Fairy Tale Queens: Representations of Early Modern Queenship (6 page)

The broadcasting of official reports continued from an eager court circle. On November 9, Sir John Mason, Mary’s ambassador to Charles V, reported that the queen “will not confess the matter until it is proved to her face, but by others I understand, to my great joy and comfort, that her garments are very strait.”
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Mason’s comments are noteworthy because he acknowledges the news as secondhand—“by others I understand”—and because he emphasizes the queen’s own uncertainty. Mary’s initial skepticism and the collusion of “others” is significant: the queen’s cautious uncertainty belies the accusations of irrationality associated with false pregnancy; second, the extent to which Mary was persuaded, and perhaps even indulged, by those who surrounded her—doctors, ladies-in-waiting, and court officials—is a reminder that royal pregnancy was a communal enterprise.

By late November Mary herself was convinced. Renard wrote optimistically to Charles: “The Queen is veritably with child, for she has felt the babe, and there are other likely and customary symptoms, such as the state of her breasts.”
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On November 24 Mary met Cardinal Reginald Pole, whose return to England after several years of exile was emotionally stirring for the queen. Pole acknowledged Mary’s condition by echoing Gabriel’s announcement upon the Virgin Mary’s conception of Jesus: “Hail, thou art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed are thou among women.”
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Mary continued to be encouraged by those closest to her that her condition was a sign of divine sanction. On November 28 Mary’s pregnancy was publicly announced during a mass at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Numerous prayers were read, which focused on the hope of a good succession. Her chaplain, Dr. Weston, composed a special prayer for the occasion, asking, “So help her that in due season [she may] bring forth a child, in body beautiful and comely, in mind noble and valiant.”
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Another prayer, wishing that the queen may deliver a “male-child, well-favoured, and witty,” announces several hopes for the unborn heir: “Let him be found faithful as David... Let him be wise among Kings as the most wise Solomon. Let him be like Job, a simple and upright man.”
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The anaphora makes for a rhetorically stylish prayer, but the enumeration of attributes with which the eventual child will ideally be endowed is also reminiscent of the fairies’ catalogue of blessings at the christening of a fairy-tale child.

In addition to the special prayers, 
Te Deums
 were ordered to be sung throughout the entire country and ballads were published. One ballad exulted: “Now sing, now spring, our care is exiled/ Our virtuous queen is quickened with child.”
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The enthusiastic public response to the queen’s pregnancy was noted by John Foxe: “Of this child great talk began at this time to rise in every man’s mouth, with busy preparation, and much ado, especially amongst such as seemed in England to carry Spanish hearts in English bodies.”
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As Gelis pointed out, a royal pregnancy “involved the kingdom as a whole.”

With the pregnancy seeming more certain, official measures were taken to plan for the future. Given the high rate of maternal mortality in childbirth, contingency plans for the monarchy were necessary. In the event of Mary’s death and the child’s survival, it was important for Parliament to clarify Philip’s status. After much wrangling, the “final act ensured that should a child be born to Mary, and should her own death follow, sixteenth-century understandings of God’s law and English law about paternal rights ensured that Philip would become 
de facto
 ruler of England.”
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As the queen approached her confinement, her attendants tried to allay her fears about the impending childbirth. On April 1 the Venetian ambassador Michiel reported to the Doge that an older woman who had recently given birth to triplets was brought before Mary: “To comfort the Queen and give her heart and courage, three most beautiful infants were brought last week for Her Majesty to see, they having been born a few days previously at one birth, of a woman of low stature and great age like the Queen, and who, after the delivery, found herself strong and out of all danger, and the sight of this woman and her infants greatly rejoiced Her Majesty.”
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In mid-April, Mary and Philip retired to Hampton Court, which had been carefully readied for the queen’s lying-in. All the lavish rituals appropriate to high and particularly royal births were put in order: “About Whitsundtide, the time was thought to be nigh that this young master should come into the world, and that midwives, rockers, nurses, with the cradle and all, were prepared, and in a readiness... Among many other great preparations made for the queen’s deliverance of child, there was a cradle very sumptuously and gorgeously trimmed.”
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Catherine Mann explains that “in a culture that emphasized the importance of materiality, the ritual of childbirth was no exception and the quantity of goods and clothing required could be enormous.” Specific garments were made both for the mother and the child and the windows and doors of her private chamber were covered to create the “womb-like safety of a warm, darkened room.”
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In spite of the elaborate preparations, weeks went by with no signs of development. Mary’s doctors continued to maintain that she was pregnant but had merely miscalculated the date. There was such excitement over the impending birth that a false report erupted: “Suddenly, upon what cause or occasion it is uncertain, a certain vain rumour was blown in London of the prosperous deliverance of the queen, and the birth of the child; insomuch that the bells were rung, bonfires and processions made, not only in the city of London, and in most other parts of the realm, but also in the town of Antwerp.”
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Even in the midst of the widespread anticipation and public jubilation, there were skeptics, though Foxe claims that “divers were punished for saying the contrary.” Foxe describes a man from Berwich who commented on the public celebrations: “Here is a joyful triumph, but at length all will not prove worth a mess of potage.”
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The doubting man was correct and the rumors were eventually silenced. The commoner’s exposure of royal gullibility recalls another familiar fairy tale: “But the emperor has no clothes.”

