CLASSICAL GAS

DESPITE SPECIALISING IN NEANDERTHAL FLATULENCE, MARTINVILLE HAS ALSO APPLIED HIS EXPERTISE TO LOOK AT OTHER PERIODS OF OUR HISTORY. HE TOLD US: “When people discover I’m a Palaeohistorian of early human flatulence, the first thing they ask me is: what did the farts of Henry VIII’s wives sound like? So let me answer…”

DIVORCED

HENRY'S first wife was the Spanish Catherine of Aragon. A diet of paella and chorizo sausage would have made a heavy bowel gas that she expelled with a deep rumble. Whilst it's true that Henry divorced Catherine because she wasn't able to give him a son, a contributory factor could well have been the fact that she farted like an ox - much louder than Henry was physically capable of doing. In those days it wasn't the done thing for a woman to fart louder than her husband, especially if he was King.

BEHEADED

ALTHOUGH Henry's second wife Anne Boleyn was the daughter of an English nobleman, she was brought up in France, with its diet rich in cheese and red meat. A stableboy in the time of Henry VIII, hearing Anne crack one out as she mounted her horse, would have heard a typically French fart - rude, uncouth and slightly wet around the edges. Even the staunchest feminist would have to admit they understood why Henry beheaded her.

DIED

HAD recording devices been available at the Tudor Court, a young knight who wanted to prove his worth to his peers would have placed his medieval cassette player in a bush in the rose garden where Jayne Seymour, Henry’s third wife, probably went to walk after a lunch of roasted pheasant. What he would hear when listening back to the tape would have been an unhealthy fart that stuttered and came out with a gentle, ladylike gasps.

DIVORCED

A SIXTEENTH century dictaphone placed behind the cistern of the Queen’s ear th closet would have captured a few pre-dump farts before Henry’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, unloaded her breakfast. A rather heavyset woman, her German-born buttocks would have unleashed little bursts of air, like musket shots being fired. As King of England, Henry lived in constant fear of assassination, and it is very likely that he jumped every time he heard a volley of his consort’s farts. She had to go.

BEHEADED

AN EXTREMELY early version of an iPhone, placed on the windowsill to a turret room where Catherine Howard played cards with other women of the court, would secretly capture her rectal noises. In that relaxed setting, Catherine would happily drop her guts, but there would be little to hear when the device was retrieved and the play button pressed. Because Henry’s fifth wife was notoriously slight of build and a delicate eater, and it is cer tain - with a degree of 95% probability - that her far ts were almost totally silent.

SURVIVED

WHEN Catherine Parr, Henry’s final wife, farted, it would have made a noise like a minstrel blowing on a crumhorn. And although that was the Tudor monarch’s favourite musical instrument, he didn’t think the noises made by his twice-widowed wife’s bottom were ladylike. In days when women were to be seen and not heard, we can deduce that having a loud fart would be a death sentence for Henry’s Queen. It was only the fact that the ailing King died first that saved Catherine from the block.