In Bed with the Tudors: The Sex Lives of a Dynasty from Elizabeth of York to Elizabeth I (34 page)

Towards the end of 1602, Elizabeth fell ill and retired to her personal chambers. In each of her palaces, sumptuous beds had been dressed with the richest fabrics, like the walnut frame delivered to her in 1581, with its cloth of silver and velvet, lined with Venetian gold, silver and silk; the headpiece made from Bruges crimson satin topped with six huge plumes of ostrich feathers sparkling with gold spangles. At the end, though, she eschewed all her beds and lay propped up on a pile of pillows on the floor, trying to delay the inevitable. It didn’t work. She died the following March, at the age of sixty-nine at Richmond. Exactly a century after the death of her grandmother and namesake, she was buried at Westminster Abbey. Her embalmed body in its lead coffin was carried downriver at night on board a boat ablaze with torches. A hearse, drawn by four horses and draped in black velvet, carried a coffin covered in purple, on which lay a life-size wax effigy of the queen dressed in her state robes and crown. Mourners lining the route to the abbey wept and wailed at the sight, pausing only to gasp at how lifelike her effigy was. At the altar, Archbishop Whitgift was waiting to perform the ceremony; almost a thousand mourners followed but one in particular was notably absent. En route to the capital were the new royal family; James, great grandson of Margaret Tudor, his wife Anne of Denmark and their current children, Henry, Elizabeth and Charles; the journey south was slow and they did not arrive until after the event. By then, the old queen had been interred alongside her sister but James did order a magnificent tomb to be built in her honour, designed by Maximilian Colt and completed in 1606.

Although Henry VIII died leaving three legitimate children who might be expected to marry and bear a host of heirs, no Tudor royal delivery took place after the arrival of Edward in 1537. Although predominantly it was the dynasty’s men who were the ones to win battles and reform national churches, female fertility shaped their dynasty. The question of succession was an inescapably pressing one right from the start. Henry VII needed to establish his line in the uncertain days after Bosworth, Henry VIII became a serial husband in the quest for a son, Edward VI died young, Mary was unable to conceive and Elizabeth chose not to. These factors shaped the course of over a century of English history. It was in the bedroom rather than the council chamber that the fate of the Tudors was determined.

For Tudor women, queen or commoner, giving birth was rarely a straightforward affair. Undoubtedly class was the most significant factor determining the nature of the experience and although it made richer women’s experiences more comfortable, it was still no guarantee against complications and death. Marriage could be very much a lottery; the nature of Tudor society meant that women were subject to the rule of their male relations, whether husbands, fathers or brothers. The quality of their lives, therefore, depended upon the characters and understanding of men they often had not chosen and although some did rebel, the repercussions for divorce, adultery, promiscuity and illegitimate birth were great. Women’s sexual lives were also at the dictate of men, denying them the ability to make individual and informed choices about the conception of children. Birth was dangerous and when things went wrong, medicine appeared to have less to offer than conventional wisdom or sympathetic magic. The era was also divided by religious reform; before the 1530s, a greater range of superstitious practices were permissible but the subsequent upheavals of the mid-Tudor era left many women politically and religiously uncertain, especially the illiterate. On the whole, culture-specific factors mean that sixteenth-century women’s reproductive lives were vastly different from those of their modern counterparts. Still, their aspirations for marriage and childbirth were not too dissimilar. Just like the twenty-first-century mother, they felt hope and fear, pain and elation: only an accident of time separates them.

1.
Modern statue of Edward IV from the exterior of Canterbury Cathedral.

2.
Tudor portrait of Edward IV, father of Elizabeth of York and grandfather of Henry VIII.

3.
Elizabeth Wydeville, wife of Edward IV. A companion Tudor portrait to 2. with the same rich black and gold colouring. A plain gold wedding band is visible on her left hand.

4.
Henry VIII and Henry VII, detail from the Whitehall mural of 1537, by Holbein.

5.
Modern statue of Henry VII, from the exterior of Canterbury Cathedral.

6.
Henry VII, the first Tudor king, in a portrait that perpetuates later interpretations of his miserliness. He holds a Lancastrian red rose in his right hand.

7.
Elizabeth of York, the white rose, whose marriage to Henry VII united warring factions and produced the Tudor line. She wears regal red velvet, gold and ermine.

8.
Margaret Tudor, eldest daughter of Henry VII and wife of James IV of France. Henry VIII excluded her from his will but her Stuart descendants inherited the throne in 1603.

9.
Mary Rose Tudor, younger daughter of Henry VII and Queen of France by her marriage to Louis XII. Grandmother of the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey.