William Carey

Sir William Carey was an English courtier and member of Henry VIII’s household who married Mary Boleyn in 1520. He benefited from royal grants and appointments during the years in which Mary was associated with the king and remained part of the courtly circle surrounding the early Tudor monarchy.

Carey and Mary had two children, Catherine and Henry Carey. Later speculation that Henry VIII fathered one or both children cannot be proved from the surviving evidence. Carey died during the sweating sickness epidemic of 1528, leaving Mary with financial difficulties and two young children.

Alison Weir’s Mary Boleyn examines her service in France, marriages to William Carey and William Stafford, possible relationship with Francis I, and the disputed paternity of her children. In Alison Weir’s The Boleyn Secret, Katherine Carey witnesses Anne Boleyn’s execution and grows up beside Anne’s daughter Elizabeth, forming a friendship tested by the Tudor succession and Mary I’s persecution of Protestants. A disclosure from Mary Boleyn forces Katherine to question her parentage and the possibility that Henry VIII was her father.