Eleanor Carey was the daughter of Sir Thomas Carey of Chilton Foliat

Chilton Foliat

Chilton Foliat is a village and civil parish on the River Kennet in Wiltshire. The parish is in the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is on the county boundary with West Berkshire and is about northwest of the Berkshire market town of Hungerford.-Parish church:The Church of...

 and his wife Margaret Spencer

Margaret Spencer

Margaret Spencer was the daughter of Sir Robert Spencer, of Spencercombe, in the English County of Devon, by his wife Lady Eleanor Beaufort, the daughter of Edmund Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset and Lady Eleanor Beauchamp.In 1490, she was married to Sir Thomas Carey, of Chilton Foliat, in...

. She was the great-granddaughter of Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset

Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset

Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset, KG , sometimes styled 1st Duke of Somerset, was an English nobleman and an important figure in the Wars of the Roses and in the Hundred Years' War...

, which meant she was a third cousin to Henry VIII.

She and at least one of her sisters, possibly Anne Carey, were nuns at Wilton Abbey

Wilton Abbey

Wilton Abbey was a Benedictine convent in Wiltshire, England, three miles from Salisbury on the site now occupied by Wilton House. A first foundation was made as a college of secular priests by Wulfstan, Ealdorman of Wiltshire, about 773, but after his death was changed into a convent for twelve...

. On 24 April 1528 the abbess, Cecily Willoughby died. At this point the convent had about fifty nuns and there had already been several rumours of scandalous happenings there. Because of this, Thomas Wolsey wished to make Isabel Jourdain the new abbess since she was reputed to be "ancient, wise and discreet". However, it was also suggested, most likely by Eleanor’s brothers John and William Carey (who was married to Mary Boleyn

Mary Boleyn

Mary Boleyn , was the sister of English queen consort Anne Boleyn and a member of the Boleyn family, which enjoyed considerable influence during the reign of King Henry VIII of England...

), that Eleanor become the new abbess. Anne Boleyn

Anne Boleyn

Anne Boleyn ;c.1501/1507 – 19 May 1536) was Queen of England from 1533 to 1536 as the second wife of Henry VIII of England and Marquess of Pembroke in her own right. Henry's marriage to Anne, and her subsequent execution, made her a key figure in the political and religious upheaval that was the...

 also favoured Eleanor as the candidate for abbess, so the king looked into the matter. What was found out, however, quite put an end to any notion of Eleanor's promotion. She confessed to having borne “two children by two sundry priests” and was involved with a servant from the household of Lord Willoughby de Broke

Baron Willoughby de Broke

Baron Willoughby de Broke is a title in the Peerage of England. It was created by writ in 1491 for Sir Robert Willoughby, of Brooke/Broke manor, Heywood, near Westbury, Wiltshire, de jure 9th Baron Latimer...

. The Careys and Boleyns then proposed Eleanor’s eldest sister, Anne Carey, as a possible candidate, claiming that Isabel Jourdain had led an unchaste life when she was younger. Henry flatly refused to have either Eleanor, her sister, or Isabel made abbess, but Wolsey went ahead and gave the position to Isabel Jourdain anyway, causing the first major dispute between Henry and Wolsey.

What happened to Eleanor Carey after 1528 is unknown.

Sources

• Antonia Fraser, The Wives of Henry VIII (1992), page 146
• Eileen Edna Power, Medieval English Nunneries, c. 1275 to 1535 (1988), pages 54-56
• Paul Friedmann, Anne Boleyn: a Chapter of English History 1527-1536 (London: 1884), pages 73-74