In Bed with the Tudors: The Sex Lives of a Dynasty from Elizabeth of York to Elizabeth I (11 page)

The pair had been quietly married at Greenwich less than two weeks before, on 11 June. The palace had undergone significant change since Henry’s birth there, as his father had undertaken a huge programme of rebuilding, between 1498 and 1504, resulting in a red-brick Burgundian-style complex around three great courtyards. The service itself was conducted in one of the queen’s closets, possibly in the chapel royal: such closets were screened off from the body of the chapel to allow for privacy. What happened on their wedding day remains shrouded in secrecy. No record remains of the ceremonial proceedings, clothing or celebrations and certainly no formal, public bedding. With one exception, Henry was to be notoriously discreet about the arrangements of all his marriages. Only their words survive for posterity, prearranged a week in advance. Archbishop of Canterbury William Warham asked the king whether he would ‘fulfil the treaty of marriage concluded by your father … and the parents of the Princess of Wales … and, as the Pope has dispensed with this marriage, to take the Princess who is here present for your lawful wife?’
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Henry replied that he would. The contrast with Catherine’s first wedding, eight years before, could hardly have been more pronounced and perhaps this was Henry’s point. He wanted to distance himself from the medieval protocol and practices of his father. Days before the match, already at Greenwich, Catherine had officially renounced her dowry of 200,000 crowns in favour of Henry, drawing a line under the political and financial struggles of the past few years.

Various theories have been put forward to explain the sudden, secret marriage. Henry may have been fulfilling his dying father’s last wish, as he wrote to Margaret of Savoy, by maintaining the union with Spain or additionally, preventing her leaving the country with such a large sum of money, although she had hardly benefited from it. In July, Henry explained to Cardinal Sixtus de Ruvere that the ‘high virtues’ of the princess had influenced his decision and Catherine’s coronation had caused ‘incredible demonstrations of joy and enthusiasm’; to Ferdinand, he wrote that ‘if he were still free he would choose her in preference to all others’. Writing with hindsight, chronicler Edward Hall contradicts this and rewrites earlier events, suggesting the young king was wrongly urged to it by his counsellors, without true knowledge of the ‘word of God’ and that there were ‘murmurings’ against the marriage from the start. In fact, Henry’s true motives were probably less than mercenary. The new king was a romantic at heart. His notions of chivalry and romance may have been stirred by the plight of the impoverished yet beautiful young infanta whom his father had treated so badly: just like his renouncement of his father’s hated tax collectors Empson and Dudley, this may have been a belated moment of filial rebellion. Also, the match was convenient: the amorous new king wanted a wife and a suitable Spanish princess was on hand. Many indicators suggest he genuinely desired Catherine. The Pope had issued his dispensation and there were precedents of remarriage in families: two of Catherine’s sisters, Isabella and Maria, had, in turn, been married to the same man; the second match was flourishing and had produced many children. There was no reason to suspect the new royal pair would be less than fruitful.

The wedding night would have been spent in the five-storey royal apartment block, overlooking the surrounding gardens, orchards and river. The recent improvements of 1502–04 had been designed by Elizabeth of York, who had been very fond of the palace and included new walls, gardens, gallery, kitchen and tower, as well as fresh painting. Catherine would have been lodged in the queen’s chambers that formed an ‘L’ shape, at right angles to Henry’s, which sat parallel to the Thames. Provision for her household indicated that thirty-three women were employed in her service, comprising countesses, baronesses, knights’ wives and gentlewomen, including an Elizabeth Boleyn, Henry’s future mother-in-law, to advise and prepare her in her new role. A select few would have carefully dressed her and assisted her into bed to await her new husband, although the ceremonial aspects of her 1501 bedding; the music and voidee and blessing of the sheets with holy water may have been lacking. Leaving Catherine in the marital bed, her ladies tactfully withdrew. If, as she asserted with such conviction in later life, she had retained her virginity despite her union with Arthur, Catherine must have finally anticipated becoming a wife in the full sense, as her lusty young husband entered the chamber. The cloistered nature of the young king’s upbringing meant it was unlikely that Henry had had the opportunity for any sort of sexual experience yet it appears that the marriage was consummated quickly and fully. Whatever was lacking in experience was made up in enthusiasm; by later accounts, their physical relationship was a consistent success through the early years of their marriage. There was no recorded public display of blood-stained sheets the following morning, although this barbaric custom was becoming less practised and was not in keeping with the privacy and quietness of the ceremony. In spite of her years of penury, Catherine’s youth was a significant factor in her fertility and by the time of her coronation on midsummer’s day, the new queen may have already fallen pregnant.

