Historian Christine Morgan talked about Mary Boleyn and royal mistresses for Tudor Summit 2019.
Follow Christine Morgan’s web series the Untitled History Project on Youtube.
Also on Twitter and Instagram.
Mary Boleyn’s letter to Thomas Cromwell
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Transcript: Christine Morgan on Mary Boleyn
Heather:
I am super excited to welcome our next speaker Christine Morgan. She is amazing. I just know you’re gonna love her talk. Let me introduce Christine to you. She’s a historian and web series creator from Charlotte, North Carolina. She has an MA in European history, and she has been invited to present her research internationally at history conferences in the US and the UK. She’s going to be at Tudorcon too, so plug for that.
Her research covers the history of royal families, royal mistresses, religion, theatre, and propaganda. Her web series, ‘Untitled History Project‘ which she writes, researches, and hosts, has garnered support in her community and has been used as teaching material in high schools and universities in the US.
The series features interviews with premier historians and authors. She appears regularly as a historian and pop culture commentator on Charlotte’s morning show, WCCB News Rising, and has written blogs for popular online platforms such as Anglotopia and History of Royal Women.
She is currently expanding her thesis into a book about royal mistresses and power. So we’re gonna learn more about Mary Boleyn and royal mistresses here in this discussion. I’m so thrilled to introduce you to Christine Morgan!
What can you tell me about Mary Boleyn to start with? Because she’s so often just put into this container of the mistress or the whore or whatever. So tell me kind of the biographical sketch, but then we’re gonna start debunking some myths about her and talking about her power and everything.
Christine:
Absolutely and there’s a lot of debunking to be done. Mary is essentially, in a nutshell, she is the older sister, we think, of Anne Boleyn. So the Boleyn name is strong and popular, and I think that’s why people are kind of shadow interested in her. But her life is largely undocumented, which of course gives room for historical fiction to have a little fun. I think people get a little bit nervous talking about Mary too because a lot of it is theory.
But if you can place it in factual documents, sources, eyewitness accounts, it becomes a little less scary. The importance of Mary is to put her in context, what other women are doing, how other women are successful. I kind of love the word “whore” in reference to her. It is the best propaganda campaign ever! We’re still talking about her like that in 2019.
I think that there’s a lot to be unraveled about Mary. She’s in France, and she’s in England, it’s in the middle of the Reformation, and there’s more than one husband. It’s just juicy.
Heather:
So what do we know about her?
Christine:
We do know that she is working in court, she is in France, in the French court in 1514. We do know about her first and second marriage. The first in 1522 William Carey. The second in 1534 to William Stafford. We do know that the idea of her as a royal mistress exists in both France and England.
We know that there are some reformed leanings. In general, we know that she served her sister while her sister was Queen, at least briefly. We also know that she’s in servant to Henry VIII’s sister Mary Tudor at a couple different points in time. So her existence is often undocumented but when we do find her, she is a court, and she’s in the middle of it.
Heather:
Right. Okay, so let’s talk about her in France, to start with, and this rumor that she was the King’s mistress. Alison Weir in her fiction book on Anne Boleyn played that interestingly, almost making it seem like it wasn’t always consensual. So what do we know about that?
Christine:
This is so tricky, Heather. This is such a great point in Mary’s life. The way that I kind of approach this particular moment is to consider it in a larger perspective from Mary. When do we know she’s in France, at court? How do we know the make up, the demographic of French court? How is that changing at this time? We know that French court is licentious. It’s written about by multiple people, why?
Then the idea that Mary is somehow removed from France, and we also don’t know why. There are a couple of reasons that it could be. One of those theories is perhaps she tried to elevate her status unsuccessfully and had to leave France after a failed affair, something like that.
But if you consider the make up of French court, we know that French Court has a lot of gaps. The primary documents are really, really difficult, but we do know that under Queen Claude, she is employing the most women that have ever been employed at French court.