In spite of the false alarm, many continued to affirm the pregnancy, though more reservations began to surface. On May 22, Gomez wrote to Charles’ secretary from Hampton Court, “I would have written to you as you asked me to do about the Queen’s giving birth if I had seen in her any sign of heaviness. These last days she has been walking all about the garden on foot, and she steps so well that it seems to me that there is no hope at all for this month. I asked Dr. Calagila what he thought about her Highness’s condition... He said it might happen any day now, for she had entered the month. But according to her count it would not be strange if her delivery were to be delayed until the 6th of June.”
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Gomez followed this with a letter on June 1: “The Queen’s deliverance keeps us all greatly exercised in our minds, although our doctors always said that the nine months are not up until 6 June. She began to feel some pains yesterday, but not enough to make her take to her bed.”
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When the postponed due date passed and still no child arrived, it became increasingly difficult to believe in the queen’s condition, but doubters were still reprimanded and there was no public acknowledgement of the failed pregnancy. Michiel reported on June 26, “So there is no one, either of the physicians, or of the women, or others, all having been deceived, who at present dare any longer form an opinion about it... Last week two gentlemen, of no ordinary repute, were imprisoned in the Tower on a charge, according to report, of having spoken about this delivery licentiously, in a tone unbecoming their rank.”
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Even at the end of July, Michiel wrote the doge that the royal doctors “and two or three of her Majesty’s most intimate and familiar female attendants, who see and handle her frequently, taking part in it and giving their opinion, held a formal consultation last week, and came, in fact, to the conclusion that they had deceived themselves about the conception by two, or perhaps by three, months, it being undeniable, and beyond a doubt, from many manifest signs, that the Queen is certainly pregnant, but not so far gone as was believed and published at the time.”
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It is not clear whether those attending the queen actually believed at this point in the pregnancy or only feared revealing the truth, but a web of communal misunderstanding and delusion emerges from these reports. A contemporary account reported that one of Mary’s closest attendants, “Mrs. Clarentius and divers others, as parasites about her, assured her to be with child, insomuch as the queen was fully so persuaded herself, being right desirous thereof...and hardly could she suffer any that would not say as she said, touching her being with child.”
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However, another of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting, Frideswide Strelly, had the courage to express her doubts about the pregnancy. When Mary was later forced to accept that the pregnancy was false, she thanked her honest servant: “Mrs. Frideswide Strelly, a good honorable woman of hers, would not yield to her desire and never told her an untruth...then when the uttermost time was come and the Queen thus deluded, she [said], ‘Ah Strelly, I see they all be flatterers and none true to me but thou,’ and then she was more in favor than ever she was before.”
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By the end of August the royal couple moved from Hampton Court on the pretext that the palace needed cleaning, but the issue of the queen’s pregnancy was quietly put to rest and Mary gradually resumed her official functions. Michiel wrote on August 5, “I was told several days ago on high authority, perceiving not only that her Majesty’s belly did not increase, but rather diminished, have come to the conclusion, although they have hitherto dissembled it, that the pregnancy will end in wind rather than in anything else.” Michiel added that many in Mary’s court circle still insisted on perpetuating the myth of the pregnancy “for the sake of keeping the populace in hope.”
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The story of Mary’s imaginary pregnancy has something of a fairy-tale ending, albeit not a conventional happily-ever-after affirmation. When Renard wrote to Charles on June 27, he noted that “The doctors and ladies were two months out of their reckoning, and there is now no appearance of the affair happening for another ten days.” But after worrying about the “calamitous” effects should Mary’s half-sister Elizabeth become heir to the throne, Renard concluded, “Some say that she is not with child at all, but that a suppositious child is going to be presented as hers, and that if a suitable one had been found this would already have been done.”
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Renard’s startling reference to “a suppositious child” and the phrase “if a suitable child had been found” suggests the possibility of a substitution, like the changeling child that populated numerous folk and fairy tales. Indeed, there were numerous rumors circulating of such a plot. David Loades claims that “there was an elaborate substitution plot masterminded from Spain,” whereas Judith Richards suggests that perhaps the tales “originated from a woman in the queen’s kitchen.”
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Rumors can emerge from multiple sites, but Foxe offers an even more detailed and local explanation: “One thing of mine own hearing and seeing, I cannot pass over unwitnessed: There came to me, whom I did both hear and see, one Isabel Malt...that she, being delivered of a man-child upon Whit Sunday in the morning, which was the 11th day of June, anno 1555, there came to her the lord North, and another lord to her unknown, dwelling then about Old Fish-street, demanding of her if she would part with her child, and would swear that she never knew nor had any such child: which if she would, her son (they said) should be well provided for, she should take no care of it...but she in no wise would let go her son.”
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Although it is difficult to confirm or deny these rumors in total or in part, the stories once again demonstrate the convergence of the fantastic fairy-tale world and the historical record. Moreover, that such a dangerous idea of bribing Isabel Malt or any woman in exchange for her baby was even circulating suggests how desperately the queen, her immediate circle, her subjects, and her political allies wished for an heir to the throne. This sequential account of the official—and unofficial—narrative of Mary’s false pregnancy is intended to emphasize that this condition could signal more than the hysterical longings and self-delusion of one woman. Particularly for a queen upon whose reproductive body so much depended, the false pregnancy also encompassed the complex and often contradictory participation of those who surrounded her.

