Free In Bed with the Tudors: The Sex Lives of a Dynasty from Elizabeth of York to Elizabeth I by Amy Licence Page B

that they should be protected from ‘phantasies and illusions of devils’. After that, only Arthur and Catherine knew exactly what had passed between them. Hall’s chronicle would later insist that ‘this lusty prince and his beautiful bride were brought and joined together in one bed naked and there did that act, which to the performance and full consummation of matrimony was most requisite and expedient’ but he was three at the time of the wedding and writing in the early 1540s, when it was expedient to believe in the union’s success. Later, when the matter became of national importance, the expressions and testimonies of servants would become crucial and the events of that November night and following morning would be analysed and debated. In the autumn of 1501, however, there was no foreshadowing of the immense consequences of the teenager’s courtship and the series of jousts, pageants and feasts continued unabated. The king and queen watched their newly wedded son and his bride enjoying tournaments on the newly sanded tilt-yard by the river and lavish Burgundian-style disguisings in Westminster Hall. Ironically, one of these pageants included eight ‘goodly’ knights overcoming the resistance of eight ‘goodly and fresh’ ladies, who yielded to the forces of love. The subtext for Arthur and Catherine couldn’t have been clearer.
    However, tragedy awaited the newly-weds. Barely six months later, terrible news reached Elizabeth and Henry in London. After the wedding ceremonies, the young couple had departed for Ludlow, where they had settled into the imposing defensive borders castle. The location was remote and the weather extreme, exacerbating the damp and dirt: a local outbreak of the sweating sickness took hold in the late spring, a painful disease that would dispatch most sufferers within days. Both Arthur and Catherine fell ill. While she survived, he succumbed on 2 April 1502 and the sixteen-year-old Spaniard became a widow after only four and a half months of marriage. The sweat may have been to blame, or else the tuberculosis assumed by nineteenth-century historians. The official record of his funeral related that a long term disease may have been the underlying cause: ‘a pitiful disease and sickness’ of ‘deadly corruption did utterly vanquish and overcome the (healthy) blood’. It is possible that this was testicular tuberculosis, which can cause increased libido but dampen performance, which may provide answers to the lingering questions of Arthur’s marriage and death. The London messengers were afraid to break the news to the king, delaying until the following morning. Devastated by their loss, the king and queen consoled each other as best they could, with Elizabeth telling Henry they still had a ‘fair, goodly’ son and were young enough to have more children. This was no idle promise. Within weeks, she had conceived again.
    The fears that had surfaced during Elizabeth’s previous pregnancy were ominous for the advent of her final child in the winter of 1503. That July at Woodstock, she had been unwell and in September her apothecary was paid for delivering ‘certain stuff’ for the use of the queen. The fact that she had conceived so quickly after consoling Henry with the idea of a new child, suggests she was still fertile but that the couple may have previously decided to limit their family due to her ill health. As she prepared for her confinement, two nurses visited her in November, the start of her final trimester, which may have been routine but may equally have indicated that something was amiss. On the fourteenth, a Mistress Harcourt saw her at Westminster and twelve days later she was attended by a French woman at Baynard’s castle. New bedding and curtains were ordered, accounts for the delivery of bed linen were settled and the girdle of Our Lady of Westminster was delivered mid-December. Right up until the end, Elizabeth was on the move. At the end of January, she