In Bed with the Tudors: The Sex Lives of a Dynasty from Elizabeth of York to Elizabeth I

by Amy Licence

  Various theories have been put forward to explain the sudden, secret marriage. Henry may have been fulfilling his dying father’s last wish, as he wrote to Margaret of Savoy, by maintaining the union with Spain or additionally, preventing her leaving the country with such a large sum of money, although she had hardly benefited from it. In July, Henry explained to Cardinal Sixtus de Ruvere that the ‘high virtues’ of the princess had influenced his decision and Catherine’s coronation had caused ‘incredible demonstrations of joy and enthusiasm’; to Ferdinand, he wrote that ‘if he were still free he would choose her in preference to all others’. Writing with hindsight, chronicler Edward Hall contradicts this and rewrites earlier events, suggesting the young king was wrongly urged to it by his counsellors, without true knowledge of the ‘word of God’ and that there were ‘murmurings’ against the marriage from the start. In fact, Henry’s true motives were probably less than mercenary. The new king was a romantic at heart. His notions of chivalry and romance may have been stirred by the plight of the impoverished yet beautiful young infanta whom his father had treated so badly: just like his renouncement of his father’s hated tax collectors Empson and Dudley, this may have been a belated moment of filial rebellion. Also, the match was convenient: the amorous new king wanted a wife and a suitable Spanish princess was on hand. Many indicators suggest he genuinely desired Catherine. The Pope had issued his dispensation and there were precedents of remarriage in families: two of Catherine’s sisters, Isabella and Maria, had, in turn, been married to the same man; the second match was flourishing and had produced many children. There was no reason to suspect the new royal pair would be less than fruitful.

  The wedding night would have been spent in the five-storey royal apartment block, overlooking the surrounding gardens, orchards and river. The recent improvements of 1502–04 had been designed by Elizabeth of York, who had been very fond of the palace and included new walls, gardens, gallery, kitchen and tower, as well as fresh painting. Catherine would have been lodged in the queen’s chambers that formed an ‘L’ shape, at right angles to Henry’s, which sat parallel to the Thames. Provision for her household indicated that thirty-three women were employed in her service, comprising countesses, baronesses, knights’ wives and gentlewomen, including an Elizabeth Boleyn, Henry’s future mother-in-law, to advise and prepare her in her new role. A select few would have carefully dressed her and assisted her into bed to await her new husband, although the ceremonial aspects of her 1501 bedding; the music and voidee and blessing of the sheets with holy water may have been lacking. Leaving Catherine in the marital bed, her ladies tactfully withdrew. If, as she asserted with such conviction in later life, she had retained her virginity despite her union with Arthur, Catherine must have finally anticipated becoming a wife in the full sense, as her lusty young husband entered the chamber. The cloistered nature of the young king’s upbringing meant it was unlikely that Henry had had the opportunity for any sort of sexual experience yet it appears that the marriage was consummated quickly and fully. Whatever was lacking in experience was made up in enthusiasm; by later accounts, their physical relationship was a consistent success through the early years of their marriage. There was no recorded public display of blood-stained sheets the following morning, although this barbaric custom was becoming less practised and was not in keeping with the privacy and quietness of the ceremony. In spite of her years of penury, Catherine’s youth was a significant factor in her fertility and by the time of her coronation on midsummer’s day, the new queen may have already fallen pregnant.

  The young couple were delighted that Catherine had conceived so promptly after the marriage. She had fulfilled the promise of her heraldic device, the Spanish pomegranate, an ancient image of abundance found in many Renaissance images of the Virgin and child. The couple’s obvious fecundity appeared to validate the royal union and by extension, the Tudor dynasty: there was no reason to doubt that the family would continue to expand, following the example of the previous generation. Elizabeth of York had come from a prolific family and Catherine’s siblings had proved themselves fertile. The pregnancy was announced in November 1509, five months after the marriage, around the time of her quickening. Henry eagerly ordered preparations for the cradle and nursery. Her father Ferdinand, who had lost three stillborn children and a daughter in childbirth, urged her to take especial care as it was her first; she should avoid all physical activity, as even writing could tire her. But all progressed well; the child moved in her womb, her dresses were unlaced and preparations were begun for the lying-in at Greenwich. Orders were given for a birthing or ‘groaning’ chair and a copper gilt bowl to receive the blood and placenta; the silver font was to be sent from Canterbury Cathedral; sheets, cushions and linen arrived by the cartload along with a predictable host of prophets, apothecaries and astrologers. In mid-January the royal couple arrived, amid much pomp and excitement, to await the delivery that March. However, at seven months, Catherine experienced ‘only a little pain in her knee’, before going into labour, according to her confessor Fray Diego. Other accounts list that she suffered such ‘agonising pains’ that she vowed to donate her headdress to the Spanish shrine of St Peter the martyr. On 31 January, she was delivered of a stillborn girl. That was when the confusion began.

