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

by Amy Licence

  As Henry and his courtiers sneaked into the castle, Anne was watching a bullfight. Assailed by unknown masked men, she wisely and virtuously repelled one who tried to kiss her, cursing in German, the only language she knew. Factors influencing sexual attraction can be random and unpredictable; circumstances and accidents can cause initial interest to flourish or be stunted due to conditions beyond the control of those involved. Anne’s failings as a wife have traditionally been held to lie in her appearance and manners, yet something almost inexplicably subtle had prejudiced her chances right from the start. She had lost a game she was unaware she was playing. For Henry’s exacting requirements, ever difficult to satisfy as he aged, her non-conformity was fatal. He could not see her in any other role than that he had pre-cast for her. Optimistic chroniclers such as Holinshed, who reported how lovingly they addressed each other, were not present to witness this in person. With his personal rules of attraction so dependent upon a code of conduct that excluded his future wife even before their meeting, Henry’s disappointment, whilst a blow to his ego, was of his own making. Yet Henry was by no means the first ruler to pre-empt an official meeting with his future spouse: Henry VII had insisted that he and Arthur met Catherine of Aragon en route to London, even when they had been refused entry and she had tried to escape by retiring to bed; likewise James IV of Scotland had hurried to meet Margaret Tudor unexpectedly before their wedding. There were precedents for Henry’s actions yet none of these had involved the bridegroom arriving in disguise.

  The surprise had failed. Henry unmasked and Anne was made aware of her mistake, yet the damage was already done. After dining together, he departed to brood on her supposed unresponsiveness while she travelled on, unaware, through Dartford and Blackheath, arriving at Shooter’s Hill on 3 January. Here, the couple met a second time, more formally, with Anne dressed in impressive cloth of tissue of gold and a German headdress set full of Orient pearls, a coronet of black velvet and a necklace of sparkling stones. Perfumed fires were lit and all the trees and bushes were cut down; city dignitaries in furs and chains of gold lined her route towards the tents where she and Henry would dine. According to Hall’s chronicle, repeated by Holinshed, she had a most ‘amiable aspect and womanly behaviour’ whilst Henry embraced her ‘with most lovely countenance and princely behaviour’. This was intended to have been their first encounter. Dressed up to look her best, with the correct formalities and procedures in place, willing and responsive, Anne may have made a more favourable impression had Henry stuck to the original plan. Yet Henry’s mind was already made up: the more he saw her, the less he liked her. Using her appearance, manners and foreign costume as his first excuse, he started looking for ways out of the marriage even before it had been conducted. In this, he was different from many of his predecessors and European contemporaries. Traditionally, kings and queens had put aside personal feelings in order to honour matches that were diplomatic and usually international. The match of Henry’s parents had been conducted primarily for political advantage, as had that of his elder brother Arthur and sister Margaret: Henry himself had arranged his younger sister’s marriage to the ageing Louis XII of France. Such was the lot of royalty. With luck, the couple may be able to co-operate, with mutual respect and friendship developing; if love were to blossom, it was an unexpected but welcome bonus. Most foreign princes could not hope to escape this ritual, either to strengthen their own claim or reinforce important foreign ties. Francis I had married the daughter of his predecessor and cousin, Louis XII, on his accession while in 1533, Catherine de Medici had married Henri, Francis’ second son, in a notoriously loveless union. In rejecting Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII could cause an international scandal and alienate the powerful German states; in allowing his initial personal dislike to overcome all other concerns, he was adhering to romantic aspirations that were at odds with the nature of the match.

