S helton, M ary

Abstract

A cousin of Anne Boleyn, Mary Shelton (1510/15–1570/71) was an important member of a circle of literate and literary women at the court of Henry VIII whose other participants included Mary (Howard) Fitzroy, sister of Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, and the king's niece Margaret (Douglas) Howard. Shelton's handwriting survives in the Devonshire manuscript (British Library, Additional MS 17492) of coterie verse which includes poems by Thomas Wyatt and Surrey, as well as numerous verses by anonymous contemporary poets. Her parents, Sir John and Anne Shelton, supervised the household of Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, and Shelton was apparently writing or collecting poetry while serving as one of Anne Boleyn's maids: the queen herself rebuked Shelton for writing idle poetry in her prayer‐book. Perhaps a mistress of the king in 1535, Shelton was rumoured to be a candidate for queen after Jane Seymour's death. A later relationship with Thomas Clere (d.1545) led to a mention of her in Surrey's elegy on Clere (‘Norfolk sprang thee’), and she was thought to have been exchanging ‘secrets’ with Surrey before his arrest in 1546 (Heale 2004). Thus, Mary Shelton was very much at the heart of Henrician literary culture during a climactic and important period in its development. Less clear are the particularities of her role in that culture beyond the obvious fact of her association with the Devonshire manuscript.