Tudor Women: Queens and Commoners (3 page)

The Song of Lady Bessy
, which was probably written by Humphrey Brereton, a squire in the Stanley household, contains a number of authentic touches and a good deal of poetic licence. All the same, it's quite possible that Elizabeth may have been in touch with Henry at some point in the months before Bosworth and may have sent him a message of encouragement by one of the secret couriers going over to France. Although she had never seen him, she would, of course, have heard glowing reports from Margaret Beaufort, and in any case - whether or not there was ever any truth in the story that King Richard was contemplating marrying his niece - Elizabeth of York seems to have come to the conclusion that a Tudor triumph offered the best hope of a secure and honourable future that she could reasonably expect.

Henry has often in the past been accused of deliberately-delaying his wedding in order to forestall any suggestion that he owed the throne to his wife, but although the marriage was certainly of great political importance, the new King's title could in no way be strengthened by his wife's. It was the second generation of Tudor monarchs which would benefit from this union of 'the two bloodes of high renowne', and Elizabeth's real usefulness would depend quite simply on her fecundity. The Yorkist princess had been rescued from the power of her wicked uncle, and the reproach of bastardy, laid on her by Richard's government, had been removed by act of Henry's first Parliament. She had been raised to the dignity of queen consort. Her mother had been rehabilitated and her sisters suitably settled. In return she was expected to be fruitful and thus ensure the future of the new royal line. By contemporary standards, it was a perfectly fair bargain.

There can be no question that Elizabeth understood her historic role, and she was to fill it nobly. She became pregnant immediately, and in September i486 her first child, Prince Arthur, 'the Rosebush of England', was born a month prematurely at Winchester amid universal relief and rejoicing. There was a gap of three years before another living child arrived, a daughter christened Margaret, whose dynastic value was to equal that of the grandmother for whom she was named. Eighteen months later came another son, Henry, and the following year, 1492, another daughter, Elizabeth. A third daughter, Mary, was born in March 1495, and a third son, Edmund, in February 1499.

The King's mother had retired from political life once her object had been achieved, and, while her daughter-in-law was occupied with the all-important business of filling cradles, Margaret Beaufort turned her attention and her considerable organizational talents to domestic matters, laying down a series of Ordinances designed to ensure the smooth running of the royal household. Like most grandmothers, she was greatly concerned with the welfare of her grandchildren, but this grandmother had more reason than most to take a keen interest in the continuance and well-being of the family she had founded, and the first of her directives covered the preparations to be made 'against the deliverance of a queen'.

As soon as the mother-to-be had decided where she wished the event to take place, a suite of rooms must be got ready and 'hanged with rich arras'. The lying-in chamber itself was to be completely hung with tapestry, walls, ceiling and windows, 'except one window, which must be hanged so as she may have light when it pleaseth her'. The floor was to be 'laid all over and over with carpets' and a royal bed installed. The 'furniture appertaining to the Queen's bed' included a mattress stuffed with wool, a feather bed and a bolster of down. The sheets were to measure four yards broad by five yards long, and there must be two long and two square pillows stuffed with fine down. The counterpane should be of scarlet cloth, furred with ermine and trimmed with crimson velvet and rich cloth of gold; while the whole outfit was to be garnished with silk fringe in blue, russet and gold and topped with crowns embroidered in gold and, of course, the royal arms. Luxury on this scale was naturally beyond the reach of the average family, but every household, excepting the very poorest, could provide a feather pillow and some additional comforts for the woman in childbed.

My lady the King's mother went on to describe the procedure to be followed when the Queen 'took her chamber' - that is when she retired from public gaze, usually about a month before the actual birth. After hearing divine service in a chapel 'well and worshipfully arrayed' for the occasion, she would hold a reception in her 'great chamber' for the lords and ladies of the Court, and the company would be served with wine and spices. After this, the two lords of highest rank present would escort her to the door of the inner chamber and there take leave of her. 'Then', wrote Lady Margaret, 'all the ladies and gentlewomen to go in with her, and none to come into the great chamber but women; and women to be made all manner of officers, as butlers, panters, sewers, etc.' From now on, everything needful would be brought to the outer door of the great chamber and there received by the women officers.

Again, this sort of elaborate ceremonial was reserved for royal and noble households, but in every stratum of society childbirth was regarded as an exclusively female affair. When the accoucheur, or man-midwife as he was rather scornfully referred to, began to make his appearance during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, he met with considerable hostility from more conventional midwives, who furiously resented this encroachment on their preserves.

At Court the great ladies of the realm gathered as of right to attend the Queen through her ordeal, but in every walk of life a lying-in was a social occasion when all the neighbourhood wives would assemble to 'make good cheer' and support and encourage the woman in labour. The knowledge that the party could so easily end in tragedy doesn't appear to have dampened anyone's spirits. Death was, after all, an everyday occurrence and physical pain an integral part of everyone's experience.

Assuming things went well, the next event to be provided for was the christening and this normally took place within a few days of birth - infant life was too uncertain to permit of any unnecessary delay. A royal christening was a state occasion, with the church lavishly decorated throughout and the necessary lords spiritual and temporal in attendance. Lady Margaret noted that these personages, plus those appointed to be godparents or gossips, should be lodged near the place where the Queen was delivered so that they would be ready and waiting to accompany the young prince or princess to church. In pre-Reformation days, it was customary to immerse the naked infant in the font, so a screened 'travers', or closet, must be prepared with a 'fair pan of coals', plenty of cushions and carpets and a supply of warm water, where the baby could be undressed and if necessary washed - whatever happened, he must not catch cold. After the baptism - and with her unremitting eye for detail Margaret Beaufort decreed that the font must be well raised, so that the congregation would have a good view of the proceedings and not be tempted to press too close - a lighted taper was put into the child's hand and it was carried to the high altar to be confirmed by the officiating bishop. 'All which solemnities accomplished,' it was returned to the travers to be dressed again, while the godparents were served with refreshments and the christening gifts presented. Then the procession formed up again and the newly-christened prince or princess, carried by a duchess* was brought home 'in such sort as it was carried to the church, saving that the torches must be lighted, and a cloth of estate borne over it'. The christening gifts were delivered to the Queen, and the baby was brought in to receive her blessing before being taken back to the nursery. Parents were not much in evidence at a christening. This was the godparents' occasion, and, in any case, the mother was scarcely in a condition to leave her bed.

Lady Margaret's concern for her grandchildren did not end with baptism, and she laid down careful rules for the management of the royal nursery. There was to be a Lady Governess or Lady Mistress to supervise the wet nurse and the dry nurse, who had under them three assistant nurses or cradle rockers. The loyalty and reliability of these intimate personal attendants was vitally important, and their oaths of service were therefore to be administered by the Chamberlain of the Household in person, while the yeomen, grooms and other lesser servants who waited on the nursery must all be sworn 'in the most straitest manner'.

A key member of the nursery staff was, of course, the wet nurse, who must be healthy, clean in her person and habits and of unimpeachable character, for it was generally believed that an infant imbibed its nurse's morals or lack of them along with her milk. The royal wet nurse was a privileged person, and her food and drink were assayed (that is, tasted as a precaution against poison) 'during the time that she giveth suck to the child'; but Lady Margaret insisted that there should be a physician on duty to oversee her at every feed to make sure she was doing her job properly and not adding any unsuitable titbits to her charge's diet. The habit of employing a wet nurse was by no means confined to royal circles - most city-dwellers who could afford to do so would put their babies out to nurse in the country, hoping they might stand a better chance of survival away from the stench and noise and general nastiness of the streets. Wet nurses, incidentally, were sometimes used to nourish the old and toothless as well as the young and toothless -a somewhat gruesome but undeniably practical arrangement.

The royal babies spent most of their time in a wooden cradle, a yard and a quarter long and twenty-two inches broad, lying under a scarlet coverlet furred with ermine. The nursery equipment also included a 'great cradle of estate', much larger and more imposing and heavily encrusted with silver and gilt, in which the latest infant could be shown off to visitors. But in her list of 'necessaries as belong unto the child', Margaret Beaufort did not overlook such humble items as 'a great pot of leather for water' and 'two great basins of pewter' for the baby's washing and, of course, the usual quantities of soft furnishings - curtains, wall-hangings, carpets and cushions - all intended to help keep out the icy draughts which whistled through the grandest houses.

