In Bed with the Tudors: The Sex Lives of a Dynasty from Elizabeth of York to Elizabeth I (13 page)

When the news was proclaimed, London went into celebration. Days of public rejoicing and partying followed, with bells ringing, wine flowing, cannons at the Tower booming and bonfires burning in the streets. Catherine lay-in for at least three weeks as custom dictated, and therefore did not attend the elaborate christening four days later, when the processional route to the chapel of the Observant Friars was newly gravelled, strewn with rushes and hung with arras. The child was wrapped warmly and carried in procession under a canopy with great ceremony to be anointed at the font. Expensive gifts were given to Elizabeth Poyntz, the wet-nurse, and the French king Louis XII, the child’s godfather, rewarded the midwife handsomely. Very quickly, the little prince was established as a separate being from his mother. His own large household contained a daily carver, sewer, usher, gentlemen of the chamber, chaplains, waiters, grooms, men of the counting house, bakehouse, pantry, buttery, cellar, kitchen hands, almoners and clerks: forty-four men were named in the inventory of his household, not including nurses, four cradle rockers and women, overseen by Elizabeth Denton. Yeomen oversaw the meals of his wet-nurse, testing each dish for poison, lest it be passed on to the child through her milk. Magnificent jousts, pageants, feasts and tournaments followed, on 12–13 February at Westminster. A special gallery was built for Catherine and her ladies to watch the proceedings; she was clearly up by then, churched, and had recovered enough to travel up from Richmond. No expense was spared; only the Field of Cloth of Gold would exceed it as a celebration during Henry’s reign. Elaborate pageants were played out before Catherine in the tilt-yard, as she sat in rich furs beside burning braziers to keep out the February cold. Henry famously took the role of Sir Loyal Heart, wearing his wife’s initials embroidered everywhere. The day ended with feasting in the White Hall at Westminster, followed by music, dancing and celebrations. Yet the king had not forgotten to whom he owned his happiness. In contrast to the court festivities, Henry undertook a pilgrimage to Walsingham to give thanks to the Virgin Mary for the safe arrival of their son: finally God had favoured his marriage.

1511–1518

Saints, Pilgrimage & Infant Mortality

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.
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Soon after the arrival of Prince Henry, the king went on pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham. As devout Catholics, Catherine and Henry, in common with the majority of their subjects, believed in the healing and protective power of saintly intervention; donations, prayers, offerings and visits to their shrine were one way the Tudors might seek to influence their health, wealth and destinies. Walsingham was by far the most popular of many locations associated with fertility, pregnancy and childbirth, and formed the centre of the East Anglian cult of the Virgin Mary. It had been founded in 1061 by Richeldis de Faverches, widow of the Lord of the Manor of Walsingham, following three visions which had taken her, in spirit, to Nazareth and the house of Mary, at the time of her visitation by the angel Gabriel. The Norfolk chapel had apparently been miraculously constructed whilst Richeldis kept a vigil of prayer and came to be known as the English Nazareth. In 1150, a priory was constructed beside it and royal patronage increased its popularity to the extent that the value of the jewels and offerings before the shrine was so great by 1346 that it needed to be locked overnight. Walsingham was a favourite destination for Henry VIII in the first decades of his reign; after around 1520, he would stay at nearby Barsham manor and walk the two mile journey to the shrine barefoot before dedicating some rich token of his esteem: a jewel, money, or once, a gold circlet for the neck of the statue of Mary. Henry’s devotion to the cult was profound, in spite of the lengths he would later go to destroy its trappings; during these early years, he frequently visited shrines dedicated to her across the country, leaving notable offerings at our Lady in the Tower at Coventry in 1511, Ipswich in 1522, Prinknash in 1535 and Lincoln as late as 1541. With Catherine convalescing back in London, Henry rode enthusiastically to give thanks to God and ‘all the heavenly saints’, for blessing them with a son and heir.

