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

by Amy Licence

  Catherine’s promiscuous past must have been fairly typical of Tudor youth. It was common practice to place young people either in an apprenticeship or position of service in a large household. Often with scant regulation, prey to their fellows or masters, young women grew to maturity in environments where sexual opportunity was available and sometimes inescapable. Service did not necessarily denote low social class; often these were girls from good families who had fallen on hard times, like Catherine herself. Servants in particular were vulnerable to exploitation and censure, especially as the child’s father might be their master or a fellow servant in the same household, in whose interest it was to apportion blame elsewhere. In such cases it was important to ascertain exactly what had happened. Sometimes this was necessary to prevent an unwed mother feeling the full force of the law, especially when things went wrong during delivery. When spinster Margaret Hilles, servant to Bartholomew Skerne, gentleman, gave birth in his house at Pattiswick between ten and eleven at night on 26 January 1568, fifteen male jurors gave their oath that the child had been stillborn. Margaret had been ‘overcome with labour’12 in Skerne’s house, suggesting that this had not been her intended or desired place for lying-in, although it may have been her place of residence. This strongly suggests she was denied the traditional female preserve and assistance of a ritualised lying-in and her labour was a public affair, with all members of the household being informed of its progression at first hand. The extent of the privacy and support offered to servants in her position depended upon the good will of her master and those household members senior to her in age, experience and rank. Who was the father of Margaret’s child? Her body may have been the property of her master in every sense.

  Cases of servants labouring in master’s houses, beggars in fields and barns are sadly plentiful and the penalties for transgressing social codes were felt most heavily by the vulnerable. Their cases come to light most typically when unplanned pregnancy was the result. It was common for masters to dismiss pregnant workers or remove them from sight, perhaps to conceal their own guilt, like Margaret Grene of Fairstead, Essex, who was taken by her master over the county border into Suffolk in 1588 to give birth in anonymity.13 In the same year, Alse Mathewe of Essex lost her job for conceiving an unlawful child by a fellow servant and was forced to wander the countryside, begging and finally giving birth in Clare, Suffolk, attended by local women and midwives who tried to discover the child’s paternity. Mistresses could be more sympathetic, especially when there was no question of the master being implicated in the pregnancy. In the summer of 1591, Alice Perier’s mistress paid for her to travel to London to find the father of her unborn child. Alice stayed for a week at the White Horse by Bishopsgate, until she was ejected for being too great with child, then went into labour on the way to find new lodgings in Whitechapel. She delivered her son in the porch of St Botolph’s by Aldgate, where a few passing women took pity on her and carried her to the house of a Father Noswell, a water-bearer who lived in a nearby alley, where she remained for a month. On the advice of her mistress, Alice later abandoned the child, for which she did penance in a local church: what became of her son is unrecorded. A similar story is that of Mary Andros, who gave birth in 1599, whilst having left her employment to seek the child’s father. Unsupported and friendless, she had no choice but to lie down on the bare ground and be assisted by local women in an unfamiliar place.14 Such births cannot have been too infrequent, given the readiness of women to extend their help to a stranger, whose gender and travail overrode any other concerns.

  Catherine, though, famously stated that she knew how to ‘meddle’ with a man without conceiving a child. This implies a significant knowledge of birth control for one of her years, suggesting she had been informed early by the other women of her chamber. Undoubtedly among women of all classes, the usual methods of delaying conception were employed, such as withdrawal, the risky rhythm method and potions of herbs like rue. For new mothers, prolonged breastfeeding could also offer some protection. The parish registers of several Essex villages indicate that conceptions occurring after a birth happened on average between nine and twelve months later, consistent with breast feeding patterns among the lower classes. For young girls like Catherine, an ill-timed pregnancy might spoil their chances of a better marriage later on. In fact, Catherine was keen to distance herself from her ‘husband’ Dereham once a place at court had been secured for her. Superstition had plenty of contraceptive advice to offer: a hemlock plaster on the testicles could prevent pregnancy, as could the placing of a cockerel’s testicles under the bed. Sponges soaked in herbs or vinegar were used as barriers and apparently, some women went as far as to use wax to seal up the uterus! The first quondams, or condoms, made by glovers from linen or animal gut became available in the sixteenth century, named after the cowls worn by monks whose licentious behaviour was often cited as the reason for the Reformation. Early lambskin condoms were known as the Venus Glove. However, these would have been expensive and beyond the reach of most. In addition, certain times were prohibited for sexual activity. Sundays, Lent and saint’s days were debarred, although this was clearly not strictly followed as some churches insisted those indulging during that time must be denied communion or do public penance. Contemporary wisdom advised abstinence at the height of summer, as sexual activity overheated and dried the body, although the parish records show a conception cycle which suggests otherwise. More encounters took place in warmer weather, with young people taking advantage of greater degrees of privacy offered by the great outdoors, resulting in peaks in the birth rate the following spring.

  What is perhaps more surprising is that Catherine did not conceive whilst married to Henry. The rumours in July 1540 of her potential pregnancy proved to be just that. He had been disappointed four year before that Jane Seymour had not conceived sooner; now he was approaching fifty. After his recent claims to have been experiencing ‘twice nightly’ excretions to prove his ability, and despite lavishing Catherine with public physical affection, she gave no indication of being with child. This may have been embarrassing for the king who would not have liked the implication that he was ‘not a man like any other’ but it was not just a royal problem. Then, as now, some couples clearly found it easier to achieve conception than others. Baptismal records are inconclusive on this; some wives conceived before or very soon after the wedding, whilst others did not for several years. In the case of infertility, it would be unlikely for a yeoman, craftsman or labourer to be able to afford the advice of a doctor, even if that doctor had been able to help: medical diagnoses were based on the four humours; hot, cold, wet and dry and imbalances might be addressed by certain foods. Cheaper methods would be passed by oral tradition through the social network: a mixture of chestnuts, pistachios and pine nuts boiled down in sugar and ragwort was a recommended aphrodisiac. A mixture of rabbit’s blood, sheep urine, mare’s milk and mugwort were also reported to enhance fertility. Alternatively, large winged ants were mixed with the testicles of quail, bark oil and amber and applied to the member; failing that, a tourniquet to the left testicle or the sympathetically shaped Mandrake root was recommended. Bald’s ninth-century Leechbook suggested agrimony boiled in ewe’s milk would provoke an insufficiently virile man, whilst boiling the herb in Welsh beer would produce the opposite results.

  If herbal cures did not work, a variety of other methods were available to the childless couple. Superstition would encourage them both to urinate on a mixture of wheat and bran; if this became ‘foul’, the infertile partner was identified. A barren woman was invited to echo the reproductive capabilities of a rabbit by drinking a mixture made from that animal’s powdered womb; frigid or unresponsive women were to have the ‘grease of a goat’ rubbed on their private parts. Religion would encourage them to attend their local church, pray, undertake pilgrimage and be sprinkled with holy water. The Compendium Medicanae, a thirteenth-century tract by Gilbertus Anglicus, told them to uproot a large comfrey plant, followed by
a smaller one within three hours; they must recite the Lord’s Prayer three times whilst pacing, juice the plant and use this to write the prayer on a card, which they then wore about their necks during intercourse. For a girl, the woman should wear the card; for a boy, the man. Other incantations included the repetition of phrases like ‘Lord, wherefore are they increased’ and ‘rejoice, loose their chains O Lord’.15 Sympathetic magic was also used; one Oxfordshire couple named Phipps were denounced by the church in 1520 for keeping an empty cradle by their bed in the hopes that it would prompt conception.16 Infertile couples might also seek to use alchemy or astrology to help conceive a child. The position of the stars was held to be auspicious at conception and birth: if they could afford an alchemist’s fees, a couple may be given certain dates to avoid or rituals to follow. In Bury St Edmunds, a white bull festooned with garlands was led through the streets from its paddock home to the gates of the abbey: women who wished to conceive would accompany it, stroking its sides until reaching the shrine and offering prayers, again making the woman responsible for ensuring conception. The eleventh-century female doctor Trotula of Salerno was among the few to state that infertility might be equally attributed to men and women. She suggested a man drink a liquid whilst reciting the paternoster nine times. This would have hardly been an acceptable explanation for Henry.

