Mary Boleyn (c. 1499/1500 – 19 July 1543) was the sister of English queen consort Anne Boleyn and a member of the Boleyn family, which enjoyed considerable influence during the reign of King Henry VIII of England. Some historians claim she was Anne's younger sister, but her children believed Mary was the elder, as do most historians today.
Mary was one of the mistresses of Henry VIII. It has been rumoured that she bore two of the king's children, though Henry did not acknowledge either of them as he had done with Henry FitzRoy, his son by Bessie Blount. Mary was also rumoured to have been a mistress of Henry VIII's rival, King Francis I of France. She was the maternal aunt of Queen Elizabeth I of England.
Mary Boleyn was married twice: in 1520 to Sir William Carey, and secretly in 1534 to William Stafford, a soldier of good family but few prospects. This secret marriage to a man considered beneath her station angered both Henry VIII and her sister, Queen Anne, and resulted in Mary's banishment from the royal court; she spent the remainder of her life in obscurity.
Read more about Mary Boleyn: Early Life, Royal Affair in France, Royal Mistress, Sister’s Rise To Power, Second Marriage, Issue, Depictions in Fiction, Non-fiction, Styles, Ancestry
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“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)
“Toll on, thou passing bell;
Ring out my doleful knell;”
—George Boleyn (d. 1536)