Of Virtue Rare

by Linda Simon

  The substance of Suffolk’s letter echoed long-sanctioned advice to children. Someday that advice would reappear in the mouth of Polonius. In the mid fifteenth century, it was popularly repeated in one of the most commonly memorized verses of the time, John Lydgate’s “Dietary.” Besides giving advice for keeping a sound body (covering one’s head in winter, eating thoroughly cooked meat), Lydgate offered advice to children for maintaining strong moral character. They were urged to practice temperance in all things and to face life with an ever-cheerful countenance.

  Meke in troubill, glad in poverte,

  Ryche with litell, content with suffisaunce,

  Never grucchyng, but mery lyke thy degre;

  Yf physike lakke, make this thy governaunce.

  To every tale, sonn, gyff not credence;

  Be not hasty nor sodenly vengeabill,

  To poure folke do no violence,

  Curteys of langage; of fedying mesurabyll,

  On sondry metis not gredy at the tabill,

  In feding gentill; prudent in daliaunce;

  Close of tunge, of worde not deceyvabill,

  To set the best sette al-wey thy plesaunce.

  Be clenly clad aftyr thyne estate;

  Passe not thy bondys, kepe thy promise blyve;

  With thre folkes be not at debate —

  ffirst with thy bettir be ward for to strive,

  A-geyne thy felawe no quarell do contrive,

  With thy soget to strive it were shame;

  Wherfor I counsell pursue all thy lyve

  To lyve in pease and get the a good name.

  Lydgate added advice that Suffolk knew too well:

  In youthe be lusty, sad whanne thou art olde —

  No worldely Joye last but A whyle …[13]

  On May 1, 1450, Suffolk sailed from Dover. Not far off the coast, his boat was intercepted by another, the Nicholas of the Tower, and Suffolk was summoned on board. As soon as he was told the name of the ship, he knew he was a doomed man. He once had been told a prophecy: only if he escaped the danger of the Tower would he be safe.

  He was allowed time to be shriven. Then, on May 2, he was rowed out to sea in a smaller boat with a gruff Irish companion. There, with a rusty sword, his head was cut off by six hacks of the dull blade. His body was brought back to Dover and thrown on the sands.

  By May 5, the shocking news had already reached London. William Lomnor wrote to his friend John Paston, giving as many details as he had been able to learn. He was “right sory of that I shalle sey, and have soo wesshe this litel bille with sorwfulle terys that onethes ye shulle reede it.” The grim events were related, including the small consolation that Suffolk may have had his confessor with him. Lomnor added that after the duke was dead, his “gown of russette and his dobelette of velvet” were stripped from him and “his hedde was sette oon a pole” near his body. “Whatte shalbe doo forthere I wotte notte,” Lomnor wrote, “but thus fer is yt …”[14]

  When the king received news of the gruesome execution, he ordered the body retrieved and buried. Suffolk’s supporters were horrified, and, despite their efforts, the identity of the executioners was never discovered. But the Nicholas of the Tower was a royal ship. It could not have been ordered to sea except by someone of the high nobility. It may have been the king himself, convinced at last by Suffolk’s rivals that the duke was a horrendous traitor. Or, as rumor had it, it may have been the strongest of those rivals, the son of Anne Mortimer, Richard of York.

  *

  Suffolk’s death, however shocking it was for the inhabitants at Bletsoe, liberated Margaret from her bond to John de la Pole. Too important an heiress to be relegated to the son of a disgraced man, she found herself once more handed as a prize to worthy allies of the king. This time, the profitable guardianship was awarded to Edmund and Jasper Tudor.

  Henry VI’s affection for his two half brothers seems to have been genuine, but his presentation to them of earldoms — Edmund of Richmond, Jasper of Pembroke — was also politically astute. Henry had only a weak identification with Wales because of his father’s birth there, and he felt he needed a stronger presence to mitigate political unrest. Welshmen had long suffered legal discrimination by the English. Penal codes provided that Welshmen could not acquire property within or near the English boroughs; they could not serve on juries; could not marry English citizens; could not hold office. No Englishman could be convicted on the oath of a Welshman. For most Englishmen, Wales was a vast unknown territory inhabited by barbarians. In fact, the king’s writ was largely ignored there, replaced by a government of powerful lords. Wales had its own courts, taxes, civil and military authority — all obstacles to the rule of the king.

