Henry Tudor, eighth of his name, King of England, Ireland and titularly of France, was a lot of things to a lot of people. Mostly bad, considering his lifetime achievements included a few failed wars with France, killing multiple people, and looking like that towards the end of his life. We all know what happened. That singularly handsome Prince of the early Renaissance, who slowly transformed into a mass of paranoia, resentment, and fickle affections. But for the women in his life, he was a guiding light.
I don’t think you can understate just how much adoration this young King inspired in the first decade of his reign, and basically well into middle age. Despite all evidence to the contrary, the man who succeeded the notoriously miserly Henry VII of England was treated by everyone who met him as a symbol of hope for a very long time. This didn’t end with his split from the Catholic Church in 1532, or his first wife murder in 1536. In many ways, it only ended when his dynasty did, in 1603. For by that point, nobody alive was invested in the future that had never come to pass.
But in the beginning and through his life, he was considered brilliant.
Part of that brilliance was his spirituality. Even post-split from the Pope, this is a man who held onto his title as Defender of the Faith as granted to him from Rome. He went to mass when he was meant to, he spoke out against the writing of Martin Luther, and when he had affairs, he had the decency to hide them.
Much ado has been made about Henry VIII of England being the ultimate example of the serial monogamist. Some have even claimed that the King was unusually faithful for the era, keeping to his wives’ bed for the most part. You know, despite how he came into these marriages. Some of these books even make these assertions in the same paragraphs that host descriptions of his infidelities. It’s, quite obviously, ridiculous. Henry was just as sexually promiscuous as most other royal men of his day. He just felt shame about it…sometimes.
Look to his first affair, while his illustrious and long-suffering bride struggled through the loss of the first of many children. In 1510, sources indicate that there was an incident where the King began an affair with either the Lady Elizabeth Radcliffe, Baroness Fitzwalter, or her sister, the Lady Anne Hastings, Baroness Hastings. This would have been during Queen Catherine’s pregnancy, which left her unable to share in her husband’s bed. It’s unclear who was sleeping with who during this whole fiasco, as the Lady Anne was also linked to William Compton, one of King Henry’s closest friends. But what did become clear is that their illustrious brother was unhappy with this dishonourable behaviour.
Both were the sisters to the Duke of Buckingham, who took offense to the rumours surrounding his sisters, in particular the Lady Anne. Both women were removed from court for a time, and eventually, Catherine of Aragon was alerted to the drama. This is where it starts to get messy. Exit the Duke, enter the Queen.
“…Afterwards, almost all the court knew that the Queen had been vexed with the King, and the King with her, and thus this storm went on between them...” – Don Luis Caroz, the Spanish ambassador
The reactions of both Henry and Catherine during this incident feel almost opposite to how their dynamic would settle during their reign. She was furious, reproaching her philandering husband for this double adultery. He was offended to be treated like this, as the standard of Kings was adultery, which represented the virility of the nation. Considering that in every subsequent affair, he was secretive, and she was silent, it seems as if this became a testing ground for their marriage.
The next two decades of his reign would see at least three more women share his bed outside the confines or marriage. One of these was the French noblewoman, Etiennette de la Baume, daughter of the Lord of Chateauvillan, and a kinswoman to Louix XIV of Frances first official mistress, Louise de La Vallière. He apparently promised her a gift of money upon her wedding, which she requested in 1514. She was not his only Frenchwoman, as another, Jane Popincourt.
A former attendant of his mother, Jane (sometimes Jeanne or Joan) was a fixture with the royal family, having attended upon Elizabeth of York, Margaret Tudor, and Mary Tudor (the elder), at various points in her career. She is even supposed to have tutored the Princess Mary on French, and was supposed to attend on the Princess when she married the King, who refused her to attend the French court. Her reputation preceeded her, as she had been the mistress to the Duc de Longueville during his imprisonment in England. She would later return to him, but only after an alleged and brief affair with King Henry in 1514.
What can we take away from these three mistresses, in the first few years of his marriage?
Well, you see a few emerging indications that the King has a type. Both the Stafford sisters were older than the King, and considering Jane’s tenure, she was likely in her early 30s as well. Both Etiennette and Jane were French, which matches the appeal of Henry’s next great love, Anne Boleyn, who was regularly reported to have French manners. But most importantly, past the sisters of Buckingham, none were of any particular import. That was the true pattern of Henry’s love life past a certain point.
One of the reasons historians regularly make claims of Henry VIII’s fidelity is the lack of influence and status of the women he bedded. It’s easy to ignore these women, as they seldom were mentioned, and when they were, even more rarely in ways that indicated their relationship to the King. These weren’t the maîtresse-en-titre of other monarchs. There was no products of gloire like the Madame de Montespan, who’s near twenty-year reign as Louis XIV of France’s mistress brought with it fame and infamy. These were usually flings.
