Births

12 Births Erin Griffey Royal births were inherently political, conferring dynastic legitimacy and survival. For queens, it was the ultimate barometer of their virtue; it was the queen’s primary means to contribute to the health and stability of the dynasty and state. Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642) presents motherhood as the consort’s ultimate duty to the state when, on the death of Marie de Bourbon (1605–1627) in childbirth in 1627, he states, ‘she only wanted to be a mother for the sake of the state’.1 From the moment a royal woman became pregnant, she was closely monitored at court and by the public and expectation built to a crescendo for the birth itself. Because of the dynastic significance of childbirth, it was accompanied by lavish expenditure on furnishings and textiles, appointment of staff and attention to protocols to be followed for the birth and lying-in. This chapter illuminates the main stages of royal childbirth, beginning with claims to fertility, proceeding to pregnancy, practical preparations for the birth in furnishing rooms, supplying linens and securing suitable staff, to the birth itself and the lying-in period. As I will stress, the focused attention on the fertile, pregnant and birthing queen at the early modern court was deeply political and invested with dynastic import. If pregnancy signalled fertility and dynastic promise, a successful birth was an occasion of diplomatic potency, too, with the exchange of letters of congratulation that cemented bonds of alliance between courts. For noblewomen at princely courts, too, there was enormous political significance and material extravagance of childbirth, as well as an understanding that motherhood was the centrepiece of her virtue and agency as a wife. This chapter will focus on early modern England and France, especially royal births at the Stuart and Bourbon courts, and include comparative examples from the Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs, the northern Italian princely courts and the German electoral principalities. Fertility – which flourished in a healthy body – was essential for a potential consort; it was illustrated by white, smooth skin and gently blushing cheeks, middling height and weight and good proportions. After marriage, all eyes were on the royal consort to discern if she was pregnant. This was not treated as a private matter but one of great court and public investment. Ambassadorial correspondence is filled with speculation about pregnancy, and families, too, often engaged DOI: 10.4324/9780429277986-16 Births 191 in discussion. Close female servants might well be privy to a missed menstrual period, and the newly pregnant consort might be anxious about revealing her condition too soon, recognising the uncertainty of confirming pregnancy as well as the possibility of miscarriage.2 Once the pregnancy was visible and the mother had felt the ‘quickening’ or movement of the baby in the womb, a tentative excitement began to build, and observers might comment on her eschewal of dangerous activities such as horseback riding and general physical over-exertion.3 After a palace and set of apartments was selected for the queen’s confinement, a rush of activity began in the month or so before the expected birth. The expenses incurred for linens, textiles and furniture were immense. Royal childbirth presented both practical and decorative demands. It was essential that the furnishings were suitably magnificent to mirror the rank of the queen, her husband the king and their royal progeny, thus in purely material terms the furnishings needed to be magnificent. This magnificence had to coexist with the chief practical concerns for a royal birthing mother: ample space, warmth and provision of beds, chairs and stools appropriate for a birthing queen and her attendants. Warmth was an important priority for a birthing and new mother; her cold humours necessitated a fireplace.4 Heavy fabrics encompassed the room like a womb, curtains drawn, tapestries hung, fire lit.5 After the birth, too, the French obstetrician Jacques Guillemeau (1550–1613) insisted on ‘the dores, and windowes of her chamber, being close shut’.6 The biggest financial outlay was for the rich textiles for the beds, a range of which were deployed in different rooms and for different purposes: for the queen, a birthing pallet bed and/or ‘bearing’ chair; a ceremonial bed for the lying-in; a range of pallet beds for servants; a cradle for the newborn to sleep in the nursery as well as a cradle of estate. Preparations were also made in advance for the chapel for the baby’s baptism. Silk mercers, tailors and embroiderers were also busy in the build-up to the birth. Queens relied on their tailors to make new garments or modify existing ones for their growing waist-lines during pregnancy. For the actual birth, they seem to have worn clothing to maintain some modesty, and the many sheets and coverlets allowed the queen’s body to be covered to preserve her dignity. The bedchamber remained a site for the display of fine fashions and exquisite taste in clothing, even for a pregnant queen, or a new mother still recovering in bed. Building and decorative works might also be conducted to prepare the