In Bed with the Tudors: The Sex Lives of a Dynasty from Elizabeth of York to Elizabeth I (3 page)

Once the marriage ceremony was concluded, the couple processed the short distance from Westminster Abbey to the Palace. Founded by Edward the Confessor, it was close to, but not within, the city of London, then much smaller than today and centred around the modern ‘square mile’. Subsequent kings had extended and enlarged the site; in the twelfth century, the Exchequer and Treasury had been incorporated, combining the king’s official residence with the administrative heart of the country. For Elizabeth, it was familiar territory; she had been born there and would have spent a large portion of her childhood in the palace. Until it was destroyed in a fire in 1513, Westminster was the most frequently used and expensive of the Crown’s establishments, the only one of Henry’s many possessions to be referred to as a ‘palace’. The huge Norman Great Hall, the largest in Europe, was often considered too large and impractical for use, with the smaller twelfth-century White Hall being more frequently in use and directly adjoining the king’s private chambers. However, it is not impossible that for a royal wedding feast, the vast scale of the former, with its 6-foot-thick walls, may have been considered more suitable: a map of 1520 shows it to have been about four times the size of the White Hall. One surviving plan for Henry’s succession describes the ceremonious procession from Abbey to Palace, with the king followed by his bishops and chamberlain, cardinals, lords, Knights of the Bath, nobles, heralds, officers, trumpeters and minstrels. Upon arrival, he retired to his chamber, before ‘when he had pleasur sumwhat rested hym, in the same estate, with those nobles, he may retourne in to the said hall, ther royally to be serued as is according to the fest’.
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In January 1486, Henry and Elizabeth would have processed in state, surrounded by their witnesses, the short distance that took them down towards the river and into the palace, where they paused for a brief respite, perhaps a rest and change of clothes, before entering the Hall for their wedding banquet. Traditionally called a ‘wedding breakfast’, in pre-Reformation days, this would literally break the fast of the bride and groom: sometimes it referred to the Mass itself and the wine and spices served immediately afterwards. In this Catholic era, no one would receive the sacrament unless they had fasted all day, so the ‘break-fast’ might equally relate to afternoon or evening.

Every aspect of the celebratory meal would have been sumptuous and splendid. The preparation and service of food was a highly-skilled process, employing an army of specialist staff in Westminster’s kitchens and creating further opportunities to demonstrate the new regime’s power and wealth. Strict protocol on seating and service were followed; the tables set with damask cloth, scattered with flowers and herbs and set with the best cutlery and plate, surrounding the ceremonial silver and symbolic
nef
, the usually ship-shaped vessel carrying salt or spices. Such pieces were intended to mark status; seating positions ‘above’ the
nef
were infinitely preferable to those below and nobles may have brought their own impressive utensils to reinforce their rank against that of their neighbours. One surviving set of Henry VIII’s knives were set with a multitude of precious gems and drinking vessels were of silver and gold. Carvers, sewers (serving drinks), cupbearers, pantlers (bread bearer), ewerers (linen and hand-washing) and waiters were choreographed by the Master of the Hall, prominently placed to announce their arrival. The food was offered first to the king and queen, after having been tasted to ensure it contained no poison; it can hardly have been more than tepid as it approached the end of its long journey but presentation was almost more important than taste. Like their clothing, the feast was an important signal of their status. The dishes chosen for a wedding table would have combined the best ingredients with colourful and inventive display.

Attached to the late fourteenth-century cookbook the
Forme of Cury
, a feast menu of three courses suggests a list of dishes comparable to that of the 1486 wedding banquet. Among the richest delicacies were larded boar’s heads, baked teals, pheasants and curlew, partridge and lark, duck and rabbit, almond and chicken pottage in white wine and saffron, pork and cheese tarts with ground figs and pastry points, stuffed chicken and mawmenny, a pottage of shredded pheasant with fried pine nuts and dates, coloured red with sandalwood. All was washed down with spiced wine sweetened with honey, ginger and saffron, thickened with flour and egg yolk. Each course was followed by a subtlety; a fabulous allegorical creation, sculpted out of marchpane (marzipan) or spun sugar and painted or covered in gold leaf. Subtleties might take the forms of crowned birds or beasts, castles, battles, religious scenes or ships, designed to be showcases for a master artisan’s skill and the king’s purse. In 1487, the first course alone of Elizabeth’s coronation feast comprised wild boar, deer, swan, pheasant, capon, crane, pike, broth, heron, kid, lampreys and rabbit, all heavily spiced, in sauces or gelatin, served with raisins and dates. This was followed by various sweet dishes containing baked cream, fruits, nuts, custard tarts and a subtlety. The first Tudor wedding feast must have been equally sumptuous. The existence of aphrodisiacs and association of culinary and sexual appetite had been long established; chestnuts, pistachios and pine nuts were used as folk remedies to excite the libido and the consumption of meat was considered beneficial for potential parents, likewise phallic-shaped foods like asparagus and those on which sexual puns could be made, like the ‘apricock’, which arrived in the 1520s. All these delicacies were a mere prelude to the intimate event that would follow: after a long afternoon of feasting and entertainment, husband and wife were ready for bed.