  Taken by surprise, Cromwell could not find his master a way out. The pre-contract between Anne and Anthony, Duke of Lorraine, was raised, although it had been arranged when she was below the age of consent and dissolved in 1535; the surprised Cleves ambassadors could not produce paperwork to prove this, although promised to deliver it imminently and Anne herself swore that the betrothal was now invalid. The net was closing in. Despite expressing his distaste, Henry was forced to go through with the ceremony on 6 January 1540. Thomas Cranmer officiated at the service in the queen’s closet at Placentia Palace, in what was to be Henry’s most public marriage. They exchanged vows and Henry placed on Anne’s finger a wedding ring engraved with the legend: ‘God send me well to keep’. The couple then processed into Greenwich Park where the dignitaries of the city were gathered to receive them. Seeing her for the first time, French ambassador Marillac described her as ‘tall, thin and of medium beauty and of very assured and resolute countenance’. Overestimating her age at around thirty, when she was in fact twenty-four, he wrote, ‘according to some who saw her close, is not so young as was expected nor so beautiful as everyone affirmed’ and that ‘the turn and vivacity of wit supplies the place of beauty.’6 Following the ceremonies, the couple spent their wedding night at Greenwich. In the 1530s, Henry had made considerable improvements to the old medieval palace, building tilt-yard towers and stables for jousting as well as a great wardrobe to contain the king’s ‘standing beddys’, with long presses for Arras, carpets, cushions and hangings: one such press measured 55 feet and seven ladders were required to manage the hanging of the huge tapestries.7 Greenwich also boasted a specially upholstered close stool for the king’s use and magnificently curtained beds, in one of which Henry would have visited Anne that night. The encounter itself cannot have been anything less than a disaster: Henry’s dislike was concealed from the court but made plain to his close servants. Famously stating that he liked her even less after their attempted union, he questioned her virginity because of the ‘flabby belly and breasts’ he took as signs of sexual experience. There can be no question though, of the sheltered princess’s innocence, even ignorance. Strictly supervised at the Cleves court, she later proved herself unaware of the processes of reproduction. Three of her ladies – Rutland, Rochford, and Edgecombe – deposed that upon questioning the queen, they had uncovered her naivety in believing that mere kisses were sufficient, whilst Lady Browne judged Anne to have ‘such fashion and manner of bringing up so gross that in her judgment the king should never heartily love her’.8

  In some cases where marriages had not been consummated, a bedroom trial might be instigated. This went back at least as far as the twelfth century, when Thomas of Chobham advised a physical examination of a man’s genitals by a panel of matrons who would then observe the couple in bed over a number of nights to see if the ‘member is always found useless and as if dead’. This could hardly constitute encouragement to perform! In Canterbury in 1292, twelve matrons found the member of Walter de Fonte to be ‘useless’ and berated him for not being ‘better able to serve and please’ his wife. In fifteenth-century York, a husband was submitted to such an ordeal before witnesses: his wife ‘exposed her naked breasts and with her hands warmed at the fire, she held and rubbed the penis and testicles of the said John … and stirred him up … to show his virility and potency (yet) the whole time aforesaid, the said penis was scarcely three inches long … without any increase or decrease’.9 There was little danger of Henry being forced to submit to such a trial.

  Henry’s repudiation of the unfortunate Anne was finalised that summer. The queen appears to have received little advice from those close to her as to how to try and please her husband or what to expect from him. Whilst she gradually learned the English language and ways and set aside her foreign clothes, she did not become any more attractive to Henry who could not overlook his initial dislike of her body or what he described as its strange odours. Women at the time, wishing to remain sweet-smelling in their heavy clothes, may have carried scented herbs and spices in bundles or pomanders about their person; nutmeg, lavender and mint were co
mmon. Trotula of Salerno recommended women to rub their breasts, nipples and genitals with a mixture of dried roses, cloves, nutmeg, laurel and galingale before sex. All forms of mint were strewn among clothing and bed sheets, for its scent as well as the ability to repel fleas, with pennyroyal a particular favourite. Crushed camomile was also used to scent laundry and flowers such as lavender and rose, and formed perfumes and waters to freshen the body. Sage, balm, liquorice and angelica were chewed to freshen the breath and whiten teeth. The mouth could also be cleaned with salt, rosemary or powdered cuttlefish administered on sticks or linen cloths, although the arrival and popularity of sugar did little to improve dental hygiene. A late fourteenth-century lyric predates Shakespeare in comparing a mistress’s charms to herbs and flowers:

