Keeper of the ROYAL PRIVACY
A new Tudor history reveals the real power behind King Henry’s, er, throne was the ...
THE PRIVATE LIVES OF THE TUDORS: UNCOVERING THE SECRETS OF BRITAIN’S GREATEST DYNASTY
Elizabeth i once remarked: ‘a thousand eyes see all i do.’ as tracy borman makes clear in this fascinating, detailed account of the everyday reality of the royals, tudor monarchs struggled to have anything that we would recognise as a private life.
at their most intimate moments they were rarely alone. they couldn’t even visit the smallest room in the palace without company.
the ‘Groom of the Stool’, the person who attended the king when he was on the toilet, would always be on hand to help. he was an important man and the office was highly prized.
to us, wiping the royal nether end may not seem a particularly prestigious job, but it definitely had its perks. the Groom of the Stool probably spent more time alone with the king than anyone and very often became his most trusted confidant. this regular access to the king gave him great power.
Sex was also less than private. Royal bedding ceremonies, when a king or prince prepared to consummate his union with his consort, were nearly as well attended as royal marriage services.
there was a strict protocol to be followed. the new bride was escorted to her chamber by her ladies who undressed her and put her to bed.
then the groom arrived, accompanied by gentlemen attendants, musicians, priests and bishops.
TheSe onlookers were often slow to depart. even after they had seen the naked legs of the royal couple touching or witnessed the first kisses, some might linger outside the bedchamber.
it was probably difficult to enjoy your sex life when your servants were loitering near the honeymoon suite, listening for any sounds you might make.
borman ranges far and wide in her quest to throw light on what the tudor kings and queens ate, what they wore, what they did with their days and how they spent their nights.
She is particularly good at dispelling some of the myths that still cling to them.
She swiftly dismisses the popular image of henry Viii at the table, tearing at chicken legs with his teeth before hurling them over his shoulder. this owes much more to a thirties film starring Charles laughton than it does to reality.
in fact, the king and his courtiers were fastidious diners, with impeccable table manners — though some of the dishes they ate at feasts now seem bizarrely over-elaborate.
as well as favourites such as leg of mutton with lemons and game pie stuffed with oranges, henry was also treated to such exotic recipes as boiled peacocks stitched back into their original skin and feathers and then made to breathe fire using camphor, and almond cream eggs in real shells. every- thing was served up in enormous helpings. little wonder that he grew to be the overstuffed heavyweight so familiar from contemporary portraits.
in his younger days, the athletic and handsome henry had liked to show off his physique. his broad shoulders were emphasised by padded sleeves, his calves displayed to best effect in white silk hose and an improbably large codpiece was designed to draw attention to his masculinity.
by 1540, he was so fat that ‘three of the biggest men that could be found could get inside his doublet’. in the last years of his life, according to the chronicler edward hall, henry could not ‘go up or down stairs unless he was raised up or let down by an engine’.
henry, with his fire-breathing, edible peacocks, was not the only tudor monarch to enjoy fantastical food.
elizabeth i was noted for her sweet tooth and had entire menageries sculpted out of sugar- work by her court confectioners. Camels, lions and dolphins and mythical figures such as mermaids and unicorns, all made from sugar, paraded across her dinner table.
another recipe book of the
time provided instructions for making sugar-work plates and cups so that when diners had finished their meal, they could start on the crockery.
Unsurprisingly, the queen suffered badly from tooth decay. The ladies of her privy chamber did their best to keep the royal teeth clean, rubbing on them a concoction of white wine and vinegar boiled with honey. As a primi- tive form of toothpaste, they even made use of soot which, surprising as it may seem, was effective at removing stains.
But none of their efforts saved Elizabeth from tormenting toothache. She was several times reduced to the last resort of having the tooth pulled, although on one occasion the Bishop of London had to volunteer to have one of his own teeth yanked out in order to demonstrate that the pain wouldn’t be as awful as the Queen anticipated.
Further unavoidable consequences of the rich diet the Tudor monarchs enjoyed were long hours spent on the toilet or ‘close-stool’.
Like many a modern loo, Henry VIII’s ‘stool chambers’ at Greenwich Palace and Hampton Court were kitted out with pictures and bookshelves to keep the king amused during the time he was obliged to spend there.
Even there, magnificence was required. Lavish close- stools were hand-crafted for him from pewter, covered with embroidered velvet and stuffed with swans’ down to ensure that the royal buttocks were made as comfortable as possible. Another myth that Borman addresses is the belief that all people in the Tudor age, whatever their class, stank to high heaven. This is simply not true.
It’s certainly the case that they bathed infrequently. Elizabeth I was considered slightly unusual in that she took a bath once a month, ‘whether she needed it or no’.
HOWEVER, hygiene and cleanliness were considered important at court. Undergarments of linen were changed several times a day. Pests were a nuisance in outer garments of heavy materials such as wool and furs. In 1583, Elizabeth appointed one robert Pamplin to be ‘brusher of our robes’ and his sole job, day in and day out, was to clear the wildlife from her clothes.
Henry VIII always wore a small piece of fur next to his skin to lure the parasites away from his body. If you were going to be infested, it was as well to know exactly where the vermin were.
And perfumes of all kinds were used to keep clothes fragrant. Tudor courtiers smelled sweetly. One of the bitterest complaints Henry VIII made about his German bride Anne of Cleves, beyond the fact that she was ‘nothing fair’, was that she had ‘very evil smells about her’.
This is a book of rich scholarship. Tracy Borman is a chief curator of Historic royal Palaces and she knows her Tudor history inside out.
It’s also a book of odd and engaging trivia. If you want to know how much Henry VIII lost on a single game of dominoes (£ 450, equivalent to £145,000 in today’s money) or how long Tudor intellectuals believed your life was shortened by each sexual act (one day), look no further.