William Carey (circa 1529)
Mary Carey (circa 1529)
The near death of William Carey in 1528 would have tragically ended one of the brightest stars of the Tudor court had to offer. A man known for his late skills as a member of the King’s council, a great peer in his own right and the father of four high-ranking members of the English court. His legacy is one of great success, but also of great loss, and his familial connections to the Boleyn family would bring his to his highest highs, but also his lowest lows.
The ascent of William Carey cannot be entirely due to his personal charms and achievements, as it was really his familial connection to the Tudor King of England that got him into the court. His maternal grandmother, the Lady Eleanor Beaufort, was the first cousin of Margaret Beaufort, grandmother to Henry VIII of England. Thus the two were third cousins, and with this connection, he was amongst the young men who made up the King’s court, joining sometime between 1515 and 1518, as he was established by 1519, as can be seen in the negotiations of his marriage.
His first wife, at the time of their marriage known as the Mistress Mary Boleyn, was the daughter of Thomas Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire and Ormond, who at the time was Sir Thomas Boleyn, Ambassador to France. The young woman in question was of good breeding, as the niece of the Duke of Norfolk, and quite beautiful, and sometime shortly after their marriage, she was to become mistress to Henry VIII of England. Of course, there is no way to know how much Carey knew of his wife’s infidelity, although it should be noted that of their children from this time, he never once betrayed any thought they were not his.
However, it should be noted that Carey was, at the time of his marriage and later his wife’s infidelity, already a leading force in the English court. Part of the staff to the King’s Privy Chamber and Esquire to the body, Carey was an well balanced match of position and blood that made him a great match for the eldest Boleyn daughter. The birth of two children in the first decade of their marriage, Catherine and Henry Carey, cemented the bond between Carey and the Boleyns, and thus, he was amongst those in favour of his sister-in-law’s marriage to the King of England, around 1532/1533.
Carey was not just, however, known for his wife’s family and his own blood. A distinguished jouster, he was highly successful against French horsemen during the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520, shortly after his marriage. He was also a collector of art, and the one to introduce Dutch artist Lucas Horenbout to court, where he became highly successful as a miniaturist, working directly for the King from 1525 to his death, in 1544. During his time at the court, he continued his relationship with the Carey family, and painted miniatures of both William Carey and his wife around the last 1520’s, perhaps in celebration of the ascent of Carey in 1529 to Knight of the Garter, thus bringing him to the title Sir William Carey, and with it, as a reward for his great efforts at the court, lands worth an added $500 a year to those he already had, bringing his fortune up to almost $1000 a year, along with new manors and the like.
His life as Sir William Carey, from 1529 to 1533, was both quick and highly successful. Amongst those brought to France, with his wife, to be part of the King’s entourage to meet with the King of France, it seems he and the King conceived with their respective Boleyn sisters around the same time, as in September, both enjoyed the birth of daughters, named Elizabeth for the King, and Margaret for Carey. However, 1533 was not just joyous for the birth of a daughter for Carey. No, as the Queen’s pregnancy, along with her sister’s, moved forward, Henry VIII of England raised Sir William to the peerage, as the Viscount Beaumont, an ancient barony that had been in abeyance since 1460, and now became the foremost viscounty in England, placing the now Lord Carey above his brother-in-law, George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford.
In the next 3 years, Lord Carey found his wealth growing well, and by January of 1536, he was earning $2400 a year on just taxes and lands alone, and that was without his pension from the King of nearly $500 a year, and various gifts of money, in one case just reaching $2000. Indeed, there was talk during the Queen’s pregnancy in 1536 of the Viscount Beaumont rising to the title of Earl, and Carey himself seems to have thought that the King meant for him to be Earl of Bridgewater or Essex, although Essex seems to have been the one more considered. However, with the annulment of the marriage to Anne Boleyn and her later execution, the Carey family would have to wait for that honour.
Indeed, although Carey was not amongst those who testified against Anne, he was amongst the men initially considered part of her harem of lovers, although the King himself, along with Carey and a host of others, put that simply to be impossible. Yes, indeed, one of dates put forth for his potential copulation with the Queen was impossible on two levels, as he had been with the King, in another area completely. However, his dignity did not emerge unscathed, and Carey would send his wife to stay with her mother at Hever, where she remained until her mother’s death in 1540, although she did make rare appearances at court.
In the interim years, Carey found himself striving for excellence as a member of the court, and in 1537 he was amongst those who held high positions in the baptism of the Prince of Wales, and amongst those who stood for the King during the funeral to Jane Seymour. However, despite these grand positions, the King did not seem to fall back into his ease with the Viscount Beaumont until 1540, when he was amongst those who were part of the King’s party for his official meeting with Anne of Cleves, although the King had already secretly met and been offended by the future Queen of England, which was not a good sign.
The King’s most favoured advisor, Thomas Cromwell, had earlier that year succeeded to the title Earl of Essex, a title the Viscount Beaumont had previously been interested in, but shortly after the end of the marriage to Anne of Cleves, supposedly without consummation, Cromwell was executed for treason, and the King of England, in the coming months, rose the Viscount Beaumont to the same title, which had previously been intended for him.
However, the title of Earl of Wiltshire was not the only one Carey would receive that year, as his yearlong court battle to receive the inheritance of Thomas Boleyn, after his death in March of 1539, was finally decided in his favour, although a large chunk of the lands and income that Thomas Boleyn had not managed to tie directly to those titles were inherited by the Lady Elizabeth Tudor, the King’s daughter, and thus the new Earl of Essex, Wiltshire and Ormond chose to discreetly say nothing. And in this frenzy of sudden good will, he brought his wife and children back to court, and began to see to their good marriages.