So there’s this idea that all the men at French court have no idea what to do with all these women, and what to do with themselves around all these women. This is kinda where the “licentious” word comes in. The idea that it was so hard to police the romantic relationships at French court. That they became an unspoken rule, that as long as you don’t kiss and tell, as long as you don’t create waves, as long as no one finds out, you’re kind of free to do whatever you want.
The idea that maybe Mary overstepped her boundaries there, something happened with the French King, who was a womanizer we know that. It’s not totally outside the realm of possibility, but the fact that no one addresses it for 20 years, and when it is addressed, it’s part of putting down Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn’s marriage, it makes it very propaganda-like.
When we look at that source, which I believe is Rodolfo Pio, who says that the King had known her while she was in France. If we look at that, the timing of it, the context of it, it’s awfully suspicious. So if no one’s talking about it for 20 years and if that was the reason she was removed from court, it would be unusual for Henry VIII to have then take her as a mistress.
Heather:
Right, yeah. I was gonna ask about that. To have been the mistress of two Kings.
Christine:
Yeah I’m not sold, but it’s possible.
Heather:
Yeah and maybe she got into some other kind of trouble in the French court that wasn’t necessarily with the King.
Christine:
That’s totally possible. We definitely know her sister’s there too. A lot of people like to say that Anne was smarter than Mary, again unsubstantiated, how would we know that? But maybe Anne’s being really successful at court, maybe she’s being elevated faster in some circles and Mary’s not. It could be anything like that.
Heather:
I want to talk about the difference between what court was like in France and then when she came back and was in England, what that difference would have been for her? For women in the court?
Christine:
I think that’s a great question, because when people talk about Mary they talk about her possible relationship with Francis, but they don’t look at the French court itself, the way it’s functioning, and how that might have influenced the way that Mary gains autonomy and agency.
French court at this period, this is continental Europe. They’re getting a lot of information a lot faster especially in terms of the Reformation. We know that the two most elevated women at court, Queen Claude and her sister-in-law Margaret of Angoulême who eventually becomes Queen of Navarre, so Marguerite of Navarre. You could use either term and it would be correct. Both of them are known Reformers.
If we consider the idea that we don’t necessarily know that Mary wasn’t at French court, because French documents are so spotty. It’s possible she was there. Then the women serving as ladies-in-waiting at French court for Queen Claude or Marguerite Angoulême are going to be reading works by Christine de Pizan, Giovanni Boccaccio, works to elevate women into positions of power.
They’re also going to be in social circles that might include people like Erasmus, early thinkers like that. So it’s not totally outside the realm of possibility that Mary is in these early salons or at least hearing them, or witnessing their growth.
If we talk about reform as well the way that Marguerite really latches on to reform, not Protestantism, Reform. Reform of the Catholic Church with those really early 95 Theses. It’s early enough that Mary isn’t in England yet, to our knowledge. She’s in France and even if she’s not at court, she’s going to be hearing about these events.
So if she is at court she’s reading, she’s learning, she’s listening, and she’s developing her own ideas, central to a core point of women in France which is that women are able to rule, women can have some agency in a royal circle.
Heather:
Yeah and it’s interesting the difference between women in France who could not officially be queens on their own, couldn’t inherit. Yet they seem to have so much more power as regents rather than regnants. It seems like Marguerite was doing the negotiations for her brother when he was captured.
Then you think later on the Ladies Peace that was these women that were trying to organize things because the men couldn’t do it. It just seems like there was this difference in that in England there wasn’t any law prohibiting a woman from inheriting, and yet her role was almost so much, it wasn’t as, I don’t know what I’m trying to say, can you finish my sentence?
Christine:
Are you trying to touch in like on the idea that the women have the ability to influence without going through a male counterpart? As much as, if you’re looking at like Catherine of Aragon and Henry VIII, or Elizabeth of York and Henry Tudor, it’s sort of like you have to get the approval before you’re moving forward.