  Your breath is sweeter than balm, sugar or licquorice

  And yourself as sweet as is the gillyflower

  Or any lavender seeds strewn in a coffer to smell.10

  Many contemporary receipt books included recipes for personal hygiene and appearance alongside those for illnesses and dishes for the table:

  To make a Sweete Smellinge Breath:

  Lett a man use to drinke verven (vervain) tempered with wine, itt drives away the Stinke of the Mouth and maketh thee a Sweete breathe.

  For the Same:

  Take Garden mynte, seeth them in Vineger, wash thy mouth therewith, then rubb thy gummes with powder of Minte.

  A Water to putt away the Redness of the Eyes:

  Take an ownce of Quick Brimstone, whyte Frankencense 2 drames, Mirra 2 drames, Camphora 2 drames, make all these in powder by themselves, then putt them in a Stillatory and take Rosewater 1 pint and therewith wash your face and you shall perceive your coullor to abate.

  Other personal problems experienced by the Tudors were the parasites that could infest bedding, clothing and rushes. Fleas found homes in clothing, particularly favouring the rich furs of the court. One solution was to seal the garment up in a closed bag, suffocating the pests, as the usual washing with lye did not help; rooms were scattered with alder leaves and slices of bread smeared with glue were left as traps. More feared were the lice, which could thrive in ‘sweat and foul odours’, necessitating the removal of the court at regular intervals so that the royal palaces could be cleaned. Fleas were inevitable but to be infested with lice carried definite social stigma. Removing vermin from hair and beards was an intimate act, performed by those close servants that had access to the royal person. Combs were an essential personal item. Most Tudor palaces were equipped with a bathroom of some sort; at Hampton Court, Henry’s Bayne Tower contained a round wooden bath which was lined with linen to prevent splinters. Sometimes the linen sheets were lifted to make a steam bath and hot stones were added, with cinnamon, mint, cumin or liquorice. Water was pumped underneath the Thames through a lead pipe from a spring three miles away; two large bronze taps delivered it either hot or cold. Such luxuries were beyond the reach of most, though, for whom washing was a less frequent, communal activity. London’s public baths or Southbank stews became increasingly associated with brothels due to their mixed bathing and were closed down by Henry in 1546. Even before this, the fear that water spread disease, especially syphilis, began to curtail even the most regular bathers, who rubbed their bodies with oil to close up the pores before indulging. Medicinal baths for the more fortunate might be liberally sprinkled with hollyhock, mallow, fennel and camomile. However, even had Anne resorted to such hygienic, herbal and floral remedies, she could not compete with the new apple of her romantic husband’s eye.

  Ironically, the establishment of a new queen’s household had brought fresh young female blood to the court and the king’s head had quickly been turned by a petite, plump teenager who could not have been much more different from Anne. The red-haired Catherine Howard, a Boleyn cousin, may have been aged between fifteen or twenty-two, depending on various sources, by the time she left the household of her step-grandmother to serve the new queen. That spring she and Henry became lovers; once he decided to free himself from Anne and marry her, events moved very swiftly; perhaps there was a possibility that she had fallen pregnant or that, at least, Henry believed she had. On 24 June the queen was commanded to leave court and retire to Richmond, with the promise that Henry would follow soon after. It was a promise he did not keep, citing fear of the plague, although according to at least one contemporary source the area was relatively safe that summer. A commission of the clergy was established to examine the marriage and depositions taken from various sources among those who had witnessed the king’s displeasure.

