Tudor Walker
By Madeline | January 11, 2008
I was doing some research to try to find more out about Tudor education so I could post a new article (since I’ve been slacking lately!) when I stumbled upon a picture of a baby walker from the Tudor period. I’ll try to attach the picture – a true test to my computer skills… At any rate, it has little wheels on the bottom and three ‘arms’ that attach a circle to the band of wheels. The entire thing looks as though it’s made of wood, though I can but hope there was at least some padding there at one time. I think the worst thing about it is that there is no crotch holder cut out like there is in all modern day baby items, so I’m left to wonder how did they child stay in the walker? That hole the baby is supposed to go in looks really small – did the poor thing just get crammed in there until the holster hit its rib cage and just dangle there? Maybe that just encouraged them to walk more quickly. Hehehe
Today’s toys all have to be plastic, padded and super duper ultra safe. Even with such overly extreme precautions, parents are inundated with warnings about SIDS and choking hazards and bath water that is too hot all the way to germs and other invisible contaminates that can maim and kill our children. Lately we’ve also all had fear struck in our hearts because of the lead poisoning that’s been rampant on the American toy market. Taking all of this into consideration, I am left to wonder how many infants did not survive to toddlerhood as a result of ignorant construction like leaving slats too far apart on beds or high chairs that didn’t lock the children into place.
As a parent of modern times, I feel so fortunate to have access to the internet and especially babycenter.com. Now more than ever before, we have all the knowledge we can read at our fingertips. I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been for the mothers of Tudor children, women who probably had the babies when they were still young teenagers and whose knowledge didn’t extend beyond their own first hand experience with siblings. I think the worst part of being a mother then would have been the probability of infant/child mortality. Most children born, of those that actually survived birth that is, did not live past the age of five. This was primarily due to disease, but I’m sure many accidents due to ignorant negligence was prevalent as well. My daughter is just about to turn two and is the center of my world. I cannot even imagine how devastating it would be to lose her and yet this is something that most women faced at least once in their lives – if they were lucky enough to survive the actual birth that is.
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“The Tudors” Review
By Madeline | January 8, 2008
Showtimes, The Tudors series, was just released on DVD on 1/2/08. As I’d been waiting for it to come out since I heard about it, I immediately snatched it up, thrilled that it only cost about $30 - which it what Showtime would have been per month for me if I’d signed up to watch it week by week as it was intended. Over the last week, my husband and I have been watching all ten of the episodes. Sadly, we finally reached the last of them last night.
So, as an avid history fan, what was my overall opinion of the series? All in all, very, very well done. I was extremely pleased with it. I thought the casting was done very well and the acting was absolutely phenomenal. I admit I was a little hesitant to see Anne Boleyn played by a woman with blue eyes since one of Anne’s defining characteristics was her deep black eyes, but the actress carried the role well and ultimately I was satistfied despite the lack of physical resemblence. I was thrilled with how they portrayed Henry VIII. From everything I have ever read of Henry, he was very much a petulant boy in a grown man’s body with a sovriegn’s responsibility and the ability to be swayed easily when confronted with a good argument - especially when it leaned towards his own personal desires. They did a phenomenal job of displaying his fickle nature and short temper.
The only character that I was no happy with was the role of Princess Margaret. First and foremost, I was not happy with the choice of actress they chose for her. The woman they chose to play Princess Margaret was an obvious tanorexic as was evidences by the map of lines that criss crossed her face at every close up. Noble women of the Tudor era - especially princesses - were terribly fair, much like the actress who played Anne Boleyn’s character. She would never be as bronzed as the actress was. Additionally, I hated how old she was; they should have chosen a much younger woman to play the role. As far as the overall character, I hated her. Henry had two sisters: Princess Mary and Princess Margaret. For some reason they combined them; I have no idea what would possess them to do that. In all actuality, Mary was the one who was wed to the old man, although it was not the Kind of Portugal, rather it was the King of France - he was 54 when they wed. She did not murder him in history, although he did die within three months of their being married - and it was said that he wore himself out in the bedroom which led to his demise. Ew. At any rate, Mary did end up marrying Charles Brandon without Henry’s knowledge and he did forgive them. From what I’ve read though, it appears that they actually had a happy marriage that produced three children. The real Margaret was actually in Wales after her marriages and her second marriage was snuck under the nose of Henry as well, although her marriage was the miserable one. Her husband was the man who had the multiple public affairs. Additionally, the series shows Mary dying in 1530 when she actually died in 1533. Margaret died in 1541, so I have no idea why they had their rendition of Princess Margaret die in 1530. I suppose they just fabricated pretty much everything about the character.
Another serious contention I had with the series is due to the fashion of some of the costumes. I noticed prior to Anne Boleyn’s introduction to the episodes, there were many women wearing French hoods. Prior to Anne coming to court and introducing the French fashion to the people, everyone wore the gabled headress that Catherine of Aragon brought with her from Spain. It was a large, boxy type of headdress that resembled - well, a small house, that framed the face. My biggest issue with the use of the French hood was when I saw Catherine of Aragon wearing it. The true historical figure would not have been caught dead wearing the French hood that her advisary brought to court.
Aside from those major complaints, I absolutely am in love the series. The costumes were breathtakingly beautiful and the scenes were totally believable (with the exception of a few obvious CG moments that they just should have cut - but isn’t that how almost all movies are these days?). As I stated, the casting was well done and the acting was absolute perfection primarily on the characters of Henry, Anne and Catherine. It seemed like special care was really taken to ensure a lot of historical accuracy and I appreciated that.
On a scale of 5 Tudor roses - this get 4.5.
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Women
By Madeline | January 7, 2008
Since I was on the topic of marriage yesterday, it created an unplanned segway for my next topic of discussion: women in the Tudor age. Women really did have a difficult time in history. As children, they were born and raised with the knowledge that they were inferior to all males and that they were ultimately nothing more than an evil temptation. Very few women were educated with tutors and few were literate. As an example, two of Henry VIII’s wives were almost completely illiterate – Catherine Howard and Jane Seymour. I suppose that’s actually not bad – two of six.
So what education did women receive? Poor women learned whatever trade their mother worked whether it was wool working, sewing, etc. and they learned to cook and care for children. These women were usually married by 14 or else they were considered almost too old for marriage and ran the risk of becoming an old maid. Daughters of the rich were educated in little more than the poor and learned from an early age how to manage an estate and embroider. Though they didn’t typically marry as early as the poor – after all, marriage negotiations take time – they were basically being raised to be wives and mothers.
As I stated previously, once a woman was married, she was expected to completely obey her husband and be subservient to him regardless of how he treated her. The ultimate goal of every woman was to bear their husband an heir to his name. An ideal wife was not only wholly subservient to her husband, but also bore him one child a year. In a world where one had a better chance to survive going to war than having a child, many women lost their lives trying to accomplish what they were told was their only mission in life. Aside from not having the luxury of an epidural, there was also a lack of decent hygiene due to ignorance, so that many women who did actually survive the birth of their children ended up dying from infection and fever – as was the case with Jane Seymour.
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Marriage
By Madeline | January 6, 2008
For a period in history that was so laden with romance and sonnets, it’s surprising that so many marriages were loveless. Or perhaps that is why the romance and sonnets came about to compensate for the longing for love that seemed so unattainable (for those faithful to their spouses that is!).
Marriages among the nobles were arranged by their parents. The couple to be rarely knew one another and sometimes did not even see one another for the first time until the actual day of their wedding. As the average life expectancy for a woman was around 30, it was important for couples to wed young and were usually around 16 when they married. In fact, girls could be married at 12 and boys at 14 although both had to live with their parents until they were 16. Even at the age of 16, I can’t imagine being able to take on the responsibility of a household! I suppose times were just different then though and you did what was expected of you.
The wedding night for most of these marriages must have been very uncomfortable from an emotionally standpoint. Imagine having never met a man/woman before until you actually are in front of the altar, knowing that within a few hours you will be placed in a bed together and left to have sex. Awkward! No wonder so many marriages were miserable. I’m sure a lot of deep seeded hatred stemmed from the actions on the wedding night.
Once wed, women had a very simple life of what was expected of them, though it consumed their lives: obey their husbands, run their households and bear children. Some men were abusive to their wives and there were no laws to protect them.
Looking back, I can’t help but wonder how many divorces would have occurred between those arranged couples. Additionally, I wonder what the difference of those couples divorce rates versus the couples today who have chosen to marry one another and ended up divorced would be.
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Sweating Sickness
By Madeline | January 5, 2008
The sweating sickness is one of the most dangerous illnesses that spread throughout England during the Tudor period. It originally began during the reign of Henry VII in August of 1485. It struck through Europe leaving many dead and then nothing was heard of it again until 1507 when it resurfaced, though it was not nearly as fatal as the initial outbreak had been. In 1517 though, it broke out again. This time it was much more severe and fatal. This particular outbreak was the most devastating to Oxford and Cambridge where it destroyed half of the cities population. In 1587, it struck again, starting in London and it was severe and deadly as the third outbreak had been. Some of its victims who actually survived this outbreak include Cardinal Wolsey and Anne Boleyn. The thing that was the most astounding about this fourth bout of sweating sickness that swept England was that this time it was not restricted to just England. The entire continent was sick with the sweating sickness so much that in a matter of weeks, thousands were dead throughout Europe. The last recorded outbreak of the sweating sickness was in 1551. Nothing more was seen or heard of the sweating sickness after that.
