Elizabeth Boleyn
Elizabeth Boleyn , Countess of Wiltshire , née Howard ( 1480 - April 3, 1538 in London ) was an English noblewoman and a daughter of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk . She served first under Elizabeth of York as a lady-in-waiting, later under Catherine of Aragón , the first wife of King Henry VIII. Married to Thomas Boleyn , Elizabeth was the mother of Mary , George and the future Queen Anne Boleyn .
Life
Origin and youth
Elizabeth was the elder of two daughters of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk and his first wife Elizabeth Tilney (around 1445-1497), daughter of Frederick Tilney and Elizabeth Cheney. Her siblings included Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk and Edmund Howard , and her half-siblings Lord Thomas Howard and William Howard, 1st Baron Howard of Effingham . At an unspecified point in time between 1498 and 1500, Elizabeth was married to Thomas Boleyn , an ambitious young courtier. In the summer of 1501 her Wittum was determined, from which it can be concluded that the wedding must have taken place beforehand.
Elizabeth's family had King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth . supported, which is why they lost various lands under his successor Henry VII and had to buy them back at great expense. The historian Eric Ives therefore suspects that Elizabeth could not raise a large dowry and that she and Thomas initially had financial difficulties. In the first few years, according to her husband, she had "a child every year", although only Mary , George and Anne Boleyn survived .
Under Henry VII, Elizabeth was lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth of York . After his son Henry VIII's accession to the throne , she was part of the retinue of the new Queen Catherine of Aragon and took part in Katharina's ceremonial entry into London the day before her coronation. She seems to have been an attractive woman because the writer John Skelton dedicated a poem to her in which he writes about her:
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Of alle your bewte I suffice not to wright, |
I am unable to write of all your beauty, but |
Between 1519 and early 1520, their eldest daughter Mary returned from France and married royal favorite William Carey in February 1520 . Although it has sometimes been claimed that Mary fell out of favor with her parents because of sexual escapades in France, these escapades cannot be clearly proven historically. Statements about them should therefore be treated with caution. That same year, Elizabeth accompanied her husband to the Camp du Drap d'Or meeting . In 1521, their younger daughter Anne Boleyn returned from France as her father was planning a marriage for her to James Butler, heir to the Earl of Ormonde.
Mother of the queen
When Henry VIII fell in love with Anne in 1523 or 1524, Elizabeth was often near Anne at court. In 1529 her husband Thomas was made Earl of Wiltshire and Earl of Ormonde , giving Elizabeth the title of Countess of Wiltshire . After Wolsey's fall, when the king and Anne inspected the cardinal's possessions, Elizabeth went with her daughter. She became a member of Anne's household and in October 1532 took part in a diplomatic banquet in honor of the French ambassadors, with whose help Anne Boleyn wanted to effect the divorce of Henry VIII from Catherine of Aragón against the will of the Spaniards. According to some sources, Elizabeth took part in her daughter's coronation procession in 1533 in a splendid carriage clad in red brocade. According to other sources, it was the widowed Marchioness of Dorset.
A few months later, Anne's only daughter, later Queen Elizabeth I , was born. It is uncertain whether she was named after her maternal grandmother, as her paternal grandmother was also named Elizabeth. At Christmas 1534 Elizabeth gave her royal son-in-law Heinrich a velvet case, embroidered with the royal coat of arms and filled with six collars, three each made of silver and three of gold. In 1535 the Boleyns became significantly less popular and John Hale, Vicar of Isleworth , was accused of having written letters alleging that "His grace the King had an affair with the Queen's mother". Heinrich himself answered the charge that he had slept with both Anne's sister and her mother: "Never with the mother."
In April 1536, Elizabeth appeared to have health problems because it is said that she was "seriously ill with a cough that torments her severely". Perhaps Anne Boleyn was referring to her mother's illness when she said, when she was arrested in May, "O my mother, you will die of grief". She and her brother George were executed on May 19 and 17, respectively, making Mary Boleyn Elizabeth's only living child. Despite falling out of favor due to a secret marriage in 1534, Mary was reconciled with her parents after her siblings were executed.
