In Bed with the Tudors: The Sex Lives of a Dynasty from Elizabeth of York to Elizabeth I (21 page)

The ‘magnificent and gorgeous’ bed that awaited Anne was typical of those of Tudor monarchs yet they would not receive much use. A king or queen would often sleep on a simpler, smaller bed in a back room while such elaborate pieces of furniture were reserved for ceremonial or state occasions. Four-poster beds were a Tudor invention, often the largest and most expensive item in the house. They were constructed around solid wooden frames, carved and decorated, topped with an elaborate headboard and furnished with luxurious and colourful hangings and bedding. The mattress lay on bed strings, or rope, threaded from side to side, often saggy in the middle, necessitating constant tightening, which is the origin of the phrase to ‘sleep tight’. Six carvers worked for ten months on the walnut frame of Henry’s new bed at Whitehall in the early 1530s. The canopy and tester were made from panels of cloth of silver and gold, edged with purple velvet ribbon, embroidered with the royal arms, Tudor roses and the French
fleur-de-lys
. Five curtains hung round it, of purple and white taffeta edged with gold ribbon.
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He slept upon eight mattresses, which had previously been checked for daggers and sprinkled with holy water. Beds were an important sign of status and wealth, usually the largest and most expensive piece of furniture in a house; everyone from the monarchy down desired an impressive bed. Anne’s brother George slept on a soft feather mattress with down pillows, on a gilded bedstead draped in cloth-of-gold and white satin, with embellishments in tawny cloth-of-gold, fringed in white and yellow silk. Privacy was ensured by pulling closed the red and white damask curtains.
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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.
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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.
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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 6
s
8
d
and curtains, worth 3
s
, for a bed
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whilst in 1587, another felonious pair, labourers at Coggeshall, were found guilty of stealing a feather bed worth 3
s
4
d
, a coverlet worth 2
s
, a pair of sheets worth 2
s
6
d
and a bolster worth 2
s
.
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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 tender, 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.
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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.
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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.
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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;
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 10
s
, 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 soap
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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.