As an Earl, even a new one, Lord Carey saw his chance for good marriages amongst the elite of England, and thus, in May of 1540, he saw his eldest daughter married to upward mover Sir Francis Knollys, who had a solid match, although it has been claimed that, had Carey not been suggested the match by the King, he might have tried for a better husband for his daughter, although his eldest daughter’s match would have been considered quite successful.
His eldest son, meanwhile, would remain unmarried throughout the 1540’s, although it is known that attempts were made for a marriage between himself and a daughter of Edward Seymour and at one point, and in 1548 the Earl of Essex attempted to negotiate with the Dowager Duchess of Richmond and Somerset, who refused point blank. Thus, it was not until 1552 that the Viscount Beaumont, as Henry Carey’s title had become, married, to the widowed Elizabeth Tailboys, sister to Henry VIII’s bastard, Henry Fitzroy, who’s widow the Earl of Essex had tried to have as his son’s wife 4 years previously.
The youngest Carey daughter, Margaret Carey, saw herself the most high married of the three when, in 1556, ate age 23, her father saw her married to the late Duke of Norfolk, who had been hoping for her hand since negotiations had begun in 1547, although it had taken almost a decade to sort out issues surrounding her dowry. However, with this marriage, Carey felt assured in his position as a leading figure at court.
However, life in the 1540’s and 1550’s was not all smiles and roses for the Earl of Essex. The death of his wife in 1545 was a terribly blow to the Carey family, and he would not remarry until 1551, for a brief union with the Mary Howard, a sister to the executed Catherine Howard, who died two years later, possibly in childbirth, although no child is recorded. However, his third match, in 1554, to the Lady Mary FitzAlan, was a grand one, as she was the heiress to the Earl of Arundel, and with their single child, a son named John Carey, two of the sons of the Earl of Essex became Earls, with Henry Carey inheriting the bulk of the Carey titles, and young John inheriting his grandfather’s.
Carey’s survival during the Mary Tudor years is attributable to two things: he never became involved in the taunting of Mary or her mother, and he had been at Hever at the time of the King’s death, attempting to take a break from court. Otherwise, it is likely, due to his friendship with the Duke of Northumberland, he may have supported this turn of events. But now, he rode into London to congratulate the Queen see his children and leave, to live out his final 3 years of living in quiet comfort, only returning to London to see his son’s first and only child’s baptism (his son’s only child was, thankfully, a son himself, named Philip for the Queen’s Spanish husband).
Upon the Earl of Essex’s death in 1556, he was around 60 years old, married thrice, with four healthy children and a widow aged 16 years old, who was still recovering from the birth of their only son, earlier that year. She would remain unmarried until 1565, when she married, at the suggestion of the Queen Elizabeth I of England, her daughter-in-law’s widower, the Duke of Norfolk, by whom Margaret Carey had had 3 sons and a daughter, dying of smallpox at the tender age of 31. 26 year old Mary FitzAlan would have a further 2 daughters, before herself dying in 1568, leaving her husband free to marry a third time to the widow to the Baron Dacre, Elizabeth Leyburne, who would die shortly after.
Of the Carey boys, the new Earl of Essex, Wiltshire and Ormond would see himself as a shining member of the Queen’s court, although he would never rise any further than where he had been during the reign of Queen Mary. His son, however, became a favourite of the Queen’s and she would, at his request, see to his marriage to first cousin, the Lady Ursula Howard. However, this union would produce no children, as would his second marriage, to the Mistress Maud Knollys, another first cousin. However, his third marriage, in 1601, to his fourth cousin, Penelope West, would produce 2 surviving sons.
The other son of William Carey, John Carey, became Earl of Arundel in 1580, which saw him also marry his first niece, Lady Anne Howard. This match proved more fruitful than his nephew’s, in that he had a daughter by her before her death in 1594. After this match, he remarried to Margaret Brooke, widow to Sir Thomas Sondes, and had a son and a daughter, named Catherine and Henry, before his wife’s madness, which was before 1601, when she came to be described as “the mad Lady Carey”. The Earl would be widowed again in 1621, when his wife was 57 and he was 65. He remarried a third time, to Mary Dee, only child of Arthur Dee, son of Doctor John Dee. The match seems to have been, on his part, a love match, or at least, a match with a woman he hoped would keep him well. The lady in question had been widowed twice already, to Sire John Doyle in 1604, and Mistress Edward Clarke in 1615. She would, a third time, be widowed, in 1627, and then, finally, would make a happy marriage for herself, when she married in 1632, almost certainly a love match, to Mister Nicholas Stafford, who claimed descent from the Dukes of Buckingham. With a young husband, Mary Dee would have her first child in 1635, almost certainly in her 40’s, giving birth to the first of four sons. However, after her husband’s execution in 1640, for “high criminal acts” (thought to be stealing or impersonating the aristocracy), she remarried a final time, with her fifth husband being a cousin of her third husband, a man by the name of Sir Robert Knollys, aged 49 at their marriage, who married his two daughters by his own second marriage, to her two from her fourth.
The legacy of William Carey lived on through the Stuart Era, although the mainline of the Earls of Essex continued to threaten to die out, until they actually did, in 1710. By then, the Earls of Essex were so broke, they sold the Earldoms of Wiltshire and Ormond to the Earls of Arundel anyway, who fared better, due to more fertile wives, and better practice with their money. The Carey name thus lived on, and in 1802, under the Georgians, they found themselves made Dukes of Essex.