If Henry was faithful in any way, it seems to have been emotionally. Unlike many monarchs of essentially any era, he was incredibly affectionate with the women in his life. His wives were companions almost before they were members of the court, and he had a great respect for their role in his life…to an extent. That didn’t stop the cheating, but it does cast a light onto what was going on here.
Which makes the whole Elizabeth “Bessie” Blount situation very peculiar.
She was outside of the patterns Henry had established for lovers in his lifetime. Potentially as young as 14 when their relationship began, she was most definitely not a mature, older woman, as his wife and other mistresses had been. She was also around for a while, seemingly sharing his bed from 1514, until she fell pregnant in 1518. This was no fling, it was an ongoing affair.
The historian Elizabeth Norton claims Bessie only caught the King’s eye following an affair with another maiden of the court, Elizabeth Carew. Maybe that’s true, or maybe it was another meeting that led to the affair. Regardless, the facts are that they were definitely sleeping with each other sometime in the mid 1510s.
This is the first of Henry VIII’s mistresses that matter, and clearly not just because of Henry Fitzroy. While having a son to prove his fertility was clearly important to the King of England, he clearly cared enough about Bessie for her to get to that point. No other woman outside of his Queen had shared his bed for more than a few months. He had no grand affections towards anyone else. So clearly, something different was going on here.
Norton’s biography claims that Blount was certainly some kind of singular woman, but hard to make clear exactly what about her was so appealing. There’s little in historical record to indicate some great mind or unique appeal to the young woman, except that she stuck around for a long time. Henry clearly liked learned women, considering the calibre of education many of his wives’ possessed. But not all, and it’s entirely possible this relationship was purely physical.
Alison Weir supposes that the King and his mistress were using contraception, and that the pregnancy that led to Henry Fitzroy was purposeful. Considering how quickly his wives became pregnant, it’s entirely possible. But would that decision have just come from the woman here?
Elizabeth Blount may have been the first and only time Henry was using a lover to make a political point. With only one surviving girl toddler via his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, Henry had no male heir. That was clearly a problem, but even outside of that, his manhood was up for questioning. Henry would later claim that God was punishing him for marrying his brother’s widow, but outside of that, the Tudors had ascended a throne via war and murder and had continued to do so throughout the decades. Many of Henry’s siblings had been struck down in their infancy. He had had at least two brothers, and now he was the last male of his line. The birth of a son, even a bastard one, was a sign from God that he was still blessed and beloved.
Following the birth of a son, Elizabeth Blount was shortly married off to a nobleman, and likely never shared her royal lover’s bed again. In many ways, that relationship was the deviation from a pattern that continued for the rest of the King’s life. His next lover, Mistress Mary Carey, was much more consistent with his whims.
Mary Carey is probably better known as Mary Boleyn, is essentially the last named mistress of the King to historical record. There was allegedly a Margaret or Mary Shelton during the reign of Anne Boleyn, but whichever one he was allegedly sleeping with was also considered for the role of wife. Every other recorded mistress who didn’t ascend to the throne, to my knowledge, became nameless.
Because once the introduction of Anne Boleyn was had, there was a shift to the whole concept. That is where we get the whole concept of Henry the Monogamist. Where marriage and mistress seem to conflate into a meaningless sludge. If you played your cards right, you would be Queen. Not could, but would. In 1532, when Henry married Anne, she was the first Englishwoman to marry her King in about seventy years, and the second overall. Henry’s death in 1547, the count had jumped to five. It was like a sale on Henry’s dick…and also the crown.
If Mary Carey represents anything, it’s the end of an era. The end of Henry VIII as a reckless youth. A former attendant of his sister and the only confirmed lover of his 30s, Mary Carey gave way to her sister, who found she could inflame the King’s love and lust by playing hard to get. A game that became the practice for many women trying to capture his affections. Their affair was consistent with his others.
There isn’t much to say about the King’s affair with his cousin’s bride. Mary Carey was allegedly pretty, although we have no idea what she looked like. She was allegedly graceful, although she doesn’t seem to have been any more so than the ladies of the court. She was clearly spirited, considering her later remarriage and exile from court. But what she wasn’t, was important.
There’s a humour to the whole concept of Henry VIII being some sort of unique specimen of marital fidelity. His unique and quite nasty approach to wedlock for the last decade of his reign obscures the very conventional ways in which he moved through life before the Great Matter occurred. There is nothing unusual about the King having brief and ongoing affairs while also sleeping with his wife. He was quite willing to play up his piety, but nothing was going to stop that man from chasing a gabled hood and a nice smile.
As it turns out, cheating is forever.
Select Bibliography
The Mistresses of Henry VIII by Kelly Hart - link
The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Antonia Fraser - link
The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir - link
Mary Boleyn: The Great and Infamous Whore by Alison Weir - link
Henry VIII and the men that made him by Tracy Borman - link
Elizabeth Blount: Mistress to Henry VIII by Elizabeth Norton - link