Heather:
Yeah, and yet in England, there wasn’t any kind of law saying that women couldn’t. I would expect thinking about the way the laws were, that women in France wouldn’t have the same kind of power. And yet they almost seem to have more, I suppose.
Christine:
I wonder too, that may be a geographical influence. There are women ruling in other parts of Europe. This is a unique moment in history where everything’s in upheaval. Women are in positions of power, paving the way. They are writing, they are putting money into authors and artists, people that they want to be patrons of. I think that it’s really active on the continent and I just wonder if geographically that’s part of the split.
Heather:
It just is one of those things that kind of strikes me sometimes that in a country where the women weren’t even allowed to inherit, they seem to have so much more power sometimes.
Christine:
It’s true, I totally agree. I absolutely agree. But this is where we see the differences in French court which is a little more open-minded and English court which you’re going to find being very conservative, even up until the 1530’s really.
Heather:
So talk to me about what reform meant for the French and this whole reform movement that wasn’t Protestant at all. They wanted to just reform the Catholic Church. Explain that to me a little bit.
Christine:
I mean French is very Catholic and at this point, England still is too. There’s not really a need for them to break from Rome. They get a lot of power from Rome especially. But I think if we were to keep it in the framework of women, and what women are saying in France about the Reformation, you could really see a good pattern of thought that emerges in the idea of “You don’t have to pray through the Virgin Mary or through your priest or your cardinal. You can have a personal relationship with God that circumvents traditional avenues of discussion and conversation.”
So the idea that you can go pray in your home and you don’t have to do it at church, this is the idea of “solo fide” – salvation by faith alone, which is definitely a Martin Luther phrase. The idea of a personal relationship is really what people latch on to at this point.
Heather:
Interesting. So let’s move her now to England. Now she’s going to England, we aren’t sure why she’s been called. Maybe it was– you even said it, perhaps there were illnesses or something that she was trying to–
Christine:
it’s possible being the older daughter that it was necessary for Thomas Boleyn to remove his eldest from France at a time when there was sort of an outbreak of the plague. Although the fact that he left his other daughter there makes that “Yeah, you’ll be fine, Anne.”
Heather:
“It’ll build up your immune system, it’s fine!
Christine:
Oh gosh, could you imagine?
Heather:
Well she did survive the sweating sickness, right?
Christine:
Yeah, you might be on to something there. You could probably write a good essay on that. Yeah, maybe that was part of it.
Heather:
Okay, but for whatever reason, she’s back in England. She’s carrying these ideas of women and women’s power and reform, and all of that England hasn’t been exposed to very much. And she catches the eye of the King. Can you tell me about how that developed?
Christine:
This is really interesting too, because a lot of people don’t know that Mary Boleyn actually shows up in England at the end of 1519. A lot of people think it’s 1520, right before her marriage. But her name actually shows up on a document that says there are multiple ladies Boleyn eating breakfast at court in England.
We can place her in England court October, November 1519. And you’re right she’s bringing these ideas. She marries a man named William Carey. You could probably pretty accurately assess that either she returns to England so that her husband can marry her, or her father can marry her off, excuse me.
So when she appears, it’s part of the courtship – a couple of months to plan a wedding but it’s not just any wedding. William Carey has recently been elevated into King Henry VIII’s Privy chamber. He’s a Knight of the Body. He is elevated in court, and he is related to Henry.
So it is an important wedding that establishes Boleyn access to the Privy chamber with William Carey. And it proves that they have power and pull at court by marrying into an extension of the royal family.
Heather:
And so then that brings me to a question about these factions. Because you write about the factions at court developing. Can you explain a little bit about what was going on and the politics of that?
Christine:
Oh this is so so complicated, and it’s complicated because you have warring families; families that are intent on just absolute destruction of other powerful families. They’re putting people in one or two places, the Privy Chamber, which is the people who wait on Henry VIII every day. The people who hang out after hours and gamble, and have a drink and have his ear.