The saints, especially Mary and others associated with childbirth, would have formed a significant element of a Catholic queen’s lying-in. Elizabeth of York’s chamber had contained a magnificent reliquary and among Catherine’s possessions were talismen and icons, from which she must have drawn strength during her labours. Included in a later list of artefacts that accompanied her on her travels were pictures of the Virgin Mary and her mother, St Anne; an ivory diptych depicting Mary and the infant Christ, and an image of a queen petitioning Our Lady and St Elizabeth, who had supposedly given birth to John the Baptist after her menopause.
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The stories of saints’ lives, or hagiographies, would have been accessible on some level, written or oral, in many Tudor communities and women of all classes would offer their prayers, promises and undertake pilgrimages for a range of fertility, gynaecological and child-bearing issues. Given the regular Catholic observation of saints’ days and instances of popular customs and literature on the topic, it is possible that most women carried some sort of mental list of which saint went with which ailment, or else they knew a woman who did.
The Golden Legend
, a compilation of saints’ lives by a thirteenth-century archbishop of Genoa, was translated into English by William Caxton in 1483 and reissued at least seven times before 1538, but a robust oral tradition would have kept such stories in circulation among the illiterate. The saints were not distant in pre-Reformation days; they were very real, active companions to daily life, influencing ritual and custom as well as determining fortunes for good or ill, rather like the fairy godmothers of children’s literature. The private, personal intimacy between supplicant and saint made them as relevant and real to everyday trials as conversations with friends and family. The image or icon of the saint gave them the necessary human face and their relics and associated locations were also charged with divine qualities: they were imbued with life and could transmit it to the sick and suffering. Nor did Mary have the monopoly on cures; there were hundreds of saints with whom the supplicant could establish direct communication, on almost every aspect of life, transcending temporal, class and physical boundaries. The fourteenth-century St Bride had brought a child back to life; Saint Anne, the mother of Mary, could intercede for infertile women and St Margaret of Antioch assisted those who were pregnant and labouring; her name was the most frequently mentioned in women’s wills in Norwich from the fourteenth century up to the Reformation and, at the height of her fame, over 200 churches nationally bore her dedication. St Clare could help heal the eyes, St Agatha soothed sore breasts, St Felicitas could ensure an unborn child was male, while the aptly named St Uncumber could rid a woman of an unwanted husband in exchange for a gift of oats. St Catherine’s chapel at Abbotsbury in Dorset attracted women requesting a husband and on St Agnes’ Eve young women would ask the saint to show them their future spouses in a dream. Communication with the saints was one way of levelling social inequality, as was the intermingling of travellers on pilgrimage.

By the advent of Henry VIII, the shrines dotted across the country, particularly those dedicated to the Virgin Mary, were particularly favoured by women at crucial stages of their reproductive lives. In 1443, Margaret Paston undertook a pilgrimage to Walsingham to supplicate Our Lady for a cure for her husband’s illness; during the pain of labour, Margaret of Hamilton vowed to visit Canterbury and give thanks for a safe delivery; the barren wife of William of Lincoln travelled to Canterbury and afterwards was fruitful, while one infertile woman supposedly gave birth to a piece of ‘dead flesh’ which turned into a child after prayers were offered to Our Lady. Across Europe, relics of Mary’s clothing, hair, milk, slippers, wedding ring and even nail clippings could be viewed. At a shrine in Thetford, it was reported that the Virgin had revived a deceased child and according to Benedict of Peterborough, St Thomas of Canterbury could transmute water into milk. Nor was pilgrimage a one-off; it formed a regular part of Catholic life. Even as late as 1538, five or six hundred pilgrims a day visited the shrine of St Asaph in Flintshire, and the shrine to Our Lady at King’s Lynn was so popular that a double staircase had to be installed to deal with the vast numbers of visitors. No doubt sufferers made repeat visits in the hope of easing pain; the panacea of the pilgrimage process may well have brought psychological and consequently, real physical relief. Some shrines were known for curative specialisms, usually determined by the saint to whom they were dedicated: two thirds of the visitors to that of Godric of Finchale near Durham and St Frideswide in Oxford were female. Promising health and wholesomeness in uncertain times, pilgrimage, with all its attendant psychological stages, lay at the heart of English devotional culture.