  In spite of the miscarriage, the queen’s belly remained swollen, convincing her advisers that she had been expecting twins and was still carrying one remaining, viable foetus. Such a scenario was not impossible but seemed increasingly unlikely after the reappearance of Catherine’s intermittent periods. The swelling was probably the result of some infection or pseudocyesis, a phantom pregnancy, yet the couple’s gynaecological naivety and desire for an heir afforded them hope. Whatever Catherine’s personal doubts may have been, optimism and professional misdiagnosis helped convince the queen that she was, in fact, entering the final trimester of a pregnancy. Henry’s medical advisers at the time included a William Adderston and the ‘sage docteur’ John Chaunte, as well as an Anne Luke, who had nursed him in his infancy and may have been standing by to assist with the new arrival; earlier she had been awarded an annuity of £20 a year for life and was clearly a valued servant, so her advice would have been trusted. Catherine’s last public appearance was Shrove Tuesday; at the end of February the court moved to Greenwich and preparations were made for equipping the royal nursery. Henry ordered red cloth and ribbon, linen and Holland cloth to dress the Canterbury font for the child’s baptism and the whole court ritual of confinement went into motion, according to Margaret Beaufort’s Ordinances. The royal cradle of estate was re-lined with crimson cloth-of-gold and the pommels repainted to incorporate the queen’s coat of arms.

  Catherine went into confinement in the first half of March, in a formal procession that ended in the voidee of wine and spices, prayers and blessings. The doors closed. Weeks passed. The ladies waited. Perhaps they tried certain remedies to bring on her long overdue labour: a woman in her ninth month might resort to drinking mixtures made from leek, ale and wine, rue and savin or she may pace up and down her chamber, in the hope that the motion would set off her contractions. For Catherine, nothing worked. When no child appeared and her bloated stomach began to deflate, the couple were deeply embarrassed and initially kept their failure a secret. It was a personal and political humiliation; the king’s councillors were ‘vexed’ and the news had to be delicately put to the nation and foreign ambassadors. Catherine’s ladies were blamed for misleading her, but worse, rumours began to circulate about her ability to bear children. Spanish Ambassador Luis Caroz believed her failure to conceive had been caused by irregular menstruation and advised the queen to change her diet. Catherine’s chancellor Fray Diego claimed that only the king, two Spanish women, her physician knew about it but as the weeks passed, the facts could not be denied: eventually she wrote to her father in May, stating she had just miscarried. Catherine was so embarrassed that she did not re-emerge into court life until the end of that month, at least ten weeks
since her confinement.

  Catherine’s letter to her father indicates her sexual naivety. Its details were only recently made known, as Spanish archivists hid them from Victorian researchers, keen to preserve the queen’s image. Some modern historians have interpreted this as a straightforward act of deception on her part, whilst others have seen it as proof of her extreme innocence. To suggest she planned the whole process, deceived the court, kingdom and her husband is probably to accredit her with a sophistication and Machiavellianism far beyond her years and experience, also it denies the serious embarrassment she felt as a result of the mistake becoming known, to the extent that she removed herself from the public eye for an additional month. At worst, Catherine told her father a lie by omission, when she only confessed to her miscarriage four months after the event: ‘because it was considered here an ill omen’.15 It may seem incredible to a reader in the modern age that such basic mistakes could occur, but to a sexually inexperienced Tudor couple, desirous of a child, the workings and anatomy of the female body could give rise to misunderstanding. The subjective and imprecise nature of gynaecological understanding meant that doctors, physicians and midwives, often in conflict and unregulated, could join with astrologers, prophets and astronomers to diagnose and predict exactly what a royal couple wanted to hear. It was an easy matter to tell a king he was expecting a son; less easy to inform him he was mistaken. Even if some had suspected the truth, it would have been a brave doctor who would have dared contradict the couple. Given the difficulties of diagnosis, many other such mistakes must have been regularly made. By 1612, a French royal doctor wrote that there was nothing so ridiculous as to assure a woman she was with child when her stomach was actually bloated with water or wind, but this advice came a century too late for Catherine. In the light of what happened with her first pregnancy, Henry’s personal interest in medicine and the degree of controversy that already surrounded the female secrecy of the birth chamber, it is unsurprising that the king took steps to regulate the industry, resulting in the establishment of the all-male Royal College of Physicians in 1518. Female specialists would remain unregulated for another fifty years.