rooms. Anne Boleyn’s (c. 1501–1536) bedchamber was installed with a ‘false Roffe [roof]’ in order ‘to soyle [seal] and hange it with clothe of ares [Arras]’ in preparation for the birth of Elizabeth in 1533.7 Building accounts regularly refer to new works, from a range of basic renovations to the palace (repairing plasterwork, making and mending mats, joinery work, fresh painting and gilding) and to new works that seem to relate specifically to a birth, including kitchens, baths and chimneys. Baths were considered ‘very good’ for women ‘great’ with child or after birth, and numerous recipes were promoted for such purposes, to be prepared by court apothecaries.8 192 Erin Griffey Some sense of what an elite birthing room looked like can be gleaned from Abraham Bosse’s print depicting The Birth from the series, Marriage in the City (Figure 12.1). While the subject is not royal, her status is displayed in the fine furnishings in her rooms and the number of servants depicted. The birthing image includes two beds: a basic pallet bed where she gives birth, and a lying-in bed lavishly dressed in rich textiles and topped with cups of plumes. The image also includes a number of features recommended for childbirth in early modern manuals: the lit fireplace to provide warmth for the mother, the walls covered in tapestries, the locked box with fresh linens, the midwife kneeling on a stool beside the pallet bed, the ladies assisting the mother and servants attending to the bedchamber linens (one appears to be inserting a warming pan to heat the sheets in the great bed in preparation for the mother).9 The man depicted may be the husband, since he is listed in the inscription below. This is an interesting inclusion and may be there to highlight the legitimacy of the child, with his pointing gesture towards the emerging child. Note, however, that the mother’s modesty is preserved with cloths, and the husband is not waiting at the end of the bed. The French royal surgeon indicated that the pallet bed should be provided with ‘good store of linen that they may be changed often, as need shall require’.10 Figure 12.1 Abraham Bosse, The Birth, from the series Marriage in the City, 1633, Etching with engraving (1st state of two), 29.2 × 37.8 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York © Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1926 Births 193 The surviving evidence is limited, but it appears that royal women gave birth both in beds and in birthing chairs or stools. According to the accounts of the French king Henri IV’s (1553–1610) personal physician, Jean Héroard (1551–1628), and Marie de Medici’s midwife, Louise Bourgeois (1563–1636), Marie de Medici (1575–1642) had a bed for labour but gave birth to the dauphin, Louis, in 1601 on a chair.11 For the births of Elisabeth in 1602 and Gaston Jean-Baptiste in 1608, however, she gave birth seated on a ‘lit de travail’.12 Elisabeth (known as Isabel de Bourbon upon her marriage to Philip IV of Spain [1605–1665]) (1602–1644) also probably gave birth in a birthing chair, perhaps like the one of crimson velvet adorned with studs and gold braid listed in her inventory.13 In 1631, the Bourbon princess and Stuart queen, Henrietta Maria (1609–1669), was invoiced by her woollen draper, Richard Aldworth, for a crimson velvet ‘bearing chaire’.14 Numerous sources describe and illustrate the ‘womans stool’, ‘birthing stool’ or ‘birthing chair’, such as the English physician Thomas Raynalde’s The Birth of Man-Kinde.15 Raynalde explains that these chairs were normally sloped in the back, with arms to grasp and a hole cut out in the middle; apparently they enjoyed popularity in France and Germany.16 Justine Siegemund (1636–1705), the Prussian midwife who delivered 20 princely births in the late seventeenth century, also discusses the use of birthing chairs for labour but recommends a bed for the birth itself.17 The French royal surgeon Jacques Guillemeau acknowledges that there are many options open for birthing mothers, whether delivered in bed, on a chair, standing while supported, leaning on a table or chair or kneeling, but like Siegemund advises that a bed delivery is best, with the woman on her back, with her head raised and body propped up with pillows.18 In fact, Siegemund specifies the ideal bed for labour and birth, a bed modified to have a chair in it that had a moveable backrest, and added armrests, side-grips and footrests, providing ‘both a proper birthing chair and a birthing bed’.19 The accompanying engraving provides a diagram of the various parts and functions of the composite bed-chair. With the midwife positioned on a low stool adjacent to the bed ‘half in the bed and half out of it, and so she can back up and move forward’.20 While a birthing chair or an open, easily accessible bed may have been more practical for births, sometimes a bed with curtains was used, as in the case of the English royal birth of James Frances Stuart (1688–1766) in 1688 at St. James’s. The earl of Huntington’s deposition claimed that he ‘stood on that side of the bed that had the curtains drawn open’.21 The curtained bed was used by Williamites in their propaganda to question the paternity of the baby. A curtained bed features in the Dutch printmaker Pieter Pickaert’s depiction of the new mother, her baby proudly displayed by a courtier (Figure 12.2). However, curtained beds which feature in a number of depictions of royal mothers with their newborns may not necessarily have been the beds in which they gave birth but ones they were moved to for after for the extended ‘lying-in’, as will be discussed below. 