The young couple were delighted that Catherine had conceived so promptly after the marriage. She had fulfilled the promise of her heraldic device, the Spanish pomegranate, an ancient image of abundance found in many Renaissance images of the Virgin and child. The couple’s obvious fecundity appeared to validate the royal union and by extension, the Tudor dynasty: there was no reason to doubt that the family would continue to expand, following the example of the previous generation. Elizabeth of York had come from a prolific family and Catherine’s siblings had proved themselves fertile. The pregnancy was announced in November 1509, five months after the marriage, around the time of her quickening. Henry eagerly ordered preparations for the cradle and nursery. Her father Ferdinand, who had lost three stillborn children and a daughter in childbirth, urged her to take especial care as it was her first; she should avoid all physical activity, as even writing could tire her. But all progressed well; the child moved in her womb, her dresses were unlaced and preparations were begun for the lying-in at Greenwich. Orders were given for a birthing or ‘groaning’ chair and a copper gilt bowl to receive the blood and placenta; the silver font was to be sent from Canterbury Cathedral; sheets, cushions and linen arrived by the cartload along with a predictable host of prophets, apothecaries and astrologers. In mid-January the royal couple arrived, amid much pomp and excitement, to await the delivery that March. However, at seven months, Catherine experienced ‘only a little pain in her knee’, before going into labour, according to her confessor Fray Diego. Other accounts list that she suffered such ‘agonising pains’ that she vowed to donate her headdress to the Spanish shrine of St Peter the martyr. On 31 January, she was delivered of a stillborn girl. That was when the confusion began.

In spite of the miscarriage, the queen’s belly remained swollen, convincing her advisers that she had been expecting twins and was still carrying one remaining, viable foetus. Such a scenario was not impossible but seemed increasingly unlikely after the reappearance of Catherine’s intermittent periods. The swelling was probably the result of some infection or pseudocyesis, a phantom pregnancy, yet the couple’s gynaecological naivety and desire for an heir afforded them hope. Whatever Catherine’s personal doubts may have been, optimism and professional misdiagnosis helped convince the queen that she was, in fact, entering the final trimester of a pregnancy. Henry’s medical advisers at the time included a William Adderston and the ‘sage docteur’ John Chaunte, as well as an Anne Luke, who had nursed him in his infancy and may have been standing by to assist with the new arrival; earlier she had been awarded an annuity of £20 a year for life and was clearly a valued servant, so her advice would have been trusted. Catherine’s last public appearance was Shrove Tuesday; at the end of February the court moved to Greenwich and preparations were made for equipping the royal nursery. Henry ordered red cloth and ribbon, linen and Holland cloth to dress the Canterbury font for the child’s baptism and the whole court ritual of confinement went into motion, according to Margaret Beaufort’s Ordinances. The royal cradle of estate was re-lined with crimson cloth-of-gold and the pommels repainted to incorporate the queen’s coat of arms.

Catherine went into confinement in the first half of March, in a formal procession that ended in the voidee of wine and spices, prayers and blessings. The doors closed. Weeks passed. The ladies waited. Perhaps they tried certain remedies to bring on her long overdue labour: a woman in her ninth month might resort to drinking mixtures made from leek, ale and wine, rue and savin or she may pace up and down her chamber, in the hope that the motion would set off her contractions. For Catherine, nothing worked. When no child appeared and her bloated stomach began to deflate, the couple were deeply embarrassed and initially kept their failure a secret. It was a personal and political humiliation; the king’s councillors were ‘vexed’ and the news had to be delicately put to the nation and foreign ambassadors. Catherine’s ladies were blamed for misleading her, but worse, rumours began to circulate about her ability to bear children. Spanish Ambassador Luis Caroz believed her failure to conceive had been caused by irregular menstruation and advised the queen to change her diet. Catherine’s chancellor Fray Diego claimed that only the king, two Spanish women, her physician knew about it but as the weeks passed, the facts could not be denied: eventually she wrote to her father in May, stating she had just miscarried. Catherine was so embarrassed that she did not re-emerge into court life until the end of that month, at least ten weeks since her confinement.

