William Carey, attributed to Hans Holbein the Younger. Private Irish collection. Scanned by Douglas Dowell.

William Carey was the second son of Thomas Carey of Chilton Foliat (in Wiltshire) and Margaret Spencer. His mother was the daughter of Eleanor Beaufort and granddaughter of the first duke of Somerset, Edmund, which meant that he was a distant cousin to Henry VIII. He was born around 1500. We know that he was at court by January 1519, possibly thanks to the good offices of the Earl of Devon. He was, by October, officially part of the king's household and active in court life - including the revels of 1519-20, the reception of Charles V in 1520 and the meeting in France at the Field of Cloth of Gold (where he distinguished himself in jousting). He had become a member of the privy chamber by this point - an important position, carrying as it did a considerable degree of access to (and potentially influence with) the king himself; and indeed, it seems that William became one of Henry's favourites.

William married Mary Boleyn on 4 February 1520. The king himself attended the wedding (and made the couple a gift of 6s. 8d.) - and the match was useful to both the Boleyns and to William. Sir Thomas Boleyn was also a prominent and rising courtier, allied by blood to the Howards, and Carey as a young favourite of the king was a potentially valuable ally. The marriage was not simply a cover for Mary as a mistress of the king - an affair which had not yet begun.

Her liaison with Henry, however, brought gains to her husband as well as her father. Over the course of their married life, William received two keeperships, a stewardship, an annuity and manors in two counties, in a spate of royal grants in 1522, 1523, 1524 and 1525. It seems unlikely that the affair began much before 1522, as Bessie Blount (Henry's previous mistress) was not married off until then. At any rate, it seems likely that their two children (Henry and Catherine) were William's children rather than the king's. The two came in quick succession, following a number of years where Mary was sexually active but childless. Given the known low fertility of Henry VIII, this seems to suggest that the children were not royal bastards. (Henry Carey was born on 4 March 1526, which suggests he was conceived shortly after the end of the affair; Katherine Carey was most likely born around 1529, though some suggest 1524.)

William's career was not stopped by the end of his wife's infidelity; indeed, when the Eltham Ordinances in January 1526 restricted the number of gentlemen of the privy chamber to six, he was one of the few who were retained - and his lodgings were on the king's side of the court. In that year, he also became keeper of Greenwich Palace; and it is significant that when Anne Boleyn began to rise, she made considerable efforts to ensure William's support (the Eleanor Carey incident of 1528 ties into this, as Eleanor was William's sister). All the signs would have suggested that he was destined to continue to rise; however, the sweating sickness - to which Anne also fell ill, although she recovered - carried him off first. He died on 22 June 1528.