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

by Amy Licence

  Beds were emotive and powerful. The inventoried goods of Bishop Fisher of Rochester, April 1534, included a bedstead with a mattress, a counterpoint of red cloth lined with canvas and a tester of old red velvet, whilst in another room stood a joined bedstead, a turned bedstead with bedding, bedstead with mattress, an old folding bed, bedstead and two mattresses; Fisher’s cook must have been a valued servant to have had her own feather bed and bolster. In her 1515 will, one Catherine Levynthorpe, a widow of Hatfield Kings, left to her son William and his wife Jane a feather bed with a bolster, pair of fustian blankets, red and yellow coverlet and two pillows; to her daughter Anne, she gave a feather bed and bolster with a counterpane and to a Cicely Thornehill, a mattress and bolster, a pair of flaxen sheets, pair of blankets, red and yellow counterpane.15 The 1520 inventory of Lord Darcy’s household accounts included thirty four beds and many more mattresses; his spectacular bed linen included separate tapestry counterpoints worked with the story of St George, three naked children in a chariot, lords and ladies, vines and grapes, biblical stories, legends, family names, coats of arms, organs and lions. The materials used included yellow silk lined with green buckram, green velvet and black satin, yellow and red sarcanet, tawny velvet and tinsel satin.16 Good quality bedding was so highly prized it was often the target of thieves. In 1583, John Seymer of Shalford was accused of breaking into the house of the widow Joan Fytche and stealing, among other items, two pairs of sheets worth 6s 8d and curtains, worth 3s, for a bed17 whilst in 1587, another felonious pair, labourers at Coggeshall, were found guilty of stealing a feather bed worth 3s 4d, a coverlet worth 2s, a pair of sheets worth 2s 6d and a bolster worth 2s.18 At the lowest end of the social scale, servants would sleep on simple pallets or truckle beds, often in the same room as their masters. Bedrooms, anterooms and passageways in Tudor palaces would have been full of gentlemen and maids of honour spending the night on duty, ever alert for potential dangers or royal commands.

  Anne went into confinement comparatively late on 26 August, the day of her arrival at Greenwich. This would have suggested to the court that she anticipated giving birth at the end of September, as the customary month dictated, implying she believed in a conception date around Christmas. However, she had scarcely been settled in when her labour began. On arrival, the midwife would have questioned her as to the nature of her pains and felt her womb to discover to what extent the child’s head had engaged. She may have anointed her hands with animal fat or herbal oils and examined the neck of the womb to establish her dilation or encourage the waters to break, had they not already done so. Anne did not lack female relations; possibly her mother and sister-in-law Jane were present as well as her ladies in waiting, although her sister Mary may still have been absent from court. Equally, the early arrival might have caught them by surprise. Hurrying to be by her side, Anne’s relations would have entered a rich, darkened chamber where pleasing scents were burned, such as ambergris, musk and civet, in the belief that they would soothe Anne during her labour, and the fire would have been maintained regularly to prevent the cold closing up her body. In the event, such preparations may have had a similar placebo effect to the clasping of religious artefacts, and represent a step closer to the rituals and practices of modern delivery rooms, often made more relaxing with candles, music and small homely comforts. It is possible that Anne would have still called upon the saints for assistance: St Felicitas was usually invoked to ensure the child was a boy, which she was well aware was Henry’s greatest wish. If she did, it was to no avail. A daughter was born after a straight-forward labour, about 3 o’clock on the afternoon of Sunday 7 September.

  Exploring the ‘what-ifs’ of history is always a cul-de-sac that lends itself better to fiction. However, in this case, the immense significance of the newborn’s gender, dictated purely by chance, was to have such an impact that the alternative scenario cannot help but provoke questions. How different the course of Tudor history may have been if Anne had borne a boy, not to mention the duration of her own life. The random allocation of genitals was, in this case, to irrevocably shape the future of a nation, as her parents were quickly aware. Chapuys reported that the arrival of a girl was ‘to the great regret’ of both and great ‘reproach of the physicians, astrologers, sorcerers and sorceresses who affirmed that it would be a male child’. Initially, Anne was determined to call her Mary, to supplant the existing princess; Chapuys even reported that was to be her name on the actual day of the Christening the following Wednesday but later corrected himself; the Venetian ambassador thought the name Elizabeth had been chosen in honour of their mothers, Elizabeth of York and Elizabeth Howard. Still, Anne had delivered a healthy child and survived, which was cause enough for gratitude. Celebratory bonfires were lit across the country and free wine flowed in London to the sound of ringing church bells. Three days later, the baby was carried in procession from the great hall at Greenwich along a carpet of green rushes, past Arras hangings, accompanied by 500 lit torches, to be christened at the church of observant friars. Henry had another legitimate heir; surely now sons would follow?