  No doubt Catherine would have had a number of knowledgeable, high-ranking women at her bedside, yet they would not necessarily have practised as midwives. The word derives from an Anglo-Saxon term meaning ‘with-woman’, like the Latin obstetrix, literally, a ‘woman who stood before’. Historically, the reception of midwives and medical women has varied, with some societies and civilisations welcoming their abilities and supporting their practice, while others treating them with suspicion. Notable among the success stories are the second-century Greco-Roman Aspasia, whose foreign status allowed her a degree of freedom; the eleventh-century Trotula of Salerno, author of a gynaecological text, De Mulierum Passionibus; Cecilia of Oxford, Surgeon to Philippa, wife of Edward III and Jacobina Felice, an Italian Jewess practising in Paris in the 1320s. Even in the most tolerant climates, medical women were often considered suspect; Felice won her right to continue working after the testimonials of leading noblemen overturned objections by the Paris Faculty of Medicine, who had previously denied her a license. Hyginus’ Fables, transcribed in 1535, told of an Athenian woman named Agnodice who practised medicine disguised as a man, until jealous competitors accused her of seducing her patients, whereupon she disclosed her secret. She was condemned to death for her law-breaking but was saved by the testimonials of women she had assisted, bringing about a change in the law.16 Whatever era they practised in, certain qualities were desirable in a woman attending a birth. Frenchman Jacques Guillemeau’s 1612 ‘Happy Delivery of Women’, stated that a midwife should be of middle age, not too young or old, not diseased or deformed, neat in appearance with little hands and nails cut short; she must not wear rings or bracelets when at work. In manner, she should be cheerful, strong, merry, ‘painfull’ (taking pains) and accustomed to labour, well able to spend two or three nights watching with an expectant woman. Her qualities must include patience, politeness and gentleness: she should respect nature and work with it and not be proud, nor a blabber and should not report anything she may see or hear in the birth chamber, excepting in the case of sexual and moral transgressions. This was particularly important in the case of queens and the royal succession.

  The role of the midwife was complex and emotive. Women had little choice but to put their trust in such assistants, literally putting their lives in their hands. Trusted midwives were clearly prized and received recompense for their efforts, like the woman who successfully delivered a son at Longleat House in 1560, who received 40s for her trouble. Others were recommended by word of mouth, tending to members of the same family and their friends. Their reputations quickly spread. William Howard of Reigate wrote to Sir William More in 1576, regretting that the midwife who had attended his wife and baby son could not be spared for his daughter-in-law, as she was required by Lady Sidney, who was soon to visit. Oral social networks could be used to denounce careless practitioners, like the Mrs Buckland who a John Genifer claimed, in 1601, was not fit to bring a dog to bed, much less a woman. Equally, the midwife could be a figure of moral dread to an unmarried mother, playing an increasingly central role in court paternity examinations and the report of illegitimate births such as the 1573 labour of Agnes Hollway in Canterbury, which was reported to the ecclesiastical court and the 1578 bastardy case of Sussex midwife Denise Clarke. Labouring mothers were considered vulnerable to supernatural influences as they lay hovering on the margin of life and death and in Catholic eyes, midwives were uniquely placed to exploit this. Clergymen worried about the use charms and old practices associated with witchcraft, magic and Pagan rites, suspecting them of making extra money by supplying witches with the spoils of the birth for their cauldrons; the caul, placenta and umbilical cord, even body parts, like Shakespeare’s ‘finger of birth-strangled babe’, delivered in a ditch. Cauls were thought to prevent death by drowning so were particularly sought after by sailors. Controversial or inept as some midwives were, not to ask for help could lead a woman into far worse trouble; concealing a pregnancy was against the law and in the event of infant death, a woman could be left vulnerable. In May 1583, Parnell Richarde, a servant from Frinton, was found guilty of delivering a female child alone, which died through her negligence in not asking for the assistance of women. Worse still were attempted deals with midwives, struck by desperate women such as Agnes Bowker in January 1569, whose dead child was bizarrely substituted for a skinned cat with collusion from her midwife. In later centuries, the presence of bystanders in the delivery room was considered essential to prevent the smuggling in of a baby during the phantom, faked or failed pregnancy of untrusted royalty.

