William Stafford (1500-1565)

Sir William Stafford (c.1500-5 May 1565) was an Essex landowner and the second husband of Mary Boleyn, the one time lover of King Henry VIII of England.

William was the son of Humphrey Stafford of Blatherwycke in Northamptonshire and his wife Margaret, daughter of Sir John Fogge of Ashford in Kent. The family were distant relatives of the mighty Staffords, but William Stafford was a commoner, and only a second son. He served Henry VIII as a soldier. In 1532, he is listed as one of two hundred people who accompanied Henry VIII to France. Here Henry and his fiancee Anne Boleyn were to meet King Francis I of France to show his public approval for Henry's annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.

Among the other travellers was Anne Boleyn's sister, Mary Boleyn, the daughter of Thomas Boleyn who was by then the Earl of Wiltshire and the Earl of Ormonde. As an earl's daughter, a duke's niece and soon to be the sister-in-law of the King, Mary's marriage prospects were excellent. Mary was dismissed from court and never saw her sister, Anne, her brother-in-law and former lover Henry or her brother George again.

The couple originally lived at Chebsey in Staffordshire, but later moved to Mary's family home, Rochford Hall at Rochford in Essex. Mary had two children from her first marriage (Henry Carey and Catherine Carey). Mary was pregnant by William Stafford when she was dismissed from court, but this child did not survive to adulthood. There are suggestions that the child was a boy, and that they also had a daughter, named Anne, who also died as a child. They had no surviving children. William served in Scotland, where he was knighted in 1545, and, two years later, he became MP for Hastings.

His Second Marriage

After his wife's death, Sir William married Dorothy, the daughter of Henry Stafford, 1st Baron Stafford, by whom he had three sons and two daughters. They moved to Geneva during Mary I's reign and he did not return to see the reign of his niece, Elizabeth I, or to see his step-children became influential courtiers during the reign of Elizabeth I. He died on 5 May, 1556.

In Popular Culture

William is portrayed by the actor Eddie Redmayne in the Hollywood adaption of "The Other Boleyn Girl" by Philippa Gregory, alongside Scarlett Johansson as Mary.

William Stafford appears as a main characer in Karen Harper's novel 'The Last Boleyn', a tale about the life of Mary Boleyn in the years before, during and the years after her affair with King Henry VIII.

Bibliography

*Bindoff, "The Commons 1509-1558"
*Oxford DNB, Mary Boleyn