  Anne considered children a blessing; ‘the greatest consolation in the world’. According to one source, she was determined to breastfeed her daughter but had to give way to the pressure of her role. Instead, Elizabeth was set up in her own establishment at Hatfield. If this account is true, it shows Anne’s unconventionality; knowing the traditions of wet nursing for royal and aristocratic infants must have served as a reminder of the distance she had travelled in becoming queen. Noblewomen would not normally breastfeed, sending their babies instead to a wet-nurse and regaining their fertility sooner. Babies born to the nobility, aristocracy and royalty were quickly established with a wet-nurse, usually of good and healthy appearance, who had recently born a child of the same gender. It was thought that a child absorbed the nurses’s qualities through her milk, so careful attention was paid to character and social degree: also the wet-nurses’s food; her garlic and alcohol consumption was carefully monitored, with some serving aristocratic families receiving generous allowances. This allowed noble women’s fertility levels to return to normal more quickly and queens to resume their public role. It meant that the relationship between a royal parent and child was significantly less close than those established with their immediate carers. In this, as in so many aspects of her life, a queen’s personal feelings must have been set aside.

  Middle and lower class women were more likely to suckle their infants themselves. Whilst breastfeeding might come naturally, especially to an experienced mother, the feeding of first babies could be tricky and required the support and encouragement of women who had themselves been through the process. Folklore remedies had advice to offer the breastfeeding mother; she should wear a gold or steel chain to stop milk curdling and to aid her milk flow, should sip milk of a cow of a single colour, then spit it out into running water, swallow a mouthful of that water and recite a charm. Hemp and henbane were used to soothe sore breasts, while barley water and dried powdered earthworms were reputed to increase milk supply. Unchaste women were believed to have a decreased milk supply, making abstinence desirable, hence the contemporary disapproval of sex during breastfeeding. Receipt books drew on local herbs and ingredients accessible in a domestic context to make poultices and dressings:

  For a soare breste:

  Take mallowes and chopp them smale and seeth [boil] them tender in running water till the water be consumed so the hearbes doe not burne; put thereto a quantity of deare sewett [deer suet] or for want thereof sheeps sewett, take also a bottle of good ale dregs and a quarte of white wine, cromes [crumbs] of leaven bread made of wheat, then seethe altogether till it be thicke, so spread itt one a linen cloth and lay itt upon the breast, so hott as the patient may suffer itt, so dresse it every day twise.

  Take these following for a soare breast that is swollen:

  Take a handfull of mallowes, another of wormewood, seeth them in running water with a softe fyre, till thye bee ten
der, then take them from the water and coppe [chop] them upon a bourd mingled with boores [boar’s] grease to the quantity of half the hearbes and lay as much to the soare as need shall require.

  For vaines [veins] in womens breasts wherin is much heate with overmuch mylke which often happeneth after they be delivered:

  Take cleane clay without stones, mingle itt with vinegar and the yolk of an egge plaister like, so spread it upon a linen cloth to the soare breste, so let itt ly till itt bee dry, the remove itt and lay to another and so again if neede require.19

