Henry Carey, the only son of William Carey and his wife, Mary Boleyn Carey, was born on 4 March 1526.

Although he has been rumored to have been the illegitimate son of King Henry VIII, the baby was most likely William Carey’s biological son. Several excellent historians, such as Eric Ives, note that Mary was living with her husband in the country the summer she conceived her son, and King Henry was busy back in London making his acknowledged son, Henry Fitzroy, the Duke of Richmond and Somerset. There weren’t even any contemporary rumors that the either of the Carey children – Henry or his sister Catherine – were the king’s offspring until it became politically important to denigrate the the monarch’s relationship with the Boleyn family. William Carey certainly acted as though he knew the little boy was the fruit of his loins … and King Henry certainly didn’t.

A frequent argument in favor of his royal parentage is that Henry Carey looked like Henry VIII, but the interrelated nature of his family could explain any superficial resemblance easily. William Carey’s grandmother was Eleanor Beaufort, the daughter of Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset, and thus first cousin of King Henry VII’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby. Any random courtier’s child could look like the king; the royal family is still producing vaguely Tudoresque gingers!

When William Carey died of the sweating sickness in June of 1528, Anne Boleyn (who was now engaged to the king) stepped in to care for her sister’s children as their ward. She didn’t ‘steal’ them from the newly widowed and impoverished Mary; she merely made sure they had excellent educations and opportunities. Anne even paid for little Henry to be tutored by noted reformer, Nicholas Bourbon. Anne also talked Henry into giving Mary money, and convinced the king to force her father, Thomas Boleyn, to give Mary an stipend as well.

After Anne Boleyn’s murder in 1536, the Carey’s were mainly left to fend for themselves like any other gentry. Rather than taking a role in assuring the best possible marriage for his purported son, King Henry allowed Henry Carey to wed the daughter of a respectable but not very distinguished Welsh family, Anne Morgan, whose maternal grandmother was Blanche Herbert, Lady Troy, the keeper of the king’s nurseries. Anne Morgan was a cousin of the Earls of Pembroke, but not a major heiress or particularly well-connected; why would Henry allow his son to marry outside a great family?

Henry Carey’s career didn’t begin it’s firm upper trajectory until Anne Boleyn’s daughter, Elizabeth I of England, came to the throne in later 1558. Queen Elizabeth did a great deal to help her Carey cousins. Henry Carey was knighted within weeks of Elizabeth’s coronation, and on 13 January 1559 he was created 1st Baron Hunsdon. Additionally, the queen gave him an annuity of £400 a year, and made him master of her hawks with a salary of £40 a year. She further elevated him on 20 April 1561, when she made him a Knight of the Garter.

Henry was a loyal and devoted cousin, and thus the queen made sure that as his family grew, so did his royal appointments to augment his income. He and Anne Morgan Carey had a dozen children (11 of whom lived to adulthood), and by the time the last of the Carey brood had arrived, Queen Elizabeth had made Henry Captain of the Gentlemen Pensioners and Governor of Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland.

The queen’s cousin proved to be worth his weight in gold during the 1569 Rising of the North, a rebellion of Catholic nobles against the Protestant crown. Henry was Lieutenant General of Elizabeth’s forces, and rode northward and defeated the rebels, which had outnumbered his troops. His victory put an early end to the uprising, and in gratitude he was appointed Warden of the Eastern March. He would eventually rise to becoming a member of the Privy Council in 1577, and finally the Lord Chamberlain of the Queen’s Household in July 1585.

As Lord Chamberlain, Henry became William Shakespeare‘s patron, and the bard called his player the Lord Chamberlain’s Men in Henry Carey’s honor. Some have even speculated that Henry Carey and Shakespeare had a mistress in common, Aemilia Bassano Lanier, a poet in her own right and Carey’s lover for several years. There is some evidence to suggest that after Carey’s death she became involved with Shakespeare, and may have been the playwright’s mysterious “Dark Lady” whose eyes were ‘nothing like the sun’ and the inspiration for the Italian settings of his plays.

Henry Carey died at Somerset House, which the queen had given to him for his use, on 23 July 1596. His beloved wife was appointed the new Keeper of Somerset House, a position usually held by men, and granted a pension of £200 per year. His eldest son, George Carey, became 2nd Baron Hunsdon, and took over patronage of Shakespeare’s players, who renamed themselves the Lord Hunsdon’s Men until George Carey became Lord Chamberlain as his father had been on 17 March 1597. After that, the company returned to the name the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.

Henry Carey was buried in St John the Baptist’s chapel of Westminster Abbey, and the queen paid for his funeral. His monument can still be seen there today, reading:

Here sleeps in the Lord Henry Carey, Baron Hunsdon, one-time Governor of the town of Berwick, Warden of the east marches towards Scotland, Captain of the gentleman-pensioners, Chief Justice of the Forests south of the Trent, Knight of the Order of the Garter, Lord Chamberlain of the Lady Queen Elizabeth, sworn of the Privy Council, and first cousin to the aforesaid Queen. Together with him is buried Anne, his dearest wife, daughter of Thomas Morgan, knight, who bore him many children, of whom there survive George, John, Edmund and Robert, knights, Catherine, Countess of Nottingham, Philadelphia, Baroness Scrope, and Margaret, Lady Hoby. He died 23 July 1596 aged 71. His son, George Carey, Baron Hunsdon, member of the Order of the Garter, Captain-General of the Isle of Wight, Chamberlain of the household to Queen Elizabeth, Privy Councillor, and his wife Anne, placed this monument to the best of fathers and dearest of husbands, in his honour and memory, and being mindful of their own and their family’s mortality.

Diana, Princess of Wales, was a descendant of Henry Carey through her paternal grandparents, Albert Spencer and Cynthia nee Hamilton. Cynthia Hamilton was the 11th great-granddaughter of Henry Carey. Although King Henry VIII was probably not Carey’s progenitor, Carey’s 14th great-grandson, William, Duke of Cambridge, will one day sit on Henry VIII’s former throne.

The quirks of fate, no?