Family
Both Margaret and Mary were daughters of Sir John Shelton and his wife Anne, the sister of Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, the father of King Henry VIII's second Queen consort, Anne Boleyn. Margaret and Mary were thus first cousins of the Queen.
Mary Shelton (1510/15 – 1570/71) was the youngest of Sir John Shelton's daughters. She was an attendant of her cousin, Queen Anne Boleyn, who is said to have chided her "for writing 'ydill poesies' in her prayerbook".
Mary was part of a social group which included the poets Sir Thomas Clere (d. 14 April 1545), Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and Thomas Wyatt, with all of whom she was romantically linked. In an epitaph he composed at the death of Sir Thomas Clere, Surrey identified Mary as Clere's "beloved". Mary's two closest friends were Lady Margaret Douglas, a niece of King Henry VIII, and Mary Howard, Duchess of Richmond, wife of the King's illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond. Shelton was the main editor of and a main contributor to the famous Devonshire MS, where members of their circle wrote poems they enjoyed or had composed.
Read more about this topic: Margaret And Mary Shelton
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