Or the people in the Privy Council who are making laws and treaties. They are suggesting diplomacy ideas. Both of those positions, especially at the court of Henry VIII, are incredibly influential. Henry VIII really enjoyed surrounding himself with his friends – people he thinks he can trust. So there is this push and pull between the old traditional factions of Tudor court, the Plantagenet court.
Then the new things like new men, new money, new titles going to his younger friends. That of course threatens the older more established powers that be including people like Cardinal Wolsey.
So for Mary Boleyn to marry into the royal family and take on a husband in the Privy Chamber while her father is an ambassador, and have the King attend her wedding by the way, this is a really huge moment. It really is going to make the Boleyns perfectly positioned for influence.
Not only that, but the factional families start to understand and this includes the Howards, the Howard family, that women are able to subtly influence because nobody expects it of them. If you’ve got Mary coming in with these ideas, and she’s marrying someone on the inside, who’s to say she’s not going to use her influence?
Heather:
Right. And then we see her, she makes an appearance at the Chateau Vert pageant? And was she extending her influence at that point, do we know or not? What was she with Henry by that point, or what’s the timeline?
Christine:
For me, I think that this is a good place to pinpoint at least the start of a relationship between Mary Boleyn and Henry VIII. A lot of people don’t agree with me on this, but hear me out.
So this particular pageant takes place at a diplomatic event. This is a diplomatic event between England and Spain and it’s hosted by Cardinal Wolsey. So this is a really weird trifecta of power. It’s not like this play is happening for fun. It’s happening in front of an international audience where Henry VIII is certainly trying to prove that he is effective and powerful.
What people don’t ever really talk about with this pageant, is that there is a song that exists that details the action of the pageant. So a lot of people say “Yeah, it existed. March 1522,” but leave out the fact that it’s a diplomatic event. And if you look at the song that is attributed to this production, we know that one of the main characters that is mentioned, is the character of Kindness.
Based on Edward Hall’s Chronicle and Richard Gibson’s Costume and Wardrobe accounts, we know that Mary Boleyn plays the role of Kindness. You could argue that it’s not significant because women are definitely put in starring roles of pageants.
But there are different things to consider here including the fact that Henry VIII is a part of the pageant, is a royal display. But also his sister Mary Tudor is a part of this pageant, and she is not the lead character. So if we want to talk about making a public display, Mary Boleyn is in the spotlight in the middle of a diplomatic event that involves Henry VIII, and does not include putting a spotlight on his sister.
Heather:
Could that also have been because his sister had been married to the French King? And this was a diplomatic event with Spain or?
Christine:
I don’t think so. I mean, she certainly has remarried and the idea of elopement by the way, certainly influences ideas about Mary Boleyn too. But the French King that she was married to his past, it’s not it’s not a diplomatic tension there. But it is a problem for Henry VIII, who has to prove to the Spanish diplomats who are aligned with his wife Catherine of Aragon, that he is loyal to her. And that he is creating an alliance based on their relationship.
So for him he plays the role of Loyalty, we think. That’s propaganda in and of itself. So it really says something. It really does say something, that Mary is playing Kindness in this particular position at this event.
Heather:
So that’s in 1522. So let’s talk about her daughter Catherine, and when was she born, and why do you think that she was Henry’s daughter?
Christine:
So Catherine is born in 1524, which is just a year and some after when we think her affair has started 1522. We are not sure if she’s his daughter. Obviously, again there are some accounts that really wreck those theories. Because there are said under propaganda-like circumstances.
But with Catherine there are some really unique circumstances that I think lend themselves to consideration. I can’t prove it. We would have to exhume, and we just, we’re not gonna do that. But there are some really interesting things that happen with Catherine, including the fact that she is placed in court as a lady-in-waiting for Anne of Cleves.
Which is certainly a position of favor, which no one would have expected from Henry VIII considering he had already beheaded Anne Boleyn and gone through another wife. But he does, he takes care of her, puts her in court. She’s also very close with Elizabeth I, and Elizabeth I pays for this really regal, almost royal burial ceremony for her funeral. It’s described as opulent. There’s a lot of money that goes into this funeral, and also for her brother Henry.
