Eleanor Carey

Dame Eleanor Carey (d. after 1528) was an early modern English noblewoman and nun, known for being endorsed as a candidate for abbess of Wilton Abbey by Anne Boleyn until her scandalous life was discovered. Life Ancestry and early life Eleanor Carey was one of the eight or so children of Sir Thomas Carey of Chilton Foliat and his wife, born Margaret Spencer. Through her mother, Eleanor was a great-granddaughter of Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset, making her a third cousin of Henry VIII, King of England. Nothing is known about her childhood. One of her brothers, the courtier William married a former mistress of Henry VIII, Mary Boleyn in 1521. Eleanor and at least one of her sisters became nuns at Saint Edith's Nunnery in the Abbey of Wilton (sometimes called Wilton Priory), a Benedictine convent near Salisbury in Wiltshire. There, they lived in the company of around fifty nuns, most of whom were said to lead dishonourable lives. Eleanor Carey herself gave birth to "two children by two sundry priests". For a time, she left the convent to live as the mistress of an unnamed servant of Robert Willoughby, 2nd Baron Willoughby de Broke.