Birthing customs in Tudor England

In ‘Treasons’, Queen Madeleine is pregnant with Henry IX’s first child and the much-needed heir. It was the common belief that women were responsible for the sex of the unborn child. Men, of course, could not be seen to be anything other than the superior gender and the King, being the centre of the universe of the court, was the supreme symbol of manhood.

For many years, I have wanted to go back in time and tell Henry VIII the good news that the man’s chromosomes dictate the sex of the child and the mother has nothing to do with it. It would have been an interesting conversation.

In researching for the customs attendant on births in the Tudor era, I am indebted to David Cressy and his book “Birth, Marriage & Death: ritual religion and the life-cycle in Tudor and Stuart England”.

Royal and aristocratic birthrooms had to be snug, darkened and kept warm for the period of labour. One guide stated that the childbed woman “must be kept from the cold air because if is an enemy of the spermatical parts…and therefore the doors and windows of her chamber in any wise are to be kept close shut”.

The room would be hung with arras, tapestry hangings. In Hamlet, Polonius is stabbed whilst hiding behind an arras curtain. The doors would be guarded and the windows covered. It was believed that the woman’s mind would be distracted by light, so the room was designed to echo the womb by being warm, dark and comfortable, thus keeping evil spirits at bay.

The soon-to-be mother would be surrounded by female friends, called gossips – from the term god-sip, a sister in the Lord. In middle class houses, there was frequent complaint at the amount of money it took to feed and house all these women, but in royal circles, the gossips would be lodged nearby to the birthing chamber. Many priests, suspicious of this overwhelming femininity, would call for the pregnant woman to spend more time thinking about spiritual matters than being distracted by her friends. Not such a bad thing when many births ended with the death of the mother and the child.

When the time came for the Queen to retire to the chamber, she would be accompanied by all her ladies and gentlewomen, no man being permitted access. She would, in effect, be in purdah, until she had given birth and the father was presented with his newborn child.

Popular belief has maligned midwives as being drunken witches with few hygiene rules or otherwise painted them as having mystical ancient wisdom, countering patriarchal tyranny. Most midwives were respectable married women or widows who regularly attended church. They held a very important place in the household, being the only people who could touch the pregnant woman intimately. They would, in extremis, give the newborn baptism. It was also common for midwives to carry the baby to the font at its christening and attend the new mother at her churching – the purification and thanksgiving service for the new mother, celebrating her return to everyday life about six weeks after giving birth.