But interestingly when we were opening files that had to do with burial records, Catherine Carey’s burial record appears in a file that only includes Royals. So is it possible it was misfiled? Sure, but I think it is certainly telling that we find Catherine Carey in a file with the burial records of other royal men and women, kings and queens, not just nobility. Kings and queens. So that’s certainly an interesting thing to consider.
Additionally, she is painted by a very similar painter, or the same painter actually that Elizabeth I commissions. They’re painted similarly, and they look very similar. So if you kind of throw all of that together, it becomes a little more likely that Henry VIII is providing for, taking care of, and then Elizabeth I is as well, for Catherine.
Heather:
She was married then though, so how could they know?
Christine:
It’s such a good, it’s so good! The thing I think that we have to look to is with Henry VIII, he has a pattern of the types of women that he has affairs with. He’s a serial monogamist. He has lots of royal affairs, but they all last quite a while. It’s not like he’s known for having women in and out of his bedroom every night.
So if you look at the people, we think he had affairs with, Bessie Blount, Elizabeth Blount, we noticed that Elizabeth Blount is an exception. She was single, so there’s sort of a responsibility for him to claim the child, to get her married etc.
But once we get to Mary, he’s learned from that. He’s not going to start an affair with a woman who’s not married. He doesn’t want all the illegitimate children running around threatening his power. He’s already got the son. We can’t say for sure that Mary is having an abstinent sexual relationship with her husband, or from her husband, but the timing is certainly suspicious.
Heather:
I guess what I’m wondering is, her husband, it’s not like he was away at that point, that you could say, “Okay, well he wasn’t around, so it had to be somebody else’s,” or anything like that. Plausible deniability is pretty high there for Henry.
Christine:
William is there. William’s at court. He’s in the privy chamber. He is protecting the King’s Person, the King’s Body, so he’s there. He’s part of the festivities. We know he’s playing tennis with Henry, there are records of him having games at Richmond with Henry. It would certainly be hard to prove, but we can always look at the circumstances and think that’s a little suspicious.
Heather:
Yeah, interesting. I guess I just wonder why these provisions were even made for her if it seemed like she was married? Like, why would you even think that it was Henry’s and that’s just, I’m just kind of curious where the rumors even came from?
Christine:
I think having her in such a public, just on the public display, like we saw with the pageant, I think it’s really hard not to put them together. I think it would be really hard. Everyone saw it.
Heather:
So then poor William dies. Was it of the sweat–
Christine:
Yeah, the sweating sickness.
Heather:
And was it in that massive outbreak when Anne got the sweating sickness too? Do you know? Or was it different?
Christine:
That’s a really good question. I’m not sure if it’s the same time period, although I know Cardinal Wolsey comes down with it too. It might be, I’m just not sure.
Heather:
Yeah, never mind. Then she tries to, she talks about potentially coming back and living in a family home, and her father says no to that. What do we know? What happened there?
Christine:
I don’t really understand the relationship between Mary and her father Thomas. It is incredibly difficult to pinpoint when and how Thomas likes her. Kind of sad. There are moments when she really needs help, when she really needs a place to live like this, like when her husband has died and she’s got children. Most specifically she’s taking care of Catherine at this point. Henry becomes a ward of the crown.
So she’s got this daughter, it’s his granddaughter. She’s saying “Can I come live with you? I have no money,” and he refuses her. Well what people have kind of put forth is maybe there was some shame in again having a royal affair that doesn’t pan out, trying and failing to elevate your status in that way. But that argument doesn’t hold up because she was already married. So her status was what it was. I’m not really sure about that. Really toxic relationship between the two of them.
Heather:
Isn’t that sad?
Christine:
Yeah, it is.
Heather:
Isn’t that funny, more than 500 years later, here are two strangers trying to analyze the family dynamics of this father and daughter.
