If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home by Lucy Worsley Page A

husband, yet also for preserving her virginity. On the other hand, pre-marital sex was not seen as disastrous for people of the middling or lower sort, and a pre-marital pregnancy could be welcome proof of fertility. ‘You would not buy a horse without trying it first,’ explained one Norfolk farmer to his vicar.
    The process of creating royal or aristocratic children, though, was the business of the whole nation, and its importance was so great that it took place in a semi-public context. The proxy bedding of Henry VIII’s sister, Mary, sounds rather undignified, yet the process saw her legally wed. Mary lay on a bed in what was described as a ‘magnificent déshabille ’ with bare legs. TheFrench king’s ambassador took off his own red stockings and lay beside her. As their naked legs touched, ‘the King of England made great rejoicing’. (When Mary finally reached France, its elderly king was delighted with his new bride and boasted ‘that he had performed marvels’ on his wedding night.)
    A century later, another English princess named Mary, aged only ten, had to endure a public bedding with her brand-new husband, the fourteen-year-old Prince of Orange. The bride’s father, King Charles I, ‘had some difficulty in conducting’ his new son-in-law through the thick throng of spectators gathered around the bed where the young princess lay waiting. Once in bed, the boy prince ‘kissed the Princess three times, and lay chastely beside her about three-quarters of an hour, in presence of all the great lords and ladies of England’. After this, his duty was considered done.
    We also know a good amount about what actually happened when a king and queen were left to it to attempt to produce an heir. Details of such matters survive because they were of vital political importance: the stability of the kingdom and alliances between nations hung in the balance.
    In 1501, the ritual for the bedding of Katherine of Aragon with Henry VIII’s older but short-lived brother, Arthur, was similarly well recorded. The princess was led from the wedding feast by her ladies, undressed and ‘reverently’ placed in bed. Prince Arthur entered the bedchamber in only his shirt, accompanied by a crowd of courtiers and musicians. The shawms, viols and tabors died away for a change of mood: the solemn blessing of the marriage bed by bishops. The young lovers were then left alone.
    But the business of what happened next was mightily raked over in later times because it became central to the issue of whether or not Henry could divorce Katherine of Aragon. Henry argued that his marriage to Katherine had been fatally flawed because the Bible decreed that he shouldn’t have married hisbrother’s widow. Meanwhile, Katherine herself argued that this was irrelevant because she hadn’t been truly married to Arthur: he had never penetrated her. Yet Henry’s supporters claimed to ‘remember’ the young Arthur coming out of the bedroom the morning after his first night with Katherine and calling for wine to refresh him after his ‘long journey into Spain’ and back.
    The success or failure of Henry VIII’s own sex life could literally result in life or death for his intimate servants. In June 1540, Thomas Cromwell, Henry’s latest chief minister, was arrested. He had been the prime mover behind Henry’s fourth marriage, to Anne of Cleves. Henry had been persuaded into marrying Anne only because Cromwell thought an alliance with the German state of Cleves was a good idea. When he actually met his promised bride, however, Henry was gravely disappointed by her appearance. He was desperate to find a way out of his marriage, and required Cromwell to put it about the court that it had been unconsummated because of Anne’s lack of physical charms. Cromwell obediently spread reports recounting the king’s words to him: ‘I have felt her belly and her breasts, and thereby, as I can judge, she should be no maid. Which struck me so to the heart