  Paradoxically it was the richest and poorest members of society who did not breastfeed; the children of servants were also put out to nurse in nearby villages, so they could resume their duties. When Marcy Dethecke’s servant Joan Bartholomew gave birth to an illegitimate child at Stanford-le-Hope in 1595, she paid 15 pence a week for it to be nursed at nearby Horndon-on-the-Hill.20 Christopher Tompson of London sought the help of a vicar in 1575 when attempting to place a male child of five or six weeks out to nurse, although the nurse was afraid to take the child for fear of the sickness in the city so the baby was then sent to Hertfordshire to be nursed temporarily and brought back a couple of months later when the sickness had subsided.21 Many died in infancy before returning to their parents. Deservedly or not, wet-nurses had a reputation for carelessness, for ‘overlaying’ or falling asleep whilst feeding and smothering their charges. Familiar accusations were those of drunkenness or infanticide. In the parish of Good Easter, Essex, the burial of Henry Coot, a nursling child from Chelmsford, was recorded on 18 April 1590 and that of Thomas Watt on 28 November 1596;22 the names of the high-born mothers and the village nurses are not listed. In the parish of St Mary Magdalene, Great Bursted, Essex, the burial was recorded of an unnamed nursling child in 1599 ‘being a man chylde of a saylors’ while ‘Dorrothe Person, a nurse child of London’ was buried at Chelmsford on 11 July 1550.23 Sometimes the decision to put a child out to nurse was made for its own protection. The notoriety of a Mary Webbe, recorded as having lived a ‘wicked life’, despite now repenting and willing to enter ‘honest service’, influenced Coggeshall parish to separate her from her newborn illegitimate child and put it out to nurse in 1580, for which the father, John Sawnder, was made to pay 16 pence a week.24 When a mother was unavailable, ill, poor, dissolute or deceased, the parish took charge of the infant’s nursing, drawing from what must have been a pool of suitable women: it was important though, that the child was supported at the location of its birth. Just as with labouring women, infants incurred expenses that drained the resources of smaller communities: in 1602, the Chelmsford assizes ruled that a child named Ruth must be returned to its birth parish of Copford, from whence it would be sent out to nurse at Aldham, placing the charge for its upkeep firmly in the Copford coffers.25 In many cases of illegitimacy, though, court records state that children were to remain and be nursed by their mothers, which alleviated the parish of additional expense.

  Conversely, other wet-nurses must have grown attached to their charges and experienced a considerable wrench when the time came to return them to their parents: in some cases, they provided better care than the mother could. A considerable industry of wet-nurses in regular employment must have existed, their reputation spread by word of mouth. John Dee’s diary records the payments given to those who cared for his children: a Nurse Darant was given 10s, a whole quarter’s wages in April 1580 for weaning the nine month old Arthur, while their daughter Katharine was sent home from Nurse Mapsley of Barnes, for fear of her maid’s sickness; in the interim she was suckled by Goodwife Benet before being sent on to Nurse Garret in Petersham. Another nurse they used for their son Rowland was also rewarded with extra money for the candles and soap26 intrinsic to her duties. By placing their child in the care of another woman, Tudor mothers may have distanced themselves a little from the inevitable losses of the first dangerous year of survival. It could be seen as prioritising maternal health and sexuality over the welfare of the child, although this is a more modern view and sixteenth-century parents would have considered they had made perfectly good arrangements for their offspring. If it survived, their child would be returned, weaned and more self-reliant than a helpless baby, ready to become the miniature adult of contemporary portraiture. Without this degree of natural contraceptive protection, noblewomen could also fall pregnant again more quickly.

