‘But one thing, Master Secretary, consider; that he was young and love overcame reason: and for my part I saw so much honesty in him that I loved him as well as he did me; was in bondage and glad I was to be at liberty’ – Powerful and strong words from Mary Boleyn.
When trying to catch a glimpse of the true nature of a person that lived so long ago, because of lack of diaries or other such documents, we may have to think a little outside the box to get to our aim.
For getting to perhaps understanding the true nature of a person such as Mary Boleyn, looking passed the two known facts of her, that she was the sister to Queen Consort of England, Anne Boleyn and she may well have been a mistress to kings, I would like to invite you to discuss a decision Mary made.
Often stated as just a part of Mary’s timeline, I do wonder if we can discover a little more of Mary through her own decision she made in marrying her second husband, William Stafford.
This decision had upset her Boleyn family at the time, with the Boleyn members perhaps jumping too quickly to the notion that Mary had married beneath her as discussed in The Boleyns: From the Tudors to the Windsors by Amanda Harvey Purse published by Amberley Publishing due out in October 2022.
The Boleyns were a very powerful family at the time, so for Mary to do this can suggest an element of strong will, perhaps she wasn’t the weak link to the family as we might have once thought. Mary and her new husband was banished from court, when Mary might have needed support as she was pregnant but does Mary give up? Does Mary turn away? No. Instead Mary writes to the one man that seemed to have power with the King of England for help, the same man that may well have been the reason for her family’s downfall within court, Thomas Cromwell. She asks from him for her husband to be reinstated into court life, explaining;
‘But one thing, Master Secretary, consider; that he was young and love overcame reason: and for my part I saw so much honesty in him that I loved him as well as he did me; was in bondage and glad I was to be at liberty’
In the Letters and Papers, Domestic and Foreign it does state that William was working with Lord Lisle in the February of 1537 in Calais. Suggesting that when England might have seemed too hot to handle the sister to the recently beheaded Queen, Mary was once again over the Channel in her France, where she had spent time in her early childhood, with her second husband. This is corporated further by the fact that in 1539, William was one of those that welcomed the King of England’s fourth wife to be, Anne of Cleves when she entered Calais on her way to England. – The Chronicle of Calais: In the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII to the year 1540 by John Gough Nicholas 2015.
This was a honoured role to have, especially after everything that had gone before and being banished from court...
Could be suggest that all was forgiven? And if so, what could this say about the power of Mary Boleyn’s words in her letters to reinstate her second husband to court life? For that matter, what would this suggest in the power of Mary Boleyn?
To push this idea further, in the Letters and Paper, Domestic and Foreign it states that by 1540 William had become a Gentleman Pensioner in the King’s household with one of his duties being to guard the king’s bedchamber. Then, a year later William becomes Esquire of the Body, the King’s bodyguard. Slowly but surely, William was rising in court, much like Mary’s father had done before him.
But what of the nature of William Stafford?
The fact that he seemed to truly love Mary Boleyn could give us an image of a Saintly man, that was the hero of the story and never did anything wrong. However, as much as he may well have been a hero for Mary, he was also very human and so being, able to make a few mistakes.
For example, in the Letters and Papers it states on 5th April 1543 William was caught eating fish on Good Friday, for this he was sent to Fleet Prison and dismissed from Council meetings. This year does not continue to go well as just a few months later, sadly his wife, Mary Boleyn passes away rather suddenly on the 19th July 1543.
However, William was not given much time to grieve as just over a month later, William led one hundred foot soldiers with the King to fight in France. Two years later we find him fighting under the banner of Edward Seymour in Scotland, for this William Stafford is knighted on 23rd September 1545.
This was only two years after the death of Mary Boleyn and one can’t help but imagine, for the chance Mary took to be happy with William, for all those times she stood by him and perhaps helped him back to court life, whether she sensed in him, not just a good man and father but also a man that might one day be knighted, as her father once was…
FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE READ: The Boleyns: From the Tudors to the Windsors by Amanda Harvey Purse published by Amberley Publishing due out in October 2022, but available for preorder now at Amberley Publishing, Waterstones, WHSmiths, Amazon and many other websites.
https://www.amberley-books.com/catalog/product/view/id/11239/s/the-boleyns-9781398100220/category/6/
ahpurse's Blog: Tudor and Victorian Historian 