Christine:
Family tensions over the dinner table! Hmm, I wonder what that was like.
Heather:
And so, well where does she go then? How does she take care of her daughter?
Christine:
She actually ends up convincing, or not convincing, but she goes to Henry VIII directly. I think it’s important to know this. So she goes through Anne, it’s like an improper kind of conversation. She goes through her sister, and she says “I need help, I need shelter, I’ve been turned away from my family home.” Henry VIII actually steps in and requires Thomas Boleyn to take Mary and Catherine into his home.
At the same time, he grants Mary an annuity or a yearly salary of like a hundred pounds. Initially, it would have belonged to her husband, so it would have transferred to her son, or back to the Crown, not necessarily to Mary. So it’s significant that he advocates for her. He steps in on a family matter and he gives her a royal annuity on top of it. Which is another thing to consider when you think about maybe he’s thinking about Catherine.
Heather:
Yeah, absolutely. So then she does something scandalous. She marries without permission. Tell me about that.
Christine:
This is good stuff because this goes right back to when she started her time in French court, when she’s serving Mary Tudor in France. We see at the end of Mary Tudor, after the French King has died, she elopes with Charles Brandon. This sets the precedent. It’s not the first elopement. You can go back to Catherine of Valois and Owen Tudor if you want to, and it’s certainly not the last.
Both of Jane Grey‘s sisters are also known to have eloped. So there is a precedent, it happens. It’s not frequent. But Mary has seen it be successful, and the reason she sees it being successful is because the people who were involved in the elopement are in elevated positions of power. She knows that it’s her second marriage. She can maybe make her own choices. She knows she can kind of get out of it, or justify it, and will talk about justification, and her rhetoric. So she marries William Stafford in 1534, and this is her second marriage. She does it with no royal permission. And as a member of the royal family at that point, that was a no-no.
Heather:
Right. Interesting and so then she does like you mentioned, she has to beg for forgiveness and to be restored in favour. Tell me about that letter which is quite extraordinary isn’t it?
Christine:
Yes, so people understand that this letter exists. She writes a petition. She addresses it to Thomas Cromwell who was Henry VIII’s acting secretary at this point in time. She is basically asking for mercy or forgiveness. This letter is so special because not only is it the only letter written by Mary that survives, we know there’s a large body of letter writing happening. But this is the only one that survives.
So we get to hear her voice very specifically. It’s not really even the content of the letter that I find interesting, but rather the way that it is constructed. I love Mary here, because she’s bold, she’s admitting that she did something wrong, but at absolutely no point in that letter does she apologize for it.
So she’s saying in a voice that most people don’t attribute to her, she’s saying very confidently, “We know we broke the rules, and we’re really happy about it anyway. Could you please forgive us?” It’s quite remarkable. It really is, and she’s using really interesting language.
If we go back to French court, we see women using similar language. The art of correspondence, the art of letter writing is so crucial to the way that women wield influence. If you know your audience, and you know it’s going to be read out loud, or in some dramatic manner, then you can very confidently write in your own voice with your own words, or with words that will appeal to the person you’re writing to.
So we see with Mary this really interesting letter writing pattern where she’s using strong words like “liberty” and “bondage” and “love”. It’s all this really interesting rhetoric that you’re also going to find in heavy reform-based materials from the periods. We know that reform language is part of Mary’s vocabulary, it comes naturally to her. But she also knows how to use it to influence Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn in her favor.
Heather:
She was a smart cookie.
Christine:
I think she’s a really smart cookie. Yeah and I just, I never can quite get over the fact that she doesn’t apologize. That is so bold to have committed a treasonous act, and then justify it. Which again brings us into the idea of the Reform writers like William Tyndale who Henry VIII was reading at this time.
The idea that even though we’re all going to sin, we should be allowed to come back to our God, or to our leader, and be forgiven if we acknowledge the sin. So the letter is just dripping with reform, that is also just full of personality, and I love it.