194 Erin Griffey Figure 12.2 Pieter Pickaert, The Birth of the Prince of Wales, from the series, The Theatre of England, 1688, Etching, 15.2 × 19.5 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam © Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Special ceremonial counterpoints, canopies, mantles and cloths were required for both the birthing mother and the newborn child. These were made of luxurious materials and lavishly trimmed. Many of the ceremonial mantles and textiles associated with childbirth at the Stuart court are crimson in hue. By contrast, blue predominated in the Catherine of Aragon’s (1485–1536) first child’s cradle of estate; tragically, Catherine was delivered of a stillborn daughter in 1510.22 Margaret of Austria’s (1584–1611) son, Fernando (1609– 41), had a crimson silk canopy for his cradle as well as for the bed hangings on his governess’s bed.23 And Mary of Burgundy (1457–1482) first slept in a bed hung with green samite fabric in her nursery. Many of the linens associated with the birth, lying-in and newborn baby were perfumed. The power of religious imagery, objects and relics in the context of childbirth was commonplace in early modern Europe. Traditionally women were encouraged to model themselves on the ultimate mother, the Virgin Mary, in pregnancy. Sacred objects associated with the Virgin Mary, as well as Mary Magdalen and other saints were regularly viewed or held by labouring women to assist with safe delivery.24 King James II of England’s (1633–1701) consort, Mary of Modena (1658–1718), prayed for a child through the intercession Births 195 of the Virgin and her mother, Laura, the duchess of Modena (1639–1687), visited the Shrine at Loreto to pray for this.25 This was incendiary to English Protestants anxious about a Catholic heir, and was immortalised in a playing card – of the three of spades – part of a set of cards of c. 1688–1689 that commemorated events during the reign of James II and 1688 revolution. The engraving depicts the duchess kneeling in prayer to a statue of the Virgin at Loreto. The inscription caustically explains the image: ‘The Duches of Modena Presenting a wedge of Gold to the Lady of Loreta that ye Q: might Conceve a son [sic]’.26 For a Catholic like Mary of Modena, such intercession was deemed very powerful – and in this case, ultimately successful. Indeed, in early modern society as a whole, imagery mattered; as the English writer Hannah Woolley (1622–c. 1675) puts it in her Gentlewoman’s companion (1673), there are ‘two gates of the Soul: the Ears and the Eyes; let the last be imployed on good and proper Subjects’.27 What constituted ‘good and proper’ seems to have varied according to various stages of pregnancy and birth. Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472), writing in 1452, maintained that wherever man and wife come together, it is advisable only to hang portraits of men of dignity and handsome appearance; for they say that this may have a great influence on the fertility of the mother and the appearance of the future offspring.28 Apparently, imagery was also seen to play a role in determining a child’s gender. Such was Charles VI of Austria’s (1685–1740) desire to have a male child that he decorated his pregnant wife’s bedchamber with ‘erotic images of manly beauty and strength’ in an effort to stimulate her imagination and make the baby male.29 Although the Holy Roman Emperor was unsuccessful, his thinking was in keeping with contemporary views that the baby in the womb was susceptible to the imagery seen by the mother. When Maria Theresa of Spain (1638–1683), consort of Louis XIV of France (1638–1715), gave birth to a child in November 1664 with dark skin, this was ascribed to the queen being frightened by black people at court before the birth.30 Naturally, pictures and figured tapestries were judiciously selected for the birthing bedchamber, since it was believed that the mother and the foetus were impacted by such imagery. Moreover, during pregnancy and birth, it was considered important to view beautiful things and avoid monstrous or unpleasant imagery.31 This view was not only popularly accepted but endorsed by the Bible, ancient sources and contemporary writers.32 The French surgeon Ambroise Paré (c. 1510–1590) provides a host of examples of monstrous births that result from ‘some object, or fantastic dream’ seen at the moment of conception.33 The stories represented in tapestries as well as the pictures also hand-selected for such bedchambers served a specific function – to keep the mother focused on suitable exemplars and beautiful images, especially the Virgin and Child. Margaret of Austria commissioned a representation of the Expectation of the Virgin on the eve of childbirth. At the Spanish court, images and observations associated with the 196 Erin Griffey Virgin’s pregnancy were particularly important as a