by Amy Licence
A song dedicated to Henry in 1516, now held in the British Library, reflects his desire for the birth of a healthy son. A double canon or round for four voices, prepared by a Flemish merchant, it includes six compositions written in a circle around a central image of a red rose. An inscription reads, ‘hail, root, bringing forth stems of different colours from your shoot, among which one stands out, from whose top there gleams a scarlet rose, where peace and justice stand enclosed and harmonious.’ That one stem, topped by the scarlet rose, represented the daughter that arrived in mid-February. Catherine had taken to her chambers at Greenwich, unaware of the death of her father Ferdinand at the end of January; the news was kept from her for fear of provoking another premature or still birth, possibly a sensible precaution given her recent history. The usual preparations were made and had by now become a familiar pattern. As she approached her time for delivery, the queen must have felt a mixture of experience and justifiable apprehension. No doubt she would have prayed fervently and turned to her devotional objects to sustain her through the coming ordeal. Birth room charms, prayers and songs combined folklore, Pagan beliefs and Christianity; older texts such as the Leechbook and Lacnunga fused these traditions, with some even including simultaneous appeals to Christ and Woden.10 One of the earliest surviving charms was intended to be said over a grave, to prevent the mother losing the child:
This is my remedy for hateful slow birth,
This is my remedy for heavy difficult birth,
This is my remedy for hateful imperfect birth.11
Another charm against miscarriage should be said as the woman stepped over the reclining form of her husband:
Up I go, over thee I step
with a living child, not with a dying one
with a full-time one, not with a doomed one.12
A 1526 English translation of the Sarum Missal included a prayer beginning:
Kind virgin of virgins, holy mother of God, be present on behalf of thy devoted handmaidens their earnest prayers to the Son, thou art the benign assister of women in travail.13
Before the prayer book was rewritten in 1549, early Tudor church liturgies followed the form of the medieval Sarum rite, in which a Mass for expectant mothers was included. The optimum times for attending Mass were on a child’s quickening and shortly before delivery; this was actively encouraged with parish priests sending labouring women to receive communion or else administering it in their chambers. Thomas Bentley’s 1582 The Monument of Matrons included two sections of thanksgiving prayers ‘… to be said of women with child, and in childbed and after their delivery’ and ‘thanksgivings for women after deliverance of child’. The recitation of prayers and charms empowered a labouring woman and her gossips with the belief that they took part of the responsibility for healing upon themselves. Active chanting provided a rhythm for contractions and untied those involved. The use of repetition, alliteration and Latin gave them a mystic feel, an ‘otherness’, and allowed some authority of the masculine church to enter the female birthing chamber. It helped extend religious blessing to a mother at a time when she was considered in danger from supernatural influences. One prayer included by Bentley stressed the expectation of joy an heir would bring:
A woman, when she travaileth, hath sorrow, for her hour has come; but when she is delivered of the child, she thinketh no more of the anguish, for joy that man is born onto the world. I beseech thee therefore, in the dangerous time of my travail, grant me speedie delivery and joyful holding of my child.14
Finally, Catherine was to have ‘joyful holding’ of her child, although that child would be a girl, rather than the long hoped-for boy. The court spent Christmas 1515 at Eltham, watching comedies and pageants, dancing and feasting in the impressive great hall. Changes already made to the palace by Henry VII included the addition of tiled floors and glass windows; the royal lodgings stood in a separate donjon, giving them a degree of privacy. It was here that Catherine retired soon after the New Year celebrations to await the arrival of her child. Once again, she would have used her holy relics: images, icons and the girdle of the Virgin as well as the usual material and medicinal comforts available to a queen. A Doctor Vittoria was afterwards rewarded for having assisted at the birth, which proved difficult: was this the first example of a hands-on male midwife, or was his support given at a distance? Tantalisingly, the records do not specify and only the Spanish papers record that in October, Henry requested the presence of physician and ‘most distinguished doctor’, Hernando Lopez, who may have advised the queen during her pregnancy. Male advice may have been in favour of a more active labour. An early seventeenth-century childbirth manual written by Jacques Guillemeau, surgeon to Henri VI of France, advised that until the final push, the queen was better off walking about, to alleviate the boredom of a long travail, only taking to her bed at the end. She should lie flat on her back with a pillow under her hips, on a little pallet bed with a block of wood at the feet, against which she could push. To keep up her strength, she could take some broth or the yolk of an egg with some butter, or a sort of spiced alcoholic porridge, while her hands should be held by friends, so that she might ‘clinch’ them. The midwife should encourage her to hold in her breath and strain downwards ‘as though she woulde go to the stoole’, while the womb laboured to deliver its burden.15 Whether Catherine’s women were as explicit as this is uncertain. She had no family to stand by her at such a time; her sister-in-law Mary, now returned to England as Duchess of Suffolk, was herself heavily pregnant and would give birth the following month. In her absence, Catherine’s most trusted ladies-in-waiting must have again performed the necessary offices.
