5 References[edit] Mistress to royalty
Mary Shelton was a teenage maid-of-honour to her first cousin Anne Boleyn when she caught the wandering eye of King Henry VIII in 1535. Their affair lasted for around six months, beginning in February 1535, according to Eustace Chapuys, the Imperial ambassador.[1]
She is often confused with her sister Margaret "Madge" Shelton, but it is now clear that it was Mary who was Henry's mistress and who was rumored to become his fourth wife. The confusion arose from the label "Marg Shelton", where the y looked like a g - a common confusion in sixteenth-century writing.
[edit] Poetess
Mary was part of a social group including the poets Thomas Clere, Lord Surrey, and Sir Thomas Wyatt,[2] with all of whom she was romantically linked. Her two closest friends were Margaret Douglas, niece of Henry VIII, and Mary Howard, daughter-in-law of Henry VIII. Shelton was the main editor and a main contributor of the famous Devonshire MS, where members of their circles wrote poems they enjoyed or had composed.
Mary's poetry did not impress Anne Boleyn, who chided her for writing "idle poesies" in her prayer book.[3]
She married her cousin, Sir Anthony Heveningham of Ketteringham c. 1546 and had five children including Sir Arthur Heveningham. After the death of Sir Anthony Heveningham in 1557, Mary married Philip Appleyard, Esq. She died in 1560.
[edit] Further reading
Herman, Peter C. (ed.), Rethinking the Henrician Era: Essays on Early Tudor Texts and Contexts (Paul G. Remley, Mary Shelton), University of Illinois Press, 1994
[edit] See also
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