Anne Boleyn's First Love

In the Tudor court, love blossomed when Henry Percy met Anne Boleyn. Their romance was abruptly torn apart by Cardinal Wolsey who chastised him, an earl’s son, for choosing to marry the daughter of a mere knight. Lord Percy put up a spirited defence but finally, browbeaten by the cardinal and his father, was compelled to promise to no longer see her.

Percy was forced into marrying Mary Talbot, daughter of the fourth Earl of Shrewsbury. The loveless match proved both acrimonious and bitter, culminating in Mary accusing her husband of trying to poison her. After another argument in which Percy, now sixth Earl of Northumberland, mentioned his betrothal to Anne Boleyn, Mary immediately wrote to her father to warn King Henry VIII that her husband and Anne had been precontracted, hoping to stop the king marrying her.

But there was more to Henry Percy than his first love affair. Despite being often ill, he undertook all the rough and arduous duties of Scottish border warfare, proving to be a strong and effective Warden of the North. His was a full life, though not a particularly happy one. In June 1537, aged thirty-five years and old before his time, he died poor and ostensibly alone. He was buried on the same day he died, the crown denying him even the usual aristocratic funeral.