Unlike most diseases of that time, the sweating sickness struck more among than the rich than it did the poor. The first signs would be a feeling of apprehension, followed by cold shivers, headache and pains in the shoulders, neck and limbs with great exhaustion. After the cold period came the heat that rendered the person slick with sweat – hence the name. Once the great sweating part of the disease had passed, the person was left with a headache, delirium, rapid pulse, intense thirst and often time heart pain. The final stage of the disease was the period of great exhaustion where the victim was overcome with the need to sleep. It was said that to go to sleep was to succumb to death. All of this would occur in a short time frame that could happen between 3-24 hours. Most of the victims did not survive the illness. The frightening thing is that if you caught it once, you were not immune to getting it again as was with the black plague. In fact, some poor souls actually caught the disease numerous times before finally slipping into deaths grasp.
So, in our modern world, we wonder – what the heck was this thing?! Well, we actually don’t know. The strange thing about this illness was that there were no characteristic marks like a rash or buboes. Initially it was thought to have been transmitted by flea and tick bites, but no flea and tick bites were found on the victims. Additionally, if it were caused by flea and tick bites, it would have had a greater impact on the poor more so than the rich. The only disease that has been speculated to be closest to what our poor Tudor ancestors suffered through is the Hantavirus.
To me this is one of the more intriguing illnesses ever as there are so many questions left unanswered like exactly what it was, what caused it, how was it spread, why was it predominately among the rich, what would have cured it? I guess those are answers we’ll never know. And probably a good thing too, since that means the world will never again be faced with the sweating sickness.
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Head Cold
By Madeline | January 3, 2008
I’ve come down with one of those fabulous winter colds which is why I haven’t been able to post for a couple of days (combined with the holiday insanity, of course). And I began thinking to myself, if I were back in the Tudor days how could I ease my cold?
First of all, I would probably be sick because my four humors were out of wack (wet, dry, hot and cold) and they were probably off because I did something bad and God was punishing me for my actions. In order to alleviate me of my ailment, they would most likely engage in blood letting, a common bedside ‘fix’ most doctors did then. Apothecaries did actually sell items that the wealthy could take to alleviate their symptoms. The nobles assumed the more expensive the item, the better it worked and so some pills were even wrapped in gold! At least you’d get it back eventually, huh?
As if blood letting weren’t already causing a sick body harm, a lot of the remedies could really open a person up to even more sickness. Among many favorites were dung and piss of animals, pretty much anything from a pregnant woman from her urine to breast milk, pretty much anything from a virgin woman like her hair and all different kinds of blood from animals. While some of this was rubbed on the body, some of it was actually consumed in a broth or medicine. Another favorite was administering laxitives to completely expunge your body of, well…everything.
It really is quite humorous when you think about it. Imagine going to your hospital because of a cold or flu and the doctor on staff comes in and immediately gives you a couple of laxitives to clean you out. Once the laxitives have done their work, he cuts you open and lets you bleed into a bowl, feeds you a couple of gold plated pills and then gives you a nice broth of goose dung in bull’s blood and rubs you down with a pregnant woman’s pee. Wow - imagine the lawsuit that would create!
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“Fine” Food
By Madeline | December 28, 2007
I have to say that in looking at the extravagant food that the nobility had splayed on their tables, I cringe. I’m sure that if you grew up with it, all of it would look delicious and mouthwatering, but in a world where a fillet mignon and a baked potato with all the fixings accompanied by a nice salad are a perfect dinner, their combinations don’t sound so appealing. For example: porpoise with oatmeal or salmon and fig pie. Blech! Of course I’ve never had porpoise; perhaps it goes very well with oatmeal…
Some of the primary ingredients in a lot of meals prepared for nobles included cod livers and beef marrow which really just sounds disgusting. If that didn’t sound gross enough, they also used a considerable amount of herbs so regardless of what you were eating, it probably tasted like…well, herbs. One of the main juices used to prepare many sauces was called verjuice, which was ultimately the juice from sour crab apples. Any fruit they did consume was usually cooked or preserved as only the poor ate their fruits raw.
As if the food itself wasn’t enough to turn me away from the table, the presentation would leave me a little less than eager to eat. One of the popular dishes was a roasted peacock that was wrapped back in its own skin before consumption. There were also stories of pies that were baked with living things inside of them, so when the pie was cut into, birds would fly out or frogs would hop out – all over the dinner table. Ugh…
I have to say that based on my modern diet, the diet of the poor sounds much more appealing as it included salted, smoked and dried meat (yeah, I’m a salt freak…) and primarily this meat was bacon. Ah! Delicious! Not to mention the luxury of consuming the fruits raw as they were intended to be eaten, not preserved or cooked.