  The statements of court gentlemen give some indication of their access and proximity to the king as well as his expressions of dislike. Even had he held his tongue, it must have been impossible for him to keep the details of his sexual activities secret from his closest male attendants. The court was a hotbed of scandal. According to the Earl of Southampton, Henry had been displeased with Anne’s person from the start but said little: ‘when he saw her first, the king considered it was not time to dispraise her who had been so extolled by others, so waited and proceeded coldly.’ Eight days after the marriage, the Earl of Essex told Southampton that the queen was still a maid and the king had no affection for her; the marriage was still unconsummated at Easter by which time Henry had become Catherine Howard’s lover. Lord Russell, Lord Admiral, said that the king was ‘astonished and abashed when he first saw Anne’ and asked Russell ‘if he thought the woman so fair and of such beauty as report had been made of her’: he was ‘ashamed that men hath so praised her as they have done’. Sir Anthony Browne, Master of the Horse, had been present with Henry at the unfortunate Rochester meeting, where he had noticed on the king’s ‘countenance a discontentment and misliking of her person, and the King tarried not to speak with her twenty words’ and ‘deferred sending the presents that he had prepared for her’. Sir Thomas Hennage reinforced the sexual slurs Henry had already made: ‘he mistrusted the queen’s virginity, by reason of the looseness of her breasts and other tokens; and the marriage had never been consummated’, which was supported by Anthony Denny, gentleman of the king’s chambers and his secretary Thomas Wriothesley.

  Still, this was all Henry’s opinion; it was hardly equable with the fabrication of evidence that had brought down Anne Boleyn or the theological case Henry had compiled against Catherine. Yet, in the intervening years Henry had discovered he could bend the law to his inclination and had put aside two burdensome wives in order to follow his romantic desires. The queen’s behaviour could not be faulted and she found many admirers at court but Henry’s age and aversion, fuelled by the surrender of Catherine Howard, placed his imperative to father more children at the centre of the debate. He could not perform with Anne, although he was capable of the act, as testified by his physician Sir William Butts, who swore to the effect that Henry experienced two nightly ejaculations. He might also have prescribed wild purslane and blue iris to remedy this excessive ‘waste’. Literally, the precious royal seed was being spilt to no good effect. Therefore, Anne must step aside.11 When Anne was first informed of Henry’s intentions, she took the matter ‘heavily’ but after the initial surprise, perhaps mindful of the fates of her predecessors, declared to commission that she was ‘content always with your majesty’. Her swift recapitulation resulted in a generous settlement. She was to be given Hever Castle, Richmond Castle and other various houses and would thereafter be known as the king’s sister. The marriage was annulled on 9 July; Henry married Catherine Howard, his ‘rose without a thorn’ on 28 July.

  Catherine Howard is most famous – or infamous – for committing adultery whilst married to the king. It may be the case though, that the marriage itself was adulterous or bigamous, as according to practices of the time, she was technically someone else’s wife. Nor may she actually have had intercourse with anyone else after her marriage to Henry. Her behaviour prior to arriving at court gives a good indication of the casual sexual encounters that occurred between young
people living under the same roof. Unsupervised as a teenager, she had an early liaison with her music teacher Henry Manox, during which he came to have an intimate knowledge of her body whilst stopping short of full intercourse. This was due more to his lowly social status than her youth. Sharing a dormitory which was supposedly locked securely at night, Catherine found a way to entertain her new lover, Francis Dereham, whose status as a gentleman gained him access to her bed. While the women slept in the crowded chamber, Dereham and a friend crept in using a duplicate key and spent the night there in feasting and merrymaking. It is clear from the descriptions of the ‘panting and puffing’ as well as witness statements, that Catherine and Dereham had full sex on a number of occasions, in the belief that they would be married in the future, ‘hanging together by the belly like sparrows’; a bird that was considered especially lascivious. By calling each other man and wife, they had entered into a pre-contract or handfasting, which was as good as a ceremony in the eyes of the Church, thus legally invalidating Catherine’s union with Henry. Catherine’s later condemnation for adultery, therefore, had little basis in reality.