  But the Tudors, through their father, were half-Welsh, and both were popular ambassadors for Henry in their homeland. In return for their loyalty and good faith, Henry gave them Margaret Beaufort. Because Margaret was eleven, her marriage to John de la Pole could be considered void. Girls older than twelve and boys older than fourteen were bound legally to their marriage agreements.

  She had ardently wished to be freed from the attachment to John de la Pole. Much later, she completely denied the betrothal by perpetrating a legend about her marriage that revealed her own desire. She claimed that she herself had been obliged to choose between Suffolk’s son and Edmund Tudor, and at first could not decide. She asked one of her servants, “an old Gentlewoman whom she moche loved and trusted, which dyd advyse her to commend her self to St Nycholas the Patron and helper of all true maydens, and to beseche him to put in her mynde what she were best to do.”

  Margaret had prayed by day and especially by night for guidance. Finally, “a mervaylous thyng” occurred:

  As she lay in Prayer calling upon St Nycholas, whether slepynge or wakeynge she could not assure, but about four of the clocke in the mornynge one appered unto her arrayed like a byshop and naming unto her Edmonde had take hyme unto her Husbande. And so by this meane she dyd encline her mynde unto Edmonde, the Kyng’s Broder …[15]

  Although by convention children were capable of consent from the age of seven, Margaret’s vision was no more marvelous than the prospect that a powerful guardian would allow a nine-year-old heiress to refuse to marry his own son. The apocryphal tale does, however, reveal Margaret’s deep desire to have control over her own life and her total faith in the efficacy of prayer. In 1455 she was married to Edmund Tudor. This final union with Edmund was twice blessed: by the king and by God.

  The ward became a wife and accompanied her husband to Pembroke Castle, the Tudor-family stronghold, owned by her brother-in-law, Jasper. She exchanged central England, with its access to London and its flow of court visitors, for the wild and desolate region of South Wales.

  Pembroke was a stony and imposing fortress built high on a rocky mound, with a twelfth-century round keep rising eighty feet and extending outward fifty-four feet. A drawbridge connected a forebuilding to the second story of the keep; there, seemingly endless spiral staircases let out onto each of the four stories. The living quarters were in a separate inner bailey near the keep. Everything about the castle was cold and forbidding. The stones were immense; the walls, thick and impenetrable. Footsteps echoed through the huge bare halls.

  Edmund was soon sent to battle to settle what seemed to be a local skirmish among some Welshmen and then developed into nearly open rebellion. Jasper fought at his brother’s side. For months, Margaret was alone at Pembroke. She knew no Welsh, the language of her servants. Often she would withdraw to her own apartment with her books.

  Her childhood, however, had prepared her for loneliness. Always given more to study and prayer than to whatever gaiety aristocratic life might offer, Margaret did not suffer in isolation. At fourteen, the thin, dark-haired, quiet girl could do no more than accept her fate. She had been obedient and respectful as a daughter; she had been outwardly docile as a ward; she would be, as expected of her, an exemplary wife.

  By her fifteenth birthday, Margaret was pregnant. Mid
wives were probably summoned immediately to advise her about her health during pregnancy, the first time such information was ever imparted to her. She was told what symptoms were normal and was cautioned that certain signs meant that she or her unborn child might be in peril. Diet was of special concern; she was advised to eat light, small meals, avoiding fatty meats and heavy gravies. She must avoid rice, chestnuts, sour fruits, spices, and lard because they would cause constipation. Should she become constipated, she was to eat apples fried with sugar, especially beneficial if taken on an empty stomach at breakfast, followed by good wine or apple juice. Figs, morning and night, would also help “lose the belly.” If dietary methods failed, she could always resort to an enema of chicken soup, sugar, and salt. If she had been a peasant woman, she was warned, she would have to make do with water in which mallows or hollyhock had been steeped. If even an enema did not help, she might try a suppository of soap, lard, or egg yolk.

