Mary Boleyn

Mary Boleyn moved through the courts of two kings. Rumour placed her in the bed of Francis I of France sometime between 1515 and 1519, then in Henry VIII's for a span no record pins down. Whether the two children she bore were his, Henry never said. In 1520 she married William Carey; after his death, she married again in 1534, this time in secret to William Stafford, a soldier with little money and no rank to speak of. The match enraged both the king and her sister Anne, now queen. Mary was banished from court. She spent the next seven years away from power, dying in obscurity on July 19 or 30…