Despite the anxious care lavished on Henry VII's children, my lady the King's mother, her son and daughter-in-law were to know the sorrow of seeing the little Princess Elizabeth die at three years old and Prince Edmund at sixteen months; while there was at least one other child, a boy, born alive, who did not survive to be named. Death which preyed on babies, often in the shape of some form of enteritis, was no respecter of rank or dignity.

During the early years of the reign, Lady Margaret was much in evidence at her son's Court. We know she was present at Winchester for the birth and christening of her first grandchild. She was there to see Henry's triumphant entry into London after his victory at Stoke in November 1487 - strictly speaking the last battle of the Wars of the Roses. She was present at Queen Elizabeth's coronation and at most of the elaborate feasts and shows with which Henry Tudor was at pains to impress the world at large and demonstrate that the new dynasty had come to stay.

Politically, of course, Margaret was still valuable - the sight of her tall, stately, coroneted figure accompanying the King and Queen at public functions serving to remind people that Henry was no mere upstart, that the blood of Edward in and 'time honour'd Lancaster' flowed in his veins too. On the more personal side, there's no reason to suppose that my lady the King's mother was not human enough to be enjoying herself and, in a dignified way, revelling in the sight of her beloved son's continuing success. It's true that some unkind people hinted that the Queen was being deliberately pushed into the background but, although Elizabeth of York may sometimes have found her formidable mother-in-law a trifle overpowering, there's no evidence to suggest that relations between the two ladies were ever anything but affectionate.

In any case, Margaret Beaufort had many other preoccupations which, as time went by, took up more and more of her attention. As well as actively supervising the complicated business of administering her own vast estates (and she never hesitated to resort to litigation in defence of her just rights), she was responsible for the equally enormous possessions of her ward, the young Duke of Buckingham: a responsibility which must have been faithfully discharged, since the Duke counted as one of the richest men in England when he reached his majority. Buckingham and his younger brother were brought up in Lady Margaret's household, where, according to the usual custom, she established a little school of handpicked companions to share their education, and in 1493 wrote to the Chancellor of the University of Oxford asking leave of absence for one Maurice Westbury whom she wished to employ as their tutor.

The list of her charitable works and benefactions is a long one. 'Poor folk to the number of twelve she daily and nightly kept in her house, giving them lodging and drink and clothing, visiting them often, and in their sickness comforting them and administering to them with her own hands, records John Fisher; but probably Margaret Beaufort is best remembered for her patronage of the University of Cambridge where, guided by Fisher, himself a Cambridge man, she made generous endowments to the newly re-founded Christ's College and herself founded St. John's.

But although Margaret was a highly intelligent and literate woman - she had been well grounded in French and often regretted she had not made more of her opportunities to study Latin - her interest in such matters never extended to promoting higher education for girls. She encouraged the printer Wynkyn de Worde to bring out books of devotion in the vernacular but remained largely untouched by the rising tide of questing intellectual excitement beginning to sweep through Christendom. Her purpose in founding colleges and endowing readerships was simply that the universities should have the means of adequately performing their primary task of training an efficient and well-educated clergy. Always devout, Lady Margaret commonly spent several hours of each busy day in prayer and meditation, hearing four or more Masses on her knees, and before she went to bed at night never failed 'to resort to her chapel and there for a large quarter of an hour to occupy her devotions'. Always a sparing eater, she observed fast days meticulously and during Lent would restrict herself to one fish meal a day. According to John Fisher, she was also in the habit of wearing a hair shirt or girdle on certain days of every week 'when she was in health'. The author of the Italian
Relation of the Island of England
noted that many Englishwomen carried long rosaries in their hands and that those who could read would take the Office of Our Lady to church with them, reciting it verse by verse with a companion; but although most of her contemporaries were careful in the outward observance of their religious duties, Lady Margaret's piety was deeply-felt devotion on a grand scale. Next to her son, her religion was undoubtedly the most important thing in her life.