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

richness and special ‘otherness’ of the Queen’s body: women across the country would prepare their chambers, or not, according to their differing social degrees. At the bottom of the scale, the poor, servants and beggar women would give birth in barns, church porches, at roadsides and in the houses of strangers. They could expect public intervention and debate concerning their bodies, their character, morals and relationships; they might be physically moved across parish boundaries to avoid expense or examined by midwives and civil officers to determine paternity and intention. Childbirth was everyone’s business.
    No Tudor birth was of greater significance than that of a future heir to the throne. With the dynasty in its infancy, the new regime’s survival could turn on Elizabeth’s performance in the lying-in chamber: she was literally delivering the future. The outcome of her pregnancy had a significance the Tudors believed was foretold in the stars. In 1490, Henry VII was presented with the translation of a work by thirteenth-century Italian astrologer Guido Bonatti, outlining the influence of the heavenly bodies at the exact moment of a child’s birth. The manuscript contains an illustration of a bare-breasted, newly delivered mother, lying in a bed hung with blue drapes and red patterned covers; the ground is depicted like grass and the stars overhead give a sense of the universality of the childbirth experience. The mother is placed at the centre of the world; a metaphor that held more than a degree of reality for England’s new queen. No doubt Henry was waiting nearby, briefly relegated to second place. In lodgings around the city, courtiers, doctors, astrologers, astronomers, courtiers, ambassadors, priests and prophets, nervously anticipated the all-important news. A successful delivery for mother and child was paramount; after that, all depended upon the infant’s health and strength. Arthur’s first few days would be crucial and his survival governed as much by luck as the mixture of superstition and custom that governed medicine at the time. The Tudors did not yet understand the circulation of the blood, let alone foetal development. Medical diagnosis was made in terms of the four humours, with female illnesses addressed by ‘balancing’ or purging the body: Elizabeth may even have been bled before giving birth, to remove ‘bad influences’, weakening her considerably at a time when she most needed her strength. Even her women, with all their wisdom and good intentions, perpetuated the myths and ignorance that could contribute to high infant and maternal mortality. At the very least, no one understood the need to wash their hands.
    As a symbolic ‘womb’ for the birth of the dynasty, Elizabeth’s little Winchester nucleus was entirely female in character. Closing the doors would exclude all men until after the child’s arrival, even the king and male doctors. She would be attended entirely by her ‘good sisters’ or ‘gossips’, who took over the usual daily ceremonies of service as well as specific maternity duties. Among the women gathered to perform this office in September 1486 were the two grandmothers; Margaret Beaufort and Elizabeth Wydeville, who had arranged the match, as well as Elizabeth’s sisters Anne and Cecily, whose youth would have limited their involvement. Seclusion also preserved the dignity and majesty of the queen in a society that venerated motherhood as the defining factor of a woman’s life; Elizabeth was labouring to secure the future of the realm whilst trying to maintain the decorum becoming to her status. Submission, regality and purity were the watchwords for a queen, an image etched in medieval culture by the pens, laws and expectations of men. The symbolic closing of the chamber doors was a deference to her femininity and status: no one would raise an eyebrow there if she were to succumb to the usual human passions during labour. It would not be fitting