Pilgrimage was particularly important for women. It empowered them in a world where they could exercise little or no control over their fertility and were exposed to the very real possibility of death in childbirth. The devotional but active nature of pilgrimage – planning, often lengthy travel and absence from home – could be a comfort for those under pressure to conceive as well as a distraction from their suffering. Motivation could be found at all stages of the reproductive cycle: conception, safe pregnancy, quickening, delivery, avoidance of pain, to grow a healthy child, to expel a dead foetus, for milk supply, help with post-partum pain and a speedy recovery. Women experiencing deep joy following conception or delivery must have knelt to give thanks alongside those suffering the pains of loss and infertility. Particular centres catered to this ever-growing market, like the 1180 shrine to St Frideswide of Oxford, where women were cured of headaches and sleeplessness, as well as sexual ailments. Further afield, Rachel’s tomb on the road to Bethlehem was a regular stopping point for those asking for assistance in marriage, pregnancy and birth: as was often the case, ritualised physical contact was particularly important, with women adorning the tomb with red string, which was then worn as a fertility aid. Important shrines were the holding places of the holy relics loaned out to royal and aristocratic women in childbirth: the girdle used by Catherine of Aragon from Westminster was one of an army of holy items: Bath Abbey, Rievaulx, Newburg, York, Kelham, Haltemprise, Basedale, Bromholm and Thetford were among other places boasting girdles as well as combs, garments, images and ampullae of water or blood and bone fragments. Mary’s milk and part of her churching candle were venerated at Shelford, and Kaldham housed the finger of St Stephen, which labouring women liked to hold. In Burton-on-Trent, women leaned on the staff of St Modwena; at Grace Dieu Monialium, part of the tunic of St Francis was loaned out, as was the shirt of St Thomas at Derby. Badges brought back as souvenirs from the Marian shrines would have been used as charms against pain and suffering of all varieties and lent or bequeathed to daughters, sisters and friends in labour. Wax discs or Agnus Dei, badges and crosses could be clasped in the hand, while ribbons were tied about the wrist, thigh or waist of a labouring woman. The souvenirs of recent and long-remembered journeys must have been present in many bed chambers to comfort the labouring, dying, unhappy and unwell. Pilgrims did not just bring home souvenirs: they left offerings too. Displays of wealth were considered directly proportional to degrees of devotion, although humble offerings might realistically represent the same percentage of income as more ostentatious gifts; while poor women might leave valuable eggs, medicinal herbs and milk, noble and aristocratic ladies could endow shrines with riches, such as the jewels and twenty-pound crown of gold bequeathed by Isabel Beauchamp to Our Lady of Caversham in 1439. It must be significant that many of the traditional herbs offered before the virgin, including bunches of periwinkle, verbena and thyme to be blessed and kept throughout the year, also found their way into potions and balms for aiding reproduction and birth.

As Henry approached the shrine at Walsingham, he was entering a dazzling world. Only a year later, in 1512, the visiting Dutch humanist Erasmus described it as surrounded on all sides with gold, silver and gems, shining brilliantly. For the majority of the visitors, it must have been an intense, incomparable experience, with sculpture, painted glass and colourful altar pieces besides all the usual theatre and paraphernalia of an internationally renowned shrine. Somewhere among it all were the prized phials of what was claimed to be the Virgin’s milk. Mary’s statue was draped in fine silk set with precious stones, with a lace veil edged in pearls, gold and silver. The additional theatricality of blazing lights must have exaggerated the spectacle and associated these earthly offerings with metaphors of divine light and the revelation and salvation it promised. The piles of attendant jewels, gold and rich fabrics were a contemporary shorthand for spiritual wealth, a reassurance of the long-standing history and authenticity of this form of worship, as well as an indication of the saints’ rates of success as healers. A saint with many offerings suggested a high success rate. One contemporary description of the tomb of St Thomas in Canterbury Cathedral gives some idea of just how dazzling the experience must have been as the culmination of weeks, or even months, on the road. The ritual of approach, supplication and departure were a carefully controlled piece of theatre; behind an altar at the top of steps, a wooden canopy could be raised and lowered to reveal a stone plinth, through the open archway of which was revealed a tantalising but brief glimpse of St Thomas’ reliquary. This was a casket covered in gold plate, studded with gems, covered with gifts given by visiting kings, past and present. Describing it in 1512, Erasmus wrote, ‘the last valuable portion was of gold but every part glistened, shone and sparkled with rare and very large jewels, some of them larger than a goose’s egg.’
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Shrines themselves were a complex multi-sensory display of light, sound, statues, glass, wall painting, prayers, music, water, incense, procession and crowds. Many pilgrims approached on hands and knees, while silver bells tinkled, incense wafted and the prior indicated the precious gifts with a white wand. Surrounding taverns and inns would have resounded with the tales of successful interventions, like one Canterbury woman who spent a day and night in labour after the arm of her foetus swelled and would not be expelled despite all the midwives’ efforts; eventually the child turned and was born normally, through the intervention of St Thomas. Stories like this engendered hope in the pilgrims; everyone believed their own miracle was possible. For Henry and Catherine, God had given his seal of approval to their marriage and the new reign: all their hopes were centred on the tiny boy that lay at Richmond.