death
Elizabeth died just two years after Anne and George in the home of Hugh Cook Farington, the Abbot of Reading. Her contemporary Thomas Warley wrote to Lady Lisle in Calais on April 7th, 1538: "My Lady Wiltshire died last Wednesday near Baynard's Castle ", from which the date of death is April 3rd. She was buried in St Mary's Church, Lambeth, in Howard Chapel on April 7, 1538 , where there are many graves of women of the Howard family. Sir John Russell and Elizabeth's half-sister Katherine Howard, Lady Daubenay, led the funeral procession. The church is now a garden museum and above Elizabeth's grave is the museum café.
progeny
With Thomas Boleyn, Elizabeth had five children known by name:
- Mary Boleyn (* ca.1501; † July 19, 1543)
- ∞ William Carey (approx. 1496–1528)
- ∞ William Stafford (approx. 1500–1556)
- George Boleyn, 2nd Viscount Rochford (approx. 1503 - May 17, 1536); ∞ Jane Boleyn (1505–1542)
- Anne Boleyn (approx. 1507 - May 19, 1536); ∞ Henry VIII (1491–1547)
- Thomas Boleyn, died early
- Henry Boleyn, died early
The age and dates of death of Thomas and Henry Boleyn are unknown. Henry's grave is in St. Peter's Church in the village of Hever near Hever Castle , Thomas' grave in St. John the Baptist Church in Penshurst.
Modern representations
Elizabeth Boleyn appears as a minor character in various historical novels. In Karen Harper's book The last Boleyn , she is portrayed as a loving mother and wife. Once courted by the young King Henry VIII, Elizabeth refused to become his mistress, something her ambitious husband Thomas Boleyn never forgave her. Since her eldest daughter looks very much like Mary Elizabeth, she instead attracts the king's eye.
In Philippa Gregory's novel The Queen 's Sister , Elizabeth Boleyn is a cold-hearted, calculating woman who never gives affection to her children and is only interested in gaining power and influence at court through them.
In The Queen's Sister , Kristin Scott Thomas played the role of Elizabeth Boleyn. Unlike her ambitious husband, Elizabeth is not interested in using her daughters to gain power and prestige and ultimately blames him for the deaths of Anne and George.
Web links
- Elizabeth Boleyn at Boleyn Festival Blickling
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d The Anne Boleyn Files: 7th April 1538 - Burial of Elizabeth Boleyn , accessed March 5, 2013
- ^ A b Eric Ives: The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn. 'The Most Happy'. Blackwell Publishing, Malden 2004, p. 17
- ↑ Eric Ives: The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn. 'The Most Happy'. Blackwell Publishing, Malden 2004, p. 4
- ↑ David Starkey: Six Wives. The Queens of Henry VIII. 2004 HarperCollins Perennial, p. 110
- ↑ The Anne Boleyn Files: What Anne Boleyn Henry VIII's Daughter? , Accessed March 5, 2013
- ↑ a b c Jonathan Hughes: Stafford, Mary (c.1499-1543) . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Oxford University Press 2004 Online Edition , accessed October 23, 2012
- ↑ Eric Ives: The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn. 'The Most Happy'. Blackwell Publishing, Malden 2004, p. 31
- ↑ Eric Ives: The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn. 'The Most Happy'. Blackwell Publishing, Malden 2004, p. 144
- ↑ Julia Fox: Jane Boleyn: The True Story of the Infamous Lady Rochford. Kindle Edition, Ballantine Books 2007, Chapter 10: Fortune's Wheel
- ↑ Eric Ives: The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn. 'The Most Happy'. Blackwell Publishing, Malden 2004, p. 151
- ↑ Eric Ives: The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn. 'The Most Happy'. Blackwell Publishing, Malden 2004, p. 177
- ↑ Eric Ives: The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn. 'The Most Happy'. Blackwell Publishing, Malden 2004, p. 216
- ^ Objections against John Leek, Clerk of Syon In: Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 8 - January-July 1535 : "the King's grace had meddling with the Queen's mother." Accessed March 5, 2013
- ^ The Anne Boleyn Files: Searching for the Grave of Elizabeth Boleyn, Countess of Wiltshire , accessed March 5, 2013
- ^ The Anne Boleyn Files: The Lost Boleyns - Thomas and Henry Boleyn , accessed March 5, 2013
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Boleyn, Elizabeth |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Howard, Elizabeth; Countess of Wiltshire |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Lady-in-waiting of Elizabeth of York and Catherine of Aragón; Mother of Anne Boleyn |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1480 |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 3, 1538 |
| Place of death | London |