The formal bedding of a newly-wed couple was a matter of ritual and significance at all levels of society: even after a church service had been concluded, a marriage was not considered binding and could still be dissolved, until consummation had taken place. For royalty, the implications for sexual failure went beyond mere embarrassment, with consequences that could spark dynastic wars and political or religious change. With many aristocratic marriages arranged in their participants’ infancy, consummation was usually delayed until the onset of physical maturity, considered to be the age of twelve in girls, fourteen in boys. Henry’s own mother had delivered him at the age of thirteen but even at the time this was considered too young, as the resulting damage to her fertility proved. Although Henry and Elizabeth were well past this age, it is unlikely either had much sexual experience. Despite the upheavals of her childhood, Elizabeth had been closely guarded during her father’s reign; recent theories regarding her amorous intentions towards her uncle Richard, based on a dubiously interpreted letter by seventeenth-century historian George Buck, find little tangible evidence to support a physical relationship or romantic understanding between the two. A royal bride’s most powerful bargaining point was her virtue; as the mother of future heirs to the throne, her morals must be beyond reproach. It seems almost unthinkable that Elizabeth’s virginity was not intact before her first encounter with Henry. However, for a man approaching thirty, living a secular life, whose regal and marital ambitions had only recently been clarified, abstinence was far less likely. Henry’s exile in Brittany was concurrent with his sexual maturation and he would have had little reason to resist casual affairs; culturally, it may even have been expected. However, no reports of such behaviour survive. In the absence of evidence either way, it must remain within the realms of possibility.

Henry and Elizabeth most likely spent their wedding night in Westminster’s painted chamber, the Palace’s most luxurious apartment containing bed, fireplace and chapel, richly decorated as its name suggests. A 1520 map of London shows a complex of smaller buildings overlooking narrow gardens leading to the river, with a view over to Lambeth Palace and the surrounding marshes. Two visiting fourteenth-century monks recorded that on the chamber’s walls ‘all the warlike stories of the Bible are painted with wonderful skill’ and the bed’s canopy contained the famous image of the coronation of Edward the Confessor, attributed to Walter of Durham.
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This was habitually Henry’s chamber, dominated by a four poster bed that required preparation by ten attendants who would search the straw mattress with daggers to discover any potential dangers, before the ritual laying down of sheets, blankets and coverlets. Some truly sumptuous beds had been created long before then; perhaps that of Joane, Lady Bergavenny, in 1434, with its black and red silk hangings embroidered with silver woodbine, represented the sort of luxury Elizabeth and Henry would have enjoyed.
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As the ceremonial ‘bed of state’, the couple may have passed the night here, after which the queen would be established in her own chambers and afterwards visited there by her husband. They would not normally share a bed except for the occasions when intercourse took place. Wherever they slept, Henry and Elizabeth’s official marital bedding would have been an important stage of the day’s proceedings. The protocol followed on the wedding of Prince Arthur and Catherine of Aragon in 1501 gives some indication of the formalised, public nature of this most intimate aspect of their union. At around eight in the evening, the royal bride was escorted to her chamber by her ladies, undressed and put to bed; the groom followed, dressed only in his shirt, accompanied by his gentlemen, musicians, priests and bishops who pronounced their blessings before wine and spices were served. The void or voidee was a mixture of expensive sweet and sharp spices considered to have beneficial medicinal and digestive effects, as well as sweetening the breath, warming the constitution and engendering strength and courage. Almost a secular alternative to the Mass, it was an integral part of the marriage celebrations and would be intended to fortify bride and groom before their night together. Sometimes, before they left, onlookers required the naked legs of a couple to touch, in order to leave satisfied, as in the case of Princess Mary Rose, whose marriage to Louis XII of France in 1514 was considered consummated when her bare leg touched that of his proxy. Even as late as the seventeenth century, royal newly-weds could expect to be observed embracing and kissing before a group of onlookers. This served as a crude reminder that with the privileges of royalty came the loss of personal identity and autonomy over one’s body, the functions of which were of valid interest to the state.

