the Tudor court represented itself. Carey's role in that introduction placed him in the company of men who shaped not just politics but the cultural memory of the reign.

• 5. Court Intrigue and the Abbess of Wilton

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  Anne Boleyn caught Henry VIII's attention roughly a year after his affair with Mary Boleyn ended. By 1527, Henry had proposed marriage to Anne. The Boleyn family's fortunes were ascending rapidly, and Carey attempted to use his position at court to benefit his own kin.

  Carey lobbied for his sister Eleanor, a nun, to be elected Abbess of Wilton Abbey. The position had a rightful heir apparent in Isabel Jordayne, but Carey pressed Eleanor's case through whatever influence he could muster. The bid collapsed badly. It emerged that Eleanor had borne two children by priests, a revelation that made her candidacy impossible to sustain. The failure was not just personal embarrassment; it illustrated the precariousness of court influence when the facts turned against you.

  The episode is a reminder that Carey, for all his access to the king, was not the central actor in the Boleyn drama. He operated in the margins of a story that Anne and Henry were driving. The Wilton affair showed both his willingness to press advantages and his limits in doing so.

• 6. Death and Its Aftermath

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  Carey died of the sweating sickness on the 22nd of June 1528, deeply in debt. His wife Mary was left in a precarious position, reduced to pawning her jewellery to meet immediate needs. It was Anne Boleyn, by then the king's intended, who eventually arranged a pension for her sister.

  The two children William and Mary left behind lived long enough to see a different world entirely. Catherine Carey, born around 1524, became a Maid of Honour to Anne of Cleves and Catherine Howard. She later served as lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth I, her first cousin. Catherine married the Puritan Sir Francis Knollys, and one of her daughters, Lettice Knollys, became the second wife of Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, the great favourite of Elizabeth I.

  Henry Carey, born on the 4th of March 1526 and created 1st Baron Hunsdon, was ennobled by Elizabeth I shortly after her coronation and made a Knight of the Garter in 1561. When he was dying, Elizabeth offered him the Boleyn family title, Earl of Ormonde, the title he had long sought. He refused it. The question of whether Catherine and Henry were the biological children of William Carey or of Henry VIII has been the subject of historical debate, given Mary's affair during her marriage; the matter remains unresolved.

• 7. Legacy and Fiction

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  Carey's life entered popular culture through Philippa Gregory's novel The Other Boleyn Girl, which fictionalizes his marriage to Mary and his death. Gregory's portrayal depicts Mary as the younger of the two Boleyn sisters, a reversal of the historical record, which identifies Mary as the elder. The novel was adapted for film twice: Anthony Howell played Carey in the 2003 version, and Benedict Cumberbatch took the role in 2008.

  The Carey family's oldest anchor in the historical record is the note Brian Tuke wrote the day after William died, a brief, personal account of a man who had been talking about hunting only hours before he was dead. That letter, written in the shadow of the sweating sickness, preserves something of the man that the grants, genealogies, and jousting scores cannot: the ordinary texture of a courtier's day, cut short before the great drama he had married into reached its conclusion.