  Catherine was lucky in that she need not concern herself with practical arrangements. She knew her every need would be catered for in the lying-in chamber. In many cases, though, the role would be determined by area and chance. Not all women had the luxury of choice, especially those in the lowest orders, such as servants or vagrants. Often the office would be performed by whichever females were to hand, especially in the delivery of the poor or those far from home. Some developed a particular reputation and were repeatedly called for; on other occasions, dependent on circumstance, delivery was assisted by the best available alternative. It might have been a neighbour, friend, relative or local woman who had experience in the field; in some cases, though, the resulting debt to the community could be a factor. In October 1593, a woman making ‘casual passage’ through the ‘very poor’ Essex parish of Ardleigh had lodged there for two nights, during which time she gave birth. Out of charity, the residents assisted her ‘who otherwise with her child might have utterly perished’ but then found themselves supporting both, unwilling for the baby to be ‘severed from the sucking brestes’.17 A similar story occurred in the village a decade later, when the village acted to prevent responsibility falling on its shoulders again. Three ‘rogue’ women with pedlar’s packs stayed for two days and nights in an
unlicensed alehouse. Perhaps they had been selling wares to pilgrims or travelling between key towns and religious sites to ply their trade. When one of them went into labour late one evening, they were thrown out into the street and looked about for a house to rent so that the child might be born there safely. The constables intervened, carrying the three in a cart to the house of an honest farmer in the next parish of St Botolph, within the district of Colchester. However, the farmer refused to take them in, asking by what warrant the constables brought them and the constables refused to return them to Ardleigh, so the women were dumped at his door in the pouring rain. Out of pity he let them lie in his barn that night, where the labouring woman delivered her child. They remained in the barn for seven or eight days and then disappeared, abandoning the baby in the nearby parish of Langham. Despite the efforts of the constables, the Justices ruled that the parish of Ardleigh should support the infant until the mother could be located.18 The prospect for women giving birth in poverty was grim.

  Midwives were a frequent, obvious scapegoat for medical men although some of their criticism was clearly deserved. Early midwifery was not regulated; the job description did not imply training, qualifications or social acceptance. The fourteenth-century John of Mirfield complained of ‘worthless and presumptuous women who usurp this profession to themselves and abuse it; who, possessing neither natural ability nor professional knowledge, make the greatest possible mistakes and very often kill their patients’. The authors of Tudor and Stuart pamphlets were rarely friends of the profession; a 1632 ballad described a ‘constant wife of Sussex’, whose midwife suggested she substitute the baby girl she had just delivered for a male child, to save her husband’s shame, while another pamphlet told the story of a murdering midwife, whose secret was betrayed by the apparitions of her victims which rose to haunt her house: ‘desiring midwives to take heed, how they dispose their bastard-breed’.19 Other seventeenth-century broadsheets presented midwives as ‘the worst of Women-kind’ who murdered ‘sweet infants from their mother’s womb’20 and others guilty of various barbarous acts of cruelty; to fan the flames even more, some were based on true tales of baby-farmers, lured into the profession in anticipation of easy financial gain. Other scare stories had them tightly swaddling newborns to conceal birth defects as well as drinking and neglecting their charges, often at the cost of their lives. While there were cases of abuse, the successful and popular midwives were scarcely lauded in any comparable way. While popular pamphlets and songs would have been passed on by word of mouth, actual medical texts would have had little circulation among those women practising their own brand of medicine.