To Elizabeth, in 1486, the room must have seemed initially crowded, overflowing with well-wishers, servants, statesmen and clergymen but eventually, the doors were closed and the couple were left alone. Although the doors were closed upon them, they may not have been free from eavesdroppers. Privacy was a rare luxury, even in the richest palace in the land. Medieval and Tudor architecture determined a degree of physical proximity that meant sex must have been a less sequestered business than it is today; rooms and beds were routinely shared, even among the aristocracy. Returning from Moscow in 1568, Thomas Randolph commented that the Muscovites ‘eat together’ but ‘lie apart’, unlike the English, implying a good deal of bed sharing. Servants notoriously accompanied their masters to the bedrooms of wives and mistresses and slept outside the door, on truckle beds on the floor or in antechambers, as in the case of Catherine of Aragon and her twelve-year-old serving boy Juan de Gamarra.
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Henry V is rumoured to have kept his steward and Chamberlain in the same room while he slept with his wife Catherine of Valois;
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one hopes her experiences with her second husband, Owen Tudor, were more intimate. Sometimes servants played key roles in the exposure of adultery or the dissolution of an unsuccessful match, as well as performing necessary practical duties. Also, it was an occasion when the monarch was at his most vulnerable and defenceless; given the recent decades of conflict and furtive assassination, a king in bed needed watchful eyes around him. On a practical level, thickly curtained beds afforded amorous couples some privacy whilst allowing unseen access to those bringing in provisions or building up fires. While it is unlikely that many couples were literally overlooked, brides could expect their dirty linen to be aired quite publicly the next morning: in 1469, the blood-stained bed sheets of Isabella of Castile had been proudly displayed as proof of her lost virginity, while, significantly, those of her impotent half-brother’s bride were not. Given the importance of royal consummation and the lengths taken to ensure it had taken place, there may have been eyes and ears at the keyholes in Westminster that January.

However, there is a chance the marriage may already have been consummated. Elizabeth’s first child arrived the following September, exactly eight months after the wedding, a time-frame which has given rise to much subsequent historical speculation. Assuming Prince Arthur was full-term, this would put his conception date around a month before the ceremony, in mid-December 1485. This was not unusual or impossible; after Bosworth, the couple had undergone a formal betrothal before witnesses and Henry had been zealous in the acquisition of Papal dispensations. Parliament had approved the match on 10 December 1485, suggesting consummation around that time, almost exactly nine months before the birth. A verbal promise of marriage or ‘handfasting’ could be enough to licence physical relations and Henry’s eagerness to secure his bride and father an heir may have led them to share a bed before the ceremony. Within the privacy of his mother’s Coldharbour house, this may have been easily achieved. Occasionally desire dictated a rapid consummation: Philip of Burgundy could not wait a week for his marriage to the beautiful Juana of Castile in 1496 and although this may not seem compatible with the supposed cold and careful reputation of Henry, it cannot be ruled out. The young, strong, healthy man of 1485, with years of abstinence and exile behind him, was still a long way from the miserly portrait of his widowhood, which has shaped many later interpretations. Perhaps his intention was to elicit divine blessing, as which, a speedy conception would have been received; perhaps his actions were dictated by sensitivity for his young bride for whom the wedding day and night would represent considerable pressure. Both possibilities are not incompatible. Contemporary belief stressed the necessity of female enjoyment in order for conception to take place. The female body, considered to be a poor shadow or imperfectly formed version of its male counterpart, could only conceive if orgasm took place, during which a female ‘seed’ was emitted to mix with that of the male. The public pressures of the wedding day may not have created a relaxed environment conducive to female conception; perhaps Henry was being strikingly modern in soliciting his virginal wife’s pleasure. Alternatively the little prince may have simply arrived early: Bacon certainly believed that Arthur was born ‘in the eighth month’ although he was ‘strong and able’. In either case, the nineteen-year-old bride must have conceived on the occasion of consummation or else very soon after, her ready fertility providing to king and country encouragement that God had blessed the union.