The false or phantom pregnancy, now diagnosed as pseudo-cyesis, is often considered a largely psychological phenomenon, but medical experts also recognize it as a condition with attendant physical attributes.
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In the absence of the testing tools available today, the early modern woman would have found it more difficult to confirm a pregnancy. Cessation of menses, weight gain, and “quickening,” or sensation of fetal movement, were common indicators then as they are today. However, without our current means to verify these common symptoms, and given the intense pressure to bear children, the early modern woman’s phantom pregnancy should not so quickly be construed as a sign of psychological instability. Rather, the combined forces of public and private longing could lead women to misread certain physical symptoms as actual pregnancy and could even lead some people to entertain the possibility that another child could be “changed” into the succession.

In spite of the suffering and embarrassment that Mary’s prolonged false pregnancy caused, she again believed herself to be pregnant in January 1558. This time, the news was not publicly proclaimed and when Mary realized by April that she was not with child, the news was allowed to quietly disappear. It may seem odd that after the traumatic disappointment of the first failed pregnancy the experience would be repeated. Mary’s second false pregnancy could be read as a sign of increased desperation for an heir, but it could also be that she again experienced some of the same physical symptoms that had led her and those around her to believe that she had been pregnant the first time. Mary’s phantom pregnancies have generally diminished assessments of her character and queenship, but she was not alone in falsely believing herself to be pregnant. Lady Honor Lisle, wife of the governor of Calais, was another highborn woman who experienced a false pregnancy even though she had already successfully delivered several children, and thus presumably understood the physical manifestations of the pregnant state. In November 1536, Lady Lisle told her servant, John Husee, that she was pregnant with her eighth child, though her first with Lisle. She relied on Husee to procure all of the necessary furnishings for her lying-in; their detailed correspondence reveals fascinating details about childbirth preparations as well as her false pregnancy. When it eventually appeared that the pregnancy might not happen, Husee attempted to console her: “And yet, though your ladyship should chance to miss of your purpose, you should not be the first noble woman that hath been so by God’s work visited. For if it be his pleasure he spareth neither Empress, Queen, Princess ne Duchess.”
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Husee’s words are notable for their tender sympathy as well as his acknowledgement that false pregnancy was not such an unusual condition, particularly for women of high rank. Another royal example of false pregnancy is thoroughly documented in the letters of Marguerite de Navarre, sister of François I.