  Obviously, Henry had to be regularly sharing Catherine’s bed in order for her to conceive. As the months passed and the summer of 1541 arrived, bringing the king’s fiftieth birthday, even she began to despair that she may never fall pregnant and thus ensure her position. Perhaps it was partly this fear that contributed to the commencement of an adulterous relationship almost under the king’s nose. In the full awareness of her predecessor’s fates, to smuggle her cousin Thomas Culpeper into her bedchamber at various locations on the royal progress was an act of extreme folly at the very least. Perhaps it was indeed the romantic, innocent liaison they portrayed, fuelled by intention rather than activity. There is a chance that the affair was not consummated in the physical sense at all and that a second of Henry’s wives met her death innocent of the charges of adultery. When a servant named John Lascelles came forward with information about the nightly activities of the Duchess of Norfolk’s charge, the king was horrified. Just as he had been mistaken over Anne of Cleves’ sexual experience, he had naively believed in his young wife’s virginity and she had not taken any steps to open his eyes. He had not insisted on any of the contemporary virginity trials, like the examination by a panel of matrons or the waving of a chicken wing over the abdomen. Once again, Henry found his initial impression of a woman did not match up to the reality. Whether or not she had cheated on him after their marriage, his disillusionment over Catherine’s past was enough; her days were numbered.

  It was incumbent upon a married man to acknowledge, as his own, any children born to his wife, so long as they were living together. However, Tudor men did not always take kindly to being ‘cuckolded’, especially when it came to the inheritance of money and property. One scandal diligently recorded by the parish clerk of Little Clacton was that of Thomasin Robwood. She had married a Walter Clarke on 15 November 1574, although later events proved that by this time she was already three months pregnant. The question of whether she had known and if she had communicated this to Clarke appears to be answered by the later naming of the ‘bastard’s’ father, Peter Tredgold, who is listed the previous year as a tailor in the village. Their daughter Prudence was born in May 1575, having been conceived in August 1574. Perhaps Clarke had finally realised the truth of his wife’s condition and worked out the maths or had gallantly offered her security and later changed his mind. No answers can be found to explain under what circumstances the conception take place but Thomasin and Walter did not go on to have any more children together.17 For Henry VIII, the all-important succession was dependent upon his wife’s fidelity; the possibility of an illegitimate child inheriting the throne was unthinkable. It was this suspicion that had fuelled the vehemence of his rejection of Anne Boleyn: now her cousin was trying to provide him with the ‘heir’ he needed, possibly with the assistance of another man! There may be the possibility that for the young teenager, romantically in love with Culpeper whilst married to an ageing, obese man, the question of the succession was not sufficient deterrent. At his examination, Culpeper insisted that they had merely talked, with the intention of infidelity but had never consummated their attraction: it was not enough to save his neck.

  The swiftness and severity of Henry’s reaction shows the depth of his sudden disillusionment with his beloved young ‘rose without a thorn’ as well as the blow to his ego. Catherine’s promiscuity, like her cousin Anne’s supposed behaviour, did not just pose a threat to the succession. Apart from making a fool of the king, it exposed him to the risk of venereal disease. That term was coined in 1527, although syphilis, known in England as the ‘French pox’ had been common in Europe since the fifteenth century, and other sexually transmitted diseases present in England for centuries. Syringes for injecting the mercury treatment directly into the urethra were discovered aboard the wreck of the Mary Rose, Henry’s flagship that sank in 1545. The spread and effects of such conditions was poorly understood, demonised and sometimes deliberately exploited. It sounds ridiculous to a modern audience that in 1529, Thomas Wolsey was accused of blowing in the king’s ear in an attempt to give him syphilis yet the overlap between infection, superstition and magic was strong. As far back as 1346, a royal proclamation stated that leprosy would ‘taint persons who are sound, both male and female’18 and a wide-spread fear that it could be spread through sexual contact contributed to the regulation of London prostitutes or ‘Winchester Geese’, after that Bishop’s role in licensing them. Women might attempt to cover the effects of the disease by applying asses’ milk or bean-flower water to the skin; some remedies called for the use of brimstone or dog turds. The city’s brothels were located almost out of sight and mind across the Thames in Southwark and Bankside, often closing during the plague and outbreaks of illness, such as the syphilis epidemic of 1504. Henry VIII had attempted to close them entirely in 1535, on the basis that they spread disease, a battle he wouldn’t achieve until 1546. Some commentators felt this had little impact, with the spread of prostitutes now less easy to regulate:

  The Stewes in England bore a beastly sway

  Till the eight Henry banish’d them away

  And since these common whore were quite put down

  A damned crue of private whores are grown

  So that the divill will be doing still

  Either with publique or with private ill.19

  Medieval recipe books carried a range of contemporary and ancient remedies against the effects of sexually transmitted diseases, some superstitious, some herbal. Gonorrhoea was a well-known condition, being treated with soothing remedies for ‘burning members’ (genitals), while women with the resulting discharge should soak a yarrow and lay it beneath their seat to take away the odour. ‘Loin ache’ could be soothed with mixtures of nettle, bettany, pennyroyal, groundsel and hound’s tooth diluted in wine. Pennyroyal, dill and sage were suggested for genital itching, while infused dock could treat swellings or else a patient could attach henbane roots to the thigh. For leprosy, still considered to be passed through sexual contact, drinking or bathing in the blood of virgins or children was recommended by the Ancient Greeks but even into the eighteenth century, dog blood was listed as an effective remedy. Some of these illnesses could result in infertility or interfere with the birth process. In 1513, Rosslin wrote that if the woman’s parts were affected with boils, ulcers or warts, a midwife should take advice from a doctor before the delivery; if unable, she should pour oil and fat into the vagina to make the delivery less painful and try to prevent miscarriage. The possibility of Catherine’s infidelity, which Henry was at first reluctant to believe, introduced the possibility of his own infection, fertility and mortality; all issues that were particularly close to his h
eart.

  The details of Catherine’s past were written in a letter left by Cranmer for Henry to find in the chapel at Hampton Court. She was accused of living ‘dissolutely’ and ‘using the unlawful company of Dereham’; in the words of Holinshed, they had been pre-contracted. His reaction was swift; the extent of his shock and grief surprising. After the incrimination of Manox and Dereham – who had done little wrong in fraternising with a willing teenager before she rose to become the king’s wife – the association of Catherine and Culpeper was uncovered. All were sent to their deaths; the men in December, Catherine in February 1542. The heads of Manox and Dereham remained on London Bridge until as late as 1546. The event afforded a small glimmer of hope for Anne of Cleves, whose brother petitioned Henry to accept her again as his wife, yet Henry was not prepared to re-enter that particular yoke.

  9

  Catherine Parr

  1543–1548

  The Virtuous Wife

  If they be women married … wear such apparel as becometh holiness and comely usage with soberness … love their children … be discreet, chaste, housewifely, good and obedient unto their husbands.1

  Catherine Parr, Henry’s sixth and final wife, is perhaps best known for her history of marriage to elderly husbands and the ageing Henry’s appreciation of her nursing skills. The king’s ill health is well known and various authors have pictured the devoted nurse drawing on her experience to administer to his aches and pains. In fact, neither of these statements are true. Henry had enough doctors. It would have been highly inappropriate for a woman like Catherine to perform this function, especially when what Henry really wanted was a woman to divert his attention and help him regain his youth; he would go to considerable lengths to prevent his wife from witnessing his worst episodes by barring her from his presence. Marriage to Catherine was for pleasure, not duty. However, the reverse was probably true for her. An intelligent and informed woman, she was already in love with another man when she became aware of the king’s preference for her and was forced to sacrifice personal interest and accept a dangerous and unwanted position at Henry’s side. Less well known is her status as a published author, a leading proponent of the Reformed faith and that she too, like Jane Seymour, died following complications arising in childbirth.