  Anne appeared to conceive again only weeks after Elizabeth’s birth. That Christmas, her gift to Henry was a fertility symbol; a gold fountain flanked by three naked women whose nipples flowed with water; rumours of a new pregnancy were already circulating the court by the new year, reaching Chapuys by February.27 Two months later, orders were being given to the court goldsmith, Cornelius Hayes, for an elaborate silver cradle decorated with Tudor roses and precious stones; he had probably executed a similar design for Elizabeth in 1533, having received a part payment that June, of a considerable £300. Arrangements were also made for the provision of gold embroidered bedding and baby clothes made from cloth-of-gold. On 27 April, a George Taylor was able to write from Greenwich to Lady Lisle that the queen ‘hath a goodly belly, praying our Lord to send us a prince’28 and a planned trip to Calais that August was intended to take place after the birth, as Anne was ‘so farre gon with childe’;29 witnesses saw the queen making merry at Hampton Court as late as 26 June. A possible conception date in November would have led Anne to anticipate lying-in that August, so the pregnancy must have been considerably advanced by the summer. But nothing happened. There was no move to enter confinement, no baby arrived and the matter was mysteriously dropped. By September, rumours were circulating that she had never been pregnant at all. No official records were made of her lying-in or miscarriage, while unsubstantiated gossip hinted at the delivery of a premature son while the court was on progress at the end of June. It is possible that had Anne lost a child following a visible pregnancy; her enemies would have made much of the matter, even if it was handled with the utmost discretion. Although the king sounded confident when ordering the cradle in April, that summer’s silence suggests this was a false alarm. One modern suggestion that she was actually pregnant twice during this period, miscarrying in April and in the summer barely allows time for Anne to realise her condition.30 That September, Chapuys reported that she was ‘not to have a child after all’, which sounds more like a mistake than a miscarriage. Perhaps, like Catherine, she had experienced an infection or other symptoms of illness that were misinterpreted. Professor Dewhurst supports the theory of pseudocyesis or phantom pregnancy, with physical symptoms stemming from Anne’s desire to prove her fertility, as does Muriel St Clair Byrne, who identified a similar condition in Honor Lisle in 1536–37.31 It is unlikely the shame and disappointment of a miscarriage at eight months and the threat of king’s wrath would have been enough to silence the most vitriolic wagging tongues. It seems that a mistake had been made. For Henry, the situation felt alarmingly familiar.

  In Tudor times, a miscarriage was often called a shift, a slipping away or mischance, and was considered an act of God in the most literal sense; a judgement or punishment passed on the morality and sexual practices of the parents. It could be used to refer to premature stillbirth whilst today, it is a specific term used only to refer to the ‘expulsion of a foetus before twenty-eight weeks of pregnancy’.32 Physicians considered a miscarried child was either too weak, sickly or large or that the mother was either undernourished or had too much ‘fullness and moistness’. The danger signs were milk running out of the breasts or the nipples changing colour or looseness in the belly, back and groin pain; to prevent this, a woman must eat well and rest; occasionally she should be bled or purged, must be merry and not fret, and anoint her navel with mixture of red wine, roses, coral and cinnamon. Interestingly though, it was not until after the death of the final Tudor, Elizabeth, that patterns of miscarriages were observed as having some physiological connection. In 1612, Guillemeau wrote in The Happie Deliverie of Women; ‘those that hav
e been delivered once before their time, for the most part, they miscarry with the rest of their children about the same time’. Henry VIII may have indeed observed the start of a pattern repeating itself, as did the explanation he could not put aside. In his view, Anne’s failure to produce a son, just like Catherine’s, was a condemnation of his marriage by God.

  It is possible, as a few historians suggest, that Anne had a third pregnancy in the summer of 1535, which again ended in miscarriage, but consensus appears to support the idea that she did not conceive again until autumn 1535. The previous year had been difficult, with Henry’s attentions again straying to an unnamed lady whose loyalties lay with Catherine of Aragon and Mary, but by December 1534, Chapuys was forced to admit this affair was not serious and the royal pair were again reconciled. That summer, Anne accompanied Henry on his progress through the Severn Valley and Hampshire; in early September, they visited Wulfhall, home of the Seymours, and in late October when they returned to Windsor, she was pregnant; the royal pair were described by onlookers as being ‘merry’. At this time, Henry stopped being clean shaven and adopted a beard permanently; in the Tudor psyche this is an important indicator of sexual prowess, with facial hair being equated with the production of sperm and may have paralleled his desire to successfully father a male child. In the same month a John Horwode sent a ‘book of physicke for the queen’ via Thomas Cromwell, in hope of some financial recompense but it was unlikely to relate to her new condition. Chapuys wrote that Henry was still dominated by Anne, claiming she governed everything and he was unable to contradict her, yet this was again, an exaggeration, as his next claim that Henry was almost ‘utterly ruined’ suggests. In the same month, the Spanish Dr Ortiz cited Anne as saying that Princess Mary was her death and she was her’s, referring to Anne as the ‘wench’. Yet neither of these hostile sources knew what the queen was beginning to hope: that this time, she would bear a son and secure her own future. The mood that Christmas must have been one of optimism.