Since I started reading Dr Nicola Tallis`s fabulous new book on Margaret Beaufort, I have been thinking about Margaret, her extremely early pregnancy with the future Henry VII, as well as Francis`s mother Joan Beaumont and her similarly early pregnancies.
The trigger for all these thoughts, and for this article, was Tallis´s statement that though it is usually assumed that Margaret had no more children after Henry because her giving birth at only 13 years of age made her infertile, this is not actually proved, and there might have been other reasons for it.
Naturally, I have nothing to say against this statement. It`s indubitably true. There was no way, with the medicine known in the 15th century, to ascertain infertility, even less the cause of it, and so today, we can only guess about the issues that affected the men and women at the time. However, in the light of all this, the thoughts and opinions of people in the 15th century about fertility and extremely young births are interesting and very telling.
Famously, by law, the age of consent in the 15th century was 12 years for women and 14 years for men. It is sometimes assumed that because of this, sex at this very young age was common and accepted. This is not so; and though it was not punishable by law, society at large did not look kindly on such early consummation. [1] Margaret`s extreme youth when she became pregnant and her husband Edmund Tudor`s decision to consummate their marriage this early caused a lot of unfavourable comments in contemporary and early modern sources, and there is evidence she herself considered it far too early. Many years later, she would counsel her son Henry VII not to allow his daughter, her granddaughter Margaret, to be married too early, as it could "injure her health". Obviously, she had her own experiences in mind and did not consider these experiences as normal and expected.
Nor was Margaret a special case, who was commented on because of the high status she had and the even higher status she got in later life. Though her case was lesser known than Margaret Beaufort´s, for the simple reason than she was of somewhat lesser birth and status, her contemporary Joan Beaumont`s very early pregnancy was similarly regarded with disgust by those who knew of it.
Born two years before Margaret, Joan became pregnant at some point in late 1454 or early 1455, at the age of just 13. She was, therefore, only a few months older than Margaret was when she became pregnant. She gave birth either shortly before or - somewhat more likely - shortly after her fourteenth birthday, to a boy called John, after his father. Though this small boy`s birth did not cause the comments Henry Tudor`s birth did, Joan`s pregnancy was not greeted with joy by her relatives. Her father-in-law, already less than friendly towards his son, Joan`s husband John Lovell, in his will, added a codicil shortly before his death, by which time he must have known of his daughter-in-law`s pregnancy. In this codicil, John Lovell was all but disinherited, with his father making sure he would only receive a pittance of his large fortune, and almost nothing for nearly as long as it would take for Joan`s child to reach majority. It is hard not to see a show of his feelings about his then 22-year-old son`s actions in consummating his marriage with his barely teenaged wife in this, but Joan`s own father was to make his feelings even clearer. In his own will, written in 1456, by which time Joan, then 14, was already pregnant again, he left a small amount of money to his baby grandson, but stated that his daughter ("my daughter Lovell, my life") was "to the fury of God, wife of John my son". It is, therefore, quite clear that so early consummation was not something that was accepted and expected. Like Margaret advised for her granddaughter, with her own experiences in mind, it seems that Joan`s son, Francis Lovell, took his mother`s experiences to heart when contemplating marriages for his sisters. Both of them were only married after their sixteenth birthday - a clear sign that like Margaret, he didn`t want to take any chances.
However, there is an obvious difference in the cases of Margaret Beaufort and Joan Beaumont, which harks back to the original point of the cause of Henry Tudor remaining an only child. Though only a few months older than Margaret when she first gave birth, Joan remained very fertile. Within only a couple of months of her first birth, she was pregnant again, and the pregnancy was successful - doubly remarkable as this second pregnancy resulted in a twin birth, something that was even more dangerous at the time than a single birth. That Joan survived both those births, together with all three babies, and remained fertile even after this, giving birth twice more in the following ten years, could suggest that it was not Margaret`s extremely early pregnancy and birth that caused her apparent infertility after Henry`s birth.
However, it is sheerest guesswork, and does nothing more than perhaps throw a doubt on this assumption. We know far too little to say that these cases were so similar that such a comparison makes sense. It is entirely possible that despite being nearly Margaret`s age, Joan was taller and stronger than Margaret, who was said to be very small even in her adult years, and therefore able to recover better from the births. It´s also possible, and in the case of her second pregnany, even likely, that Joan went into labour somewhat prematurely, and giving birth to therefore smaller babies did less lasting damage. All of this is possible, none of it is verifiable, and cannot therefore be used to debunk or confirm the cause of Margaret`s infertility, and Joan`s continued fertility.
It is notable, however, that Margaret herself apparently seemed to think that her early pregnancy and birth had caused her infertility, or at the very least contributed to it, as can be seen in her statement that if her granddaughter was married too early it could "injure her health". This is particularly interesting in that while it obviously assumed it was because of her that her subsequent marriages after her first husband`s death had not produced any children, she saw her first husband´s actions in making her pregnant so early as at least partly responsible. In an age when infertility was almost always seen as the woman`s fault, this is certainly remarkable. That Margaret`s son and daughter-in-law apparently agreed, both supporting her point of view about this and their daughter`s marriage, suggests that the connection between too early births and infertility was at the very least seen as logical and a risk not worth taking - in addition to the very real and provable risk to a mother and child`s life in the case of a birth at too young an age.
Of course, what really caused Margaret`s infertility cannot be ascertained, but she herself, and her contemporaries, seemed to connect it with her experiences and her too early pregnancy and birth. Joan Beaumont was lucky in that she did not suffer those consequences, but she faced other perils. Her husband John Lovell, apparently an unsavoury character, did not seem to treat her well, even apart from forcing her to become pregnant so very early. Nor did he seem to treat his twin children well, with his relationship to his first son, John Lovell jr, who sadly died in childhood, unknown. With the birth of twins being in several legends seen as caused by a mother`s sexual appetites, in some cases even casting doubt on the twins` paternity, it might have given John Lovell ammunition for his bad treatment. All that can be said is that, through no consideration of his own, he definitely did not destroy his young wife`s fertility, while in the case of Edmund Tudor, he very well might have, and was at least contemporarily thought to be responsible for destroying Margaret Beaufort`s chance of having more children.
[1] In fact, most people only married in their twenties. It was only nobility who married so very young in the first place.
No comments:
Post a Comment