Catherine’s letter to her father indicates her sexual naivety. Its details were only recently made known, as Spanish archivists hid them from Victorian researchers, keen to preserve the queen’s image. Some modern historians have interpreted this as a straightforward act of deception on her part, whilst others have seen it as proof of her extreme innocence. To suggest she planned the whole process, deceived the court, kingdom and her husband is probably to accredit her with a sophistication and Machiavellianism far beyond her years and experience, also it denies the serious embarrassment she felt as a result of the mistake becoming known, to the extent that she removed herself from the public eye for an additional month. At worst, Catherine told her father a lie by omission, when she only confessed to her miscarriage four months after the event: ‘because it was considered here an ill omen’.
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It may seem incredible to a reader in the modern age that such basic mistakes could occur, but to a sexually inexperienced Tudor couple, desirous of a child, the workings and anatomy of the female body could give rise to misunderstanding. The subjective and imprecise nature of gynaecological understanding meant that doctors, physicians and midwives, often in conflict and unregulated, could join with astrologers, prophets and astronomers to diagnose and predict exactly what a royal couple wanted to hear. It was an easy matter to tell a king he was expecting a son; less easy to inform him he was mistaken. Even if some had suspected the truth, it would have been a brave doctor who would have dared contradict the couple. Given the difficulties of diagnosis, many other such mistakes must have been regularly made. By 1612, a French royal doctor wrote that there was nothing so ridiculous as to assure a woman she was with child when her stomach was actually bloated with water or wind, but this advice came a century too late for Catherine. In the light of what happened with her first pregnancy, Henry’s personal interest in medicine and the degree of controversy that already surrounded the female secrecy of the birth chamber, it is unsurprising that the king took steps to regulate the industry, resulting in the establishment of the all-male Royal College of Physicians in 1518. Female specialists would remain unregulated for another fifty years.

No doubt Catherine would have had a number of knowledgeable, high-ranking women at her bedside, yet they would not necessarily have practised as midwives. The word derives from an Anglo-Saxon term meaning ‘with-woman’, like the Latin
obstetrix
, literally, a ‘woman who stood before’. Historically, the reception of midwives and medical women has varied, with some societies and civilisations welcoming their abilities and supporting their practice, while others treating them with suspicion. Notable among the success stories are the second-century Greco-Roman Aspasia, whose foreign status allowed her a degree of freedom; the eleventh-century Trotula of Salerno, author of a gynaecological text,
De Mulierum Passionibus
; Cecilia of Oxford, Surgeon to Philippa, wife of Edward III and Jacobina Felice, an Italian Jewess practising in Paris in the 1320s. Even in the most tolerant climates, medical women were often considered suspect; Felice won her right to continue working after the testimonials of leading noblemen overturned objections by the Paris Faculty of Medicine, who had previously denied her a license. Hyginus’
Fables
, transcribed in 1535, told of an Athenian woman named Agnodice who practised medicine disguised as a man, until jealous competitors accused her of seducing her patients, whereupon she disclosed her secret. She was condemned to death for her law-breaking but was saved by the testimonials of women she had assisted, bringing about a change in the law.
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Whatever era they practised in, certain qualities were desirable in a woman attending a birth. Frenchman Jacques Guillemeau’s 1612 ‘Happy Delivery of Women’, stated that a midwife should be of middle age, not too young or old, not diseased or deformed, neat in appearance with little hands and nails cut short; she must not wear rings or bracelets when at work. In manner, she should be cheerful, strong, merry, ‘painfull’ (taking pains) and accustomed to labour, well able to spend two or three nights watching with an expectant woman. Her qualities must include patience, politeness and gentleness: she should respect nature and work with it and not be proud, nor a blabber and should not report anything she may see or hear in the birth chamber, excepting in the case of sexual and moral transgressions. This was particularly important in the case of queens and the royal succession.