Heather:
That’s awesome, we’ll have to include a link to the text of the letter. So then how did that end? How did all of that end for her?
Christine:
We don’t have a response to that but we do know just based on her circumstances that there is an amount of grace extended to her, again with her children being placed in positions at court. There’s still some favor there. Then on top of it, we certainly know that her father remains at court, although his time is sort of like a roller coaster. But he’s always there. So the Boleyn family, at least those who are alive by the late 1530’s, they’re still in favor. It’s remarkable.
Heather:
Yeah. Did she live for a long time then after that point or?
Christine:
No, she doesn’t live very long.
Heather:
Was it in the mid 1540’s or something?
Christine:
Yeah, I think 1540’s. She dies before Henry VIII does. Which is also why it was important for her children to be taken care of. But I don’t know the exact date of that.
Heather:
But so her last years, she was still in favor, and it and it seems like it all kind of worked out for her then.
Christine:
She inherits her father’s home and estate, and she’s allowed to live there for the remainder of her life. Again not a small favor.
Heather:
With her husband? With the new husband?
Christine:
With Stafford. And then of course, he doesn’t last very long either, but that is the Tudor period.
Heather:
Tricky time, that.
Christine:
I know.
Heather:
Awesome, well I’m trying to see if I have any– Well it’s funny, it’s interesting that you have a background in musical theatre because I wanted to ask you about pageants and entertainment, but maybe what I would really like, I’ve actually been wanting to do an episode on William Cornysh and the mystery of whether there were two William Cornyshes or just one. And like the pageants, and the William Cornysh of the Choirbook versus the William Cornysh of the Chateau Vert.
So maybe can I ask you a request, will you come onto my podcast sometime and talk to me about pageants? ‘Cause I wanted to ask you that too, but that’s like a whole different world.
Christine:
Oh, I would love that. I would absolutely love that. That’s how this started really, was I found out that Mary was in this pageant. I was like “Why does everyone pretend like Anne was the main part of this pageant?” Then from there it just snowballed, and I was doing theater, and propaganda,a and pageantry. Oh, it’s so fun.
Heather:
Yeah, it’s interesting just a couple weeks ago, I started to write this episode about pagaents, and I thought “I wish I can find an expert. That would save me a lot of research.” So will you be my pageant expert some time?
Christine:
I’d love that. Absolutely.
Heather:
Awesome! That’s great I’ll have to schedule something like that with you then! Wonderful!
So then, where can people find your work, and find out more about you? You have a YouTube channel, you do all kinds of stuff, so tell me about it.
Christine:
So my thesis which is what we’re working off of quite a bit today, which is where even my sources, my interpretations, and a whole lot more are in the making. My thesis hasn’t been published for the public, but it is published on like WorldCat or like ProQuest I think carries it. So if you have a university affiliation, you can do that.
But if you want to contact me, I can also send that to you because, it’s copyrighted. So you can cite it and use it and do whatever you want. Then I run Untitled History Project, and this last season has been focused on the Tudors. So we’ve been having a lot of fun with that. Just short episodes about my favorite things about the Tudors.
Heather:
Like the greatest Tudor mysteries on there. Was Edmund Tudor really the father, and all of that.
Christine:
Yeah, more DNA questions.
Heather:
Awesome, so we’ll add links to all of that somewhere down there. Awesome, and any of the other any of the other places people can– Do you have a website, Twitter, or anything like that where people can reach out?
Christine:
I’m on Twitter, I love to share and do history Twitter community things. I’m @mChristineMo, so you can find me there, or on Instagram and then YouTube and Facebook for my videos. I’m writing some articles, so you may see that soon.
Heather:
Well, you are fabulous. I love you. Thank you so much for sharing and being so generous with your time, and telling us so much about Mary Boleyn. You’ve definitely opened my eyes to another perspective, and I love seeing her as the strong woman and not just this manipulated person that is just owned by her family.
Christine:
Well, thank you for letting me talk about her. She’s my absolute favorite subject.
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