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Page 3 of 4
Page Three
Talking of sex and pregnancy... by Anne Colet
Were we? Well, yes, we were. Reading letters and other sources from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, I have been struck by a very relaxed attitude to these subjects. It is easy to be infected by Victorian prudery, and to imagine that "nice people" never talked about such things, certainly in mixed company, but this is not true. Sex and pregnancy were important markers in medieval times, when consummation was the binding aspect of marriage, and the ceremony could consist of no more than a private declaration between two people. Henry VIII's courtiers must have talked of little else, as he and his wives variously tried to prove who they had or had not slept with or been secretly promised to. In fact, "slept with" was not sufficient. Although Prince Arthur and Catherine of Aragon had been properly bedded with witnesses, and despite Arthur's boast next morning that he had "been this night in the midst of Spain", both Catherine and Henry maintained steadfastly that she had been a maid when he came to her.
Literally sleeping together was however the norm for most couples, unlike the Victorian ideal of separate bedrooms, and the letters we have are from couples for whom this was evidently a happy arrangement. Margaret Paston begs her husband to send for her, if he is going to be in London for long, "for I thynke long sen I lay in your armes". It was also acknowledged even in formal situations: many of Lord Lisle's correspondents from court ask to be recommended "unto my most singular good lady, your bedfellow". Sex was positively encouraged within marriage - "how should their matrimony bee other-wise a meanes of preventing whoredom?" The Boke of Husbandrye (this is husbandry for husbands, like adultery for adults) recommends that a wife should be "merry of cheer, well paced and easy to leap upon".
A wife should also of course be fertile, and it is surprising even now how much men were involved with pregnancy. This was obviously another subject for constant conjecture at court, with the King desperate for an heir, but the prospect of a child was announced just as joyfully by others, and all acquaintances would confidently predict a son, wishing the mother-to-be "a good, fortunate and a prosperous hour". Women wrote fondly to their husbands of their bulges: "Ye have left me such a remembrance that maketh me to think upon you both day and night when I would sleep" says Margaret Paston, and Catherine Parr, pregnant for the first time by her fourth husband, Lord Seymour, reports "It hath stirred these three days every morning and evening so that I trust when you come it will make you some pastime". And men wrote back with sympathy for the discomfort and uncertainties of pregnancy. John Husee, the Lisles' agent, writes to his mistress "If I thought it would not be painful I would that your Ladyship might have [2] goodly sons", and asks that she recommend him "to your little boy in your belly, the which I pray God to send into your arms". As medicine could do little for the pregnant woman, she relied very much on prayers and on charms and amulets, which friends would lend around. However, I would like to know what Honor Lisle's reaction was when (if!) she learnt of this letter to Lord Lisle from their neighbour, Sir John Wallop.
"And against my lady's lying-in I have sent her two bottles of waters meet for that purpose, and specially when she draweth nigh the churching time [the water] is restrynetyve and draweth together like a purse. Furthermore, when a woman's breasts be long, it raiseth them higher and rounder, which peradventure shall be good for some of your neighbours! As for my lady, needeth not."
How did he know??
References:
The Lisle Letters, edited by Muriel St Clare Byrne. Lord Lisle was the illegitimate son of Edward IV, and Governor of Calais from 1533 until 1537.
The Six Wives of Henry VIII, by Antonia Fraser
The Tudor Housewife, by Alison Sim
Women's Lives in Medieval Europe: a sourcebook, by Emilie Amt
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