  Physicians were never consulted for pregnancy, and Margaret knew that when she was confined for delivery, only women would be allowed to attend to her. As late as 1522, a German physician with insatiable curiosity dressed as a woman to observe a birth. His trespass was punished: he was burned to death. There was no training offered to midwives other than experience and methods handed down from generation to generation. Written instruction was thought to be shameful; the intimate matters of women might then become known to men, causing them “the more to abhore and loath the company of women.”[16]

  Much of midwifery had remained unchanged from the time of Soranus, a second-century Greek physician who practiced in Alexandria and in Rome. He advised every midwife to have clean hands and trimmed and rounded fingernails, since she would have to insert her index finger (covered with grease, oil of almonds, or oil of white lilies) into the laboring woman’s vagina to determine the dilation of the cervix, and after delivery would again have to insert her finger to remove any blood clots that might adhere to the uterine cavity.

  He trained midwives to look for certain signs during the pregnancy that would indicate the presence of disease or the possibility of stillbirth or miscarriage. These signs were well known to the women who attended Margaret, and they watched her carefully, not sure that such a small and frail young woman could produce a healthy child — and survive.

  They examined her breasts for slackness, which they believed indicated a potential stillbirth. They questioned her about her diet: Did she crave foods “which be against nature, and not wont to be eaten or drunken?” Did she have frequent nightmares? Did she have a “stinking and filthy” vaginal discharge? Did she feel pain “about the secret parts?” Had her belly suddenly become cold?

  They noted her eyes: Were they ringed and hollow? They watched for extreme pallor or sudden deep swarthiness. They smelled her breath, certain that a bad odor meant a miscarriage would occur in two or three days. From time to time, they would place their hands in very warm water, then lay them on Margaret’s belly, waiting for the fetus to stir. If “the child stirre not, is a sign that it is dead.”[17]

  Though Margaret was pale, tired, and often uncomfortable, the midwives saw no signs of any problems and believed that she would bear a healthy baby. But in November, when Margaret was just completing her sixth month, she suffered a terrible shock that sent the midwives hurrying to her in alarm.

  Edmund had been in battle again for the king, when suddenly he fell ill. He was brought to the nearest fortress, Carmarthen Castle, treated, but failed to recover. On November 3, he died. When word reached Pembroke Castle, Margaret was desolate, but her sorrow did not show itself in the wild grief the midwives feared would bring on a miscarriage. Instead, Margaret turned to prayer for consolation, showing once more the emotional self-sufficiency that had characterized her youth. She prayed for Edmund’s soul; she prayed for herself; and she prayed most intensely for her unborn child.

  November was bleak and chilly; December, hardly brightened by holiday feasts. At last, on January 28, 1457, midwives hurried along the passage to Margaret’s chamber, carrying with them the few items necessary to aid the birth of her child.

  The pain was frightening, but the midwives’ comfort and encouragement alleviated some of the fear. Margaret refused offerings of food and drink, grateful for the fire that the women kept stoked and that warmed the drafty room. The women were closely attentive to Margaret, noting her contractions and discussing among themselves whether or not some pepper should be placed beneath her nose to provoke her into a fit of sneezing, thereby speeding labor. Ideally, the midwives thought, labor should be brief: “twenty pangs or within those twenty.”[18] But rarely was that ideal realized.

  The midwives stroked her belly and kept ready a special girdle thought efficacious in aiding delivery. They taught her when to hold her breath, and they often prayed, clutching an amulet they thought would help ease the terrible pain that racked the thin body of the young widow. They also readied a small “birthing stool” or “short, narrow, high-standing bed”[19] on which Margaret would be placed if it appeared that her child would be born in one of sixteen “unnatural” positions. A supply of cloths was held at the back of the stool, in easy reach of the midwife. Her hands were slick with oil in case she would have to turn the child in the womb to prevent a breech birth. If only one foot protruded, she would have to lift Margaret up at her thighs, then attempt to turn the infant to a head-first position. The midwife knew this was a difficult procedure, one that often failed. If it did, she would have to pull out the child gently in whatever position it appeared.

  Anxiously, she watched, certain that this child would present itself head first, but uncertain whether it would be healthy or whether it would live. Like most midwives attending noblewomen, she had been licensed by a bishop to empower her to baptize the infant if it appeared that the newborn might soon die.

  Margaret’s child, however, did not die. Though her son was small and frail, he was healthy. Immediately, he was taken from his mother, washed, and anointed with oil of acorn. His umbilical cord was cut and tied about two inches from the navel. When it dried and fell off, a powder of burned calves’ ashes or snail shells would be applied to the navel.

  The navel itself was examined closely. It was believed that if the navel protruded, with no wrinkles, the mother would thereafter be barren. If there were wrinkles, the number would forecast how many children the mother would yet have. If the wrinkles were close together, future pregnancies would be close together; if far apart, a few years might intervene between each pregnancy.

  The infant was handled gently. His nostrils were cleaned out, and he was held down to allow him to cough up any substance in his throat. He was quickly swaddled.

  Perhaps Margaret followed the prescription of the time and nursed her son. She may, however, have chosen to hire a wet nurse, a local woman of sound health and ruddy complexion, who would abstain from onions, garlic, vinegar, pepper, too much salt, and sex. “Love’s intercourse she must shun — or else go in for it very moderately” to avoid another pregnancy.[20] Though her remuneration was not grand, the wet nurse was assured of an adequate diet of white bread, meat, vegetables, and good wine. She was freed from any additional work lest the strain diminish her supply of milk.

  While the newborn was being cared for, the midwife attended to Margaret. A linen pad had been placed beneath the perineum as the infant was emerging, and now the tear was washed with butter and wine, pressed together, and sewn with silk threads. The stitches were then covered by a clean linen pad that would be changed daily for a week.

  Despite the pain and exhaustion, Margaret felt a great infusion of emotional strength at having produced a living child, a son. More than her marriage, more even than the death of her husband, this event marked the boundary between childhood and womanhood. No longer did she feel that she could not control her fate: now she would direct her own life and that of her child.

  When her Tudor relatives visited her in congratulation, they urged her to name her son for
his grandfather and in honor of his Welsh heritage. But Margaret had decided on another name. She would not name the child Owen. She would not call him Edmund. Instead, she insisted that the boy be called Henry: a good English name, she thought; the name of kings.

  III - Murdre & Much Pride

  THE EVENTS of Margaret’s short life made her realize fully that her son had been born into a world of dissension and violence. The Hundred Years’ War, which had blighted her own childhood and youth, finally was ended, but new fighting, this time domestic, had begun. This overblown internecine conflict involved two families of the descendants of Edward III, long rivals, the Houses of Lancaster and York. From 1455 to 1485, England would suffer as the two sides struggled for power, each trying to wrest and secure the crown of England. Years later, the battles were designated, romantically, the Wars of the Roses: the white rose from the badge of the House of York; the red rose, of Lancaster. If that elegant flower masks the brutality of the age, no epithet could be less apt.

  Fluted armor, newly imported from Italy, was taken up with enthusiasm because of its ability to deflect arrows, swords, and spears. Those weapons gave way to maces and flails; bludgeoning became a favored means of combat. Though the heavily armored men could fight for only a few hours, the fighting was intense and savage. Hostilities went beyond the battlefields.

  English society became violent and convulsive. The anger and distrust that permeated the aristocracy filtered down to the populace. Murder became an accepted means of resolving disputes. The “Wild Welshmen” who fought for the Lancastrians, the Yorkshire peasants who rallied behind Richard of York, knew little of their particular moment in history but had learned well the art of ambush and massacre. Soldiers returned to their fields with arms and quick tempers.

  At the time of her son’s birth, Margaret knew that neither she nor the child was in direct danger. Henry VI, the Lancastrian heir, was still king, and after eight years of marriage to Margaret of Anjou he at last had a son. But if the Yorkists succeeded in usurping the throne, if both the king and his heir were killed, Margaret and Henry Tudor would be in great peril. News came slowly to Pembroke, and from word of the first confrontation Margaret never relaxed her vigilance and never forgot her prayers.