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Medieval Poo
By Madeline | December 26, 2007
Imagine a city in the medieval times swarming with people, old and young, rich and poor. Honestly, the first thought that comes to mind must surely be the smell. I know that people actually bathed more frequently than most imagine, but I’m sure in a city full of people combined with the lack of deodorant would result in a less than pleasant odor. Especially when you consider that all those people had to go to the bathroom on a regular basis and there was no such thing as the complex sewer lines that we have today. So what happened to all the poo?
Contrary to popular belief, most people did not just chuck their excrement out of the window as is always shown in movies. In fact, to do such was illegal, at least in
Chamber pots were typically taken down to the streets and emptied into the gutter, which I’m sure created a disgusting smell that permeated the city, especially on warm days. For those who were out and about and didn’t have access to the comfort of their own personal chamber pot, there were actual public bathrooms that they could use. The ones most often used were actually located on
Most homes of nobles actually had garderobes that were basically private rooms that enclosed a small seat with a hole cut out. This hole usually led to the street below leaving their home smelling sweet and clean despite what their rich diet emptied onto the streets. However, some manors have actually been found to have an interesting system where all the holes from the garderobes were all piped to the same place which conveniently was the same place that the hot water from the kitchen and laundry went thus washing away most of the smell and nastiness. Some garderobe holes actually were covered with bars to keep intruders and invaders out of the home. I guess that would be a nasty surprise while you were sitting there for a while, huh?
Then came the business of wiping. Really anything could be used from scrap pieces of fabrics to the bits of lace it was rumored the king of
The moral of the story: Next time you are on a road trip and stop at a gas station to use the restroom and you cringe at having to use such disgusting facilities and wipe with one ply paper, think how lucky you really are. 
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No Jousting Allowed
By Madeline | December 24, 2007
…after a holiday feast that is.
In his youth, Henry VIII was quite the active, sporty adolescent who engaged, and excelled in, tennis, jousting and anything else that was challenging and physical. As he began to grow older, an injury in his leg caused by an old jousting wound caused him grow lazy and overindulgent and soon his once famed sculpted physique melted into layers upon layers of fat.
In 1541, five wives later and six years before his death, Henry passed the Unlawful Gains Act which, after Christmas feasts, restricted all physically active sports except archery which was considered necessary to keep the military strong. Perhaps he was truly just too full from the feasting to even want to watch others engage in physical activity, although I have a sneaking suspicion that he was put off by all of the young, physically fit men who were still able to compete thus making him feel old, fat and inadequate.
So this year, if you eat too much food during the holidays and don’t much feel like jousting, well, you have Henry VIII and his girth to thank for that.
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Elizabeth I’s Christmas Treats
By Madeline | December 22, 2007
When one things of royalty during the Tudor era, they immediately envision rich fabrics, decadent foods, endless balls, and countless mistresses. All accurate assumptions in most cases. However, when one things of a female ruler, the last thing they think of is their sexual curiosities, assuming the woman a virgin (unless wed, of course) with no interest in the opposite sex.
Not true. Especially so in Queen Elizabeth the I’s case. Perhaps it’s because as a youth she was praised for her beauty and her station offered her an excuse to exploit that sexual power or perhaps it’s just what cycled through her blood – after all, the was the daughter of the sensual Anne Boleyn. Regardless, Elizabeth was just as sexually charged as her father, Henry VIII, who actually had more brides than mistresses, but was certainly led by the head hidden behind a codpiece.
Since Elizabeth was such a lady, she took to eating in her private apartments on a regular basis, a practice not uncommon for women as eating is a messy act and to appear such before others was simply embarrassing. However, during the twelve days of Christmas festivities at court (see where the song originates?), she was brought out of her private apartments to eat before the court so that all who wished to see the queen in a natural state of consumption could do so. Regardless of the obligation, Elizabeth was still hesitant to follow through with the task and every year had to be bribed with the presence of handsome young men to serve her. Guess she got dinner and a show, huh?
Guests of the queen were invited to the festivities by invitation only. Not only did you not want to miss it because of all the excitement and gossip there was to be had, it was terribly offensive to the queen to refuse her request except on the condition of extreme illness, child birth, or – of course- death. Once there, all guests were expected to stay; however, the young male courtiers were ordered to stay until the festivities were complete. There’s a women who loves her doting fans.
Hrmm…I wonder what SHE got for Christmas every year? Hehehe
Next time you heard of Elizabeth, I don’t especially want you to think of her as some overindulged pervert, because after all, it is Elizabeth and she certainly did many amazing things during her reign. However, you may not think of her as being so chaste after all despite being the Virgin Queen.
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