At four in the morning of 18 February, Catherine produced her only surviving child, a daughter named Mary. She would have been wrapped in blankets at once, especially at that time of year and brought close to the fire, with her eyes covered so as not to expose her to sudden light. Her tiny body would be anointed and dried, then she would have been given a little wine and sugar, only the ‘bigness of a pease’ (a pea) and a drop of treacle: winter babies were given treacle while summer arrivals had cordial water.16 The little girl was christened the following Wednesday: the court gate to the church door was hung with rich cloth of arras, the path gravelled and strewn afresh with rushes. At the church door, she met her godparents and received her name, before the procession headed inside to a church hung with needlework garnished with precious stones and pearls. Important members of the nobility carried the basin, taper, salt and chrism as Mary was born under a canopy to the font. Everyone must have been wondering whether this child would survive, but the little girl seemed healthy and the days turned into weeks and months. At last, Henry and Catherine could enjoy being parents.
As her newborn baby slept, Catherine lay back and began the process of recovery. For the surviving mother, it was essential that the placenta and lochia be delivered quickly, requiring a second ‘labour’. Retention of these cells could lead to severe complication and the size of the placenta could be a factor. In 1607, a doctor, Edward Ayre, used a potion of rhubarb, beaver’s stones and oil of juniper to assist its delivery, as had an old woman named Christiania, practising medicine in London in 1598.17 In cases of excess bleeding, cold compresses and ergot were administered and powders of aloe and frankincense applied to abdomen. French queens were given a special drink of wine, sweet almonds and syrup of maidenhair in order to soothe the throat – which had been strained by groaning during labour – and to bring on the purges, helping the delivery of the afterbirth. Another recipe included oil of Hypericum, rose oil and St John’s wort, bound with two eggs and applied to the thighs and legs with linen cloths or flax. A woman might be wrapped in the fleece of a newly shorn sheep to comfort and warm those parts which had been stretched. Difficult and protracted labours could leave even an experienced woman like Catherine vulnerable: vaginal tears incurred during delivery would most likely have been left to mend naturally and therefore left open to infection, although this process w
ould have been aided by the woman remaining in bed for her month. Survival and healing would have depended on the degree of tearing. Wounds that penetrated through muscle into the tissue, today classed as second and third degree tears, could prove fatal through loss of blood and infection. Puerperal fever, caused by bacteria spread on unwashed hands, peritonitis and septicaemia could build up over hours or days unnoticed. Contemporary remedies made a variety of suggestions, including the use of quartz crystals, among other ingredients.
To staunch bleeding:
Take powder of corroll [coral] mixed with gum Arabicke, putt this into water of Planten and drink itt colde, this will stop the bledinge at any time, at any place within the body or without.
For an open wound that will not leave akinge:
Egremony, stampe itt small and temper itt with leaf, till itt bewell moysted, then lay itt to the wound and itt shall cease akinge within a while. So will bugill and honny doe the same.18
Catherine, however, was recovering well, unlike her sister-in-law in Scotland. Reports had travelled south of the plight of Henry’s elder sister Margaret, whose remarriage following the death of James IV had alienated the pro-French party, who replaced her as regent of her young son, the future James V. Fleeing Scotland, heavily pregnant, she had taken refuge at Harbottle Castle, under Henry’s protection. Back in October 1515, she had been delivered of a premature daughter and four months later still lay ‘grievously ill’, suffering terrible pain in her right thigh, ‘the great joint, the seat of sciatica’, so that the doctors could do little to help: she urged Henry to send his physician north to tend her, in the belief that she would get well again if the pain would lessen. Her long confinement had ‘destroyed her appetite’ so that she could barely stomach the recommended invalid’s diet: ‘almond milk, broth, pottage, boiled or roast meat and jellies’.19 To compound her grief, whilst lying ill, she had learned of the death of her younger son by James, the twenty-month-old Alexander. On her recovery, she would travel south and seek refuge in London. Hearing of her terrible news, Catherine must have been doubly thankful for the arrival of her healthy daughter.
