Mary Shelton

Mary Shelton (1510/15 – 1570/71) was an English courtier. As a poet, she was one of the contributors to the Devonshire manuscript. Either she or her sister Madge Shelton may have been a mistress of King Henry VIII.

Family Both Margaret and Mary were daughters of Sir John Shelton and his wife Anne, the sister of Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire. Thomas Boleyn was the father of Anne Boleyn, second Queen consort to Henry VIII of England. Margaret and Mary were thus first cousins of the Queen. Princess Mary sent her New Year's Day gifts of a sum of money, 7 shillings 6 pence, in January 1537 and 1540.

Mary joined the court some time in 1534. She wrote poems, and according to William Latymer she was chided by Anne Boleyn for writing "certeyne ydill poeses" in a prayerbook, which she had given to the Queen. She was part of a social group which included the poets Sir Thomas Clere (d. 14 April 1545), Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and Thomas Wyatt, with all of whom she was romantically linked. In an epitaph he composed at the death of Sir Thomas Clere, Surrey identified Mary as Clere's "beloved".

Her father, John Shelton (1472 – 21 December 1539), was the son of Sir Ralph Shelton and Margaret Clere. He was a high sheriff in 1504, and knighted in 1509. Her siblings were John, Ralph, Elizabeth, Anne, Gabriella, Emma, Thomas, Margaret and Amy Shelton (Mary was one of 10 children). She was married three times and had seven children. After the death of her fiancé, Thomas Clere, she married Anthony Heveningham of Ketteringham, her first cousin. She had seven children with Heveningham: Arthur, John, Abigail, Bridget, Elizabeth, Mary and Anne. Another son, Anthony, died on 22 November 1557. Mary's final marriage was to Phillip Appleyard.

King's mistress One of the Shelton sisters is believed to have been King Henry's mistress for a six-month period beginning in February 1535, according to statements about mistresses made by the Imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, who referred to a "Mistress Shelton". According to Antonia Fraser, this was Margaret Shelton. Hugh Latimer identified Madge Shelton as the woman attendant on Anne when she miscarried within hours of Queen Katherine of Aragon's death. Madge was the "concubine's" closest companion in waiting owing to her familial ties, yet would be dismissed at the end.

However, more recent research has suggested that it was Margaret's sister Mary who was Henry's mistress, and was rumoured to have been selected to become his fourth wife. Supposedly, the confusion of earlier historians arose from the label "Marg Shelton", in which the "y" resembled a "g", a common confusion in sixteenth-century writing.

Mary would have been a 'lady-in-waiting' to Anne, and although the two were cousins, according to Hart, "...this did not mean that their families were allies—not all Boleyns supported the queen..." In point of fact, Queen Anne has been said to have been deeply in love with Henry and also very jealous of his attention to other women. Mary, known for having contributed greatly to the Devonshire MS, wrote many poems about love. Queen Anne was especially jealous that Mary could have been writing love poems about her husband, the King. To make matters worse, Mary has been described as a young girl of great beauty and talent, and her friends at court were a great influence on her, most of them also being highly literate. According to one historian "Rumour twice linked Mary amorously with Henry VIII". Uncertainty over the date of Mary's birth means she could have been as young as fifteen when she began her affair with King Henry VIII. Madge seems to be a faithful servant, yet fearfully duped by her mother Lady Shelton's spying, determined as she was to bring down Norris and Weston for using her daughter. Unfortunately Mistress Coffin had already been groomed as a spy when the Queen inadvertently told her of Sir Francis Weston's flirtations with Madge, of which she reproved. Norris may have been her betrothed, but Weston naively insinuated that he was in the Queen's Chambers to see her and not her servant. Norris was executed for treason on 17 May 1536. Madge's father died at the age of sixty-two and left his family with financial troubles; disconsolate, Madge went away to a convent.

Mary became engaged to Thomas Clere (son of Alice Boleyn, Lady Clere) the poet and her first cousin through their mothers; however, he died soon after their engagement, leaving Mary his lands in his will.

By 1546 Mary had married her cousin Sir Anthony Heveningham (1507–1557) by whom she had five children, including Arthur Heveningham, and her youngest daughter, Abigail (wife of Sir George Digby of Coleshill, Warwickshire), who was later in attendance on Queen Elizabeth in 1588. A few months after the confinement of Margaret Douglas and Thomas Howard for an impolitic affair in 1536, the MS was passed to Mary Shelton for the first time, where it is likely she added poems and allowed others to add poems to folios 22–50. The MS returned to Mary Shelton (and Mary Fitzroy) in 1539, with the return of Mary Fitzroy to the Court. During this time, at Kenninghall, Mary Shelton is believed to have largely completed the manuscript with the addition of many Medieval fragments in folios 88–92. Yet that author also assumes "a face should content me" were lines addressed to Madge's friend Mary Howard, another beauty, married to Wyatt's friend the royal Duke of Richmond. Although there is much debate and ambiguity surrounding the manuscript, Shelton is argued by scholars to be the main contributor and editor of the document.

The 'Courtly Love Lyric'

Women and the Court Mary Shelton, as a part of the Court of Anne Boleyn, was subject to a culture of fine lines of social acceptability. Tudor culture expected a level of both amorous and self-restrained behaviour from women. As Ann Jones assesses, a woman was encouraged "to be a member of the chorus prompting men to bravery in tournaments and eloquence in conversation; she was expected to be a witty and informed participant in dialogues whose subject was most often love.

The poetry of the time reflected this. In Tudor Court, poems, like the ones ascribed in the Devonshire MS, were an integral part of social interaction, exchanged between members perhaps for songs, perhaps for rumor and the innuendo of gossip.

'Ydill Poesies' Along with the poetry she 'lifted' from medieval poets, Mary is thought to have added few original poems to the Manuscript. What is thought to be Mary Shelton’s handwriting has been identified in the following folios of the manuscript: 3, 22, 26–29, 30, 40–44, 55, 58–60, 61–62, 65, 67–68, 88, 89–90, 91–92. An "unsentimental, plain-speaking" tone is often associated with her contributions.

Folios 6 and 7 of the document include the poem 'Suffryng in sorow in hope to attayn,' a poem about a despondent lover who cannot figure out her lover's pain. Above the poem in the folios, Margaret Douglas expresses her disappointment with it, saying 'forget thys,' but Mary Shelton, in her handwriting below Douglas', asserts the poem's worthiness: 'yt ys worhy.' This poem is usually ascribed to Mary Shelton because the first letters of the first seven stanzas spell out "SHELTVN"

There are a number of poems in the collection that are written from a woman's point of view, but it is unclear if the author is Shelton, or if, for that matter, the author is a woman at all.

Fictional portrayals

She appears in The Lady in the Tower by Jean Plaidy. The character of Madge Sheldon, played by Laura Jane Laughlin in the Showtime series The Tudors is loosely inspired by the two sisters. Mary Shelton appears in the series of books "The Lady Grace Mysteries" as a maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth I. She is the main character in "At the Mercy of the Queen" by Anne Clinard Barnhill. Mary Shelton is the first person narrator of Queenbreaker, a Young Adult novel, by Catherine McCarran. Mary Shelton appears in the Wolf Hall trilogy, combining elements of both her and her sister's biographies.