The little princess was two years old when her mother conceived for the final time. There were rumours of a pregnancy the following year but it was the spring of 1518 before Catherine suspected she was carrying another child: Henry confided the secret news to Wolsey that April. The dreaded sweating sickness had broken out in London so the royal couple stayed away from the capital, moving between country houses with a scaled-down court. Even that July, when she spent a day hunting, the pregnancy was not ‘ensured’ but only considered a ‘likelihood’, although this must have been around the time of her quickening if the baby was to have been full term that December. In July she was already showing, giving them ‘great hope and likelihood’ and orders were given for purple tissue to drape her bed and a crimson cloth of estate for the cradle. Venetian Ambassador Guistinian wrote to the Pope late in October that the queen was near her delivery, which was anxiously awaited, and prayed that she may have a son, so ‘that the King may be at liberty to embark in any great undertaking’.20 Without a male heir, any potential injury or accident Henry might suffer could cast the succession into turmoil. However, that November at Greenwich, a girl was born, again in the eighth month, as Guistinian claimed, to the ‘vexation’ of many, as the nation had ‘looked for a prince’. It was a final blow for Catherine; at almost thirty-three, her gynaecological history had taken its toll on her fertility and her menopause was only six years away. The couple continued to sleep together, in the hopes of a healthy son following young Mary but as time passed, it became increasingly obvious that the queen would not conceive again and her fortieth birthday inched closer. The age gap between the couple had never been more pronounced. Still in his early thirties, Henry’s prospects of an heir were less bleak. Shortly before Catherine’s last daughter was born and died, one of her maids of honour had become pregnant with his child. If Catherine could not provide him with a son to inherit his throne, he began to hope that another woman could.
5
Elizabeth Blount
& Mary Boleyn
1518–1526
Illegitimate Royals
While life or breath is in my brest,
My sovereign lord I shall love best.1
The above lines, rumoured to have been composed by Elizabeth Blount during her relationship with Henry VIII, point to an affair typical of the values of his early court. Entrenched in a world of pageantry and chivalric ritual, the king would have revelled in the poem’s description of him as the ‘chieftan of a warrior’ who had proved himself ‘with spear and sword at the barryoure’ as ‘hardy with the hardyest’. As king and lover, Henry was paradoxically the master and servant; the object of infatuation as well as the humble suitor of the European courtly love tradition. If the song is genuine, Elizabeth may have been a witness at one of the spectacular jousts staged during the early years of Henry’s reign, such as the one described by the Venetian Ambassador’s secretary in July 1517, at which time the affair had already been underway for several years. Sixty knights took part: forty wore cloth-of-gold, while a further twenty were dressed in white velvet and cloth of silver, their horses adorned with silver chain-work and ringing bells. The king and his gentlemen wore silver; he and the Duke of Suffolk tilted eight courses, ‘shivering’ their lances to the ‘great applause’ of the spectators. Two tents were erected for the spectators; one of cloth-of-gold and the other of silk, seating 50,000 people. The event lasted four hours and was punctuated by daring feats of horsemanship, after which, predictably, the king and Suffolk were awarded the honours. A magnificent feast followed, where Henry sat between Catherine and his sister Mary, flanked by Wolsey and the ‘handsomest ladies’ the court could offer.2 There is little doubt that Elizabeth Blount would have been classed in this category.
Elizabeth, or Bessie, Blount had arrived at Henry’s court as early as March 1512; a golden-haired, blue-eyed, lively, merry girl of twelve or fourteen. It was not long before she attracted attention with her ability to dance and compose songs, which were seen as the acme of accomplishments. Henry’s attention would not be held by a pretty face alone; romantically, he required a match for those chivalric skills so central to his early identity as (ironically) ‘Sir Loyal Heart’. In 1513, the young woman’s abilities had ensured her admittance among Catherine’s ladies, a privileged and sought-after position for which there was much competition among her contemporaries. Composition, song and dance, sewing, reading and even gambling were all enjoyed in the royal apartments, as well as religious studies and observances. Catherine’s household was not so sombre that she and her maids did not enjoy the regular feasting, dances, jousts, pageants and games of the early Tudor court but the queen prided herself on setting a high moral tone and the industrious occupation of her women. When Catherine’s back was turned, however, the flirtatious and incestuous hot-house of the Tudor court encouraged love affairs and secret liaisons to flourish. Male courtiers would have been aware of the arrival of a new, pretty face. Although Bessie may have had family recommendations and already been turning heads, noble birth and good looks alone were not enough to guarantee such attention. Her early success indicates that she must have been an exceptional young woman. By the following Christmas, the king would have certainly been aware of her at Greenwich, dressed for a pageant in blue velvet, gold cap and mask as she played the role of a woman of Savoy, in need of his rescue. As she danced in the candlelight, graceful and accomplished, with her typically English good looks, she would have appeared a perfect physical match for the handsome athletic twenty-three-year-old king. Even the year age gap would not have been considered a barrier. It was not unheard of for young girls to be married, like Margaret Beaufort, or even, to become sexually active, as with Catherine Howard; the usual age of female consent was given as fourteen, and twelve for boys. With the five-year gap between Henry and Catherine appearing to widen each year, there were plenty of beautif
ul young ladies to divert him during the queen’s pregnancies. At Christmas 1514, as she recovered from losing her fourth child, Catherine enjoyed the entertainment so much that she ordered a repeat performance in her private chambers, where Bessie was partnered by the king. By this point they may have already become lovers.