sign of devotion.34 Indeed, the Santa Cinta de Tortosa (Sacred Girdle of Tortosa), purportedly woven and worn by the Virgin and kept since 1178 in Tortosa Cathedral, was meant to help in difficult births. Elisabeth of France (Isabel de Bourbon) used the girdle during the birth of Balthasar Carlos in 1629 and used at subsequent Spanish queens’ deliveries.35 Of 50 pictures listed in the inventory of the queen’s oratory, 42 depicted the Virgin Mary.36 Marian imagery was central to pregnant and birthing mothers in Catholic Spain and France as well as for Catholic consorts in Protestant countries, such as Mary of Modena.37 In the first instance, Marian imagery was deemed suitable given the strong devotional role of Mary for mothers, especially Catholic ones. As the example above about Mary of Modena indicates, miraculous images of the Virgin Mary were seen to play an active role in securing fertility and a healthy child; pilgrimages to Marian shrines were common and prayers for her intercession constant.38 This is evidenced by another Catholic queen at the Stuart court, Henrietta Maria. Her priest recounted how she prayed for the intercession of the Virgin during a ‘bad lying-in’.39 In addition, Abraham van der Doort’s inventory of around 1639 provides compelling evidence for the pictures selected for Henrietta Maria’s birth of her daughter, Catherine, at Whitehall, who tragically died soon after birth. Marian imagery located the queen as a type for her namesake Mary, the royal children as divinely ordained. The centrality of religious imagery in the context of childbirth is suggested, too, by the presence of relics in Marie de Medici’s birthing chamber in 1601. According to her French midwife, Louise Bourgeois, Marie had relics of St. Margaret on a table during childbirth.40 In Renaissance Italy, the legend of St. Margaret was often read during labour or even placed on the mother’s stomach if she was illiterate.41 Much of the literature on early modern childbirth stresses that the birthing bedchamber was exclusively the domain of women, with husbands and male servants explicitly barred from entry.42 Led by the midwife, the birthing woman was supported by a close-knit circle of ‘gossips’ or female neighbours, relatives and friends.43 Royal births did indeed involve groups of women assisting in the labour, birth and associated preparations – chamberers, midwives, laundry maids – as well as the female governess, wet and dry nurses and other servants to care for the baby after birth. But for many queens, it was not exclusively a female event, with a male physician and the king often present.44 Indeed, royal births tended to be crowded events with many witnesses to the legitimacy of the birth. For important dynastic births in England and France, it was a custom for the king to be present. There was a particularly large assembly at the court of James II of England for Mary of Modena’s birth of James Francis Edward in 1688, and Pickaert’s etching certainly teems with people. As mentioned earlier, there was fear amongst English Protestants that a male heir presented the prospect of an ongoing Catholic dynasty. Understanding the scrutiny around the event, the court ensured a major presence of witnesses, including James II himself, Charles II’s widow Catherine of Braganza (1638–1705), privy councillors, senior female courtiers, chamberers, doctors and midwives. The political significance of the Births 197 birth meant that, as James II claimed, ‘scarce any prince was ever born where there were so many persons present’.45 The presence of physicians for Mary of Modena’s birth was normal for Stuart queens. This differed from the custom amongst the broader population, for whom birthing women were attended by a midwife alone unless problems arose. The queens consort Anna of Denmark (1574–1619) and Henrietta Maria were also attended by both a physician and a midwife for births. Both of Anna’s English births were overseen by Peter Chamberlen the Elder (1560–1631), who was also on hand for Henrietta Maria’s aforementioned first birth of a premature son Charles James, at Greenwich; the baby died the same day.46 Henrietta Maria was attended at her other births by the French midwife, Madame Peronne, who was personally sent by her mother Marie de Medici. Henrietta Maria was also served by the French-born royal physician, Théodore de Mayerne (1573–1655), as well as her longstanding French nurse, Françoise de Monbodiac. Mayerne had previously been physician to Henri IV of France, and his role suited Henrietta Maria’s interest in having a strong French presence for her births and for her children.47 We can glean from a well-placed source in France that physicians attended at royal births there, too. Bourgeois, who delivered all six of Marie de Medici’s children, produced a number of medical texts on obstetrics and gynaecology. Bourgeois explains that for the 1601 birth of the dauphin, the future Louis XIII (1601–1643), physicians came into the birthing room periodically to consult her and check on the queen.48 Other French accounts from the period also indicate that physicians and surgeons came into the room as required.49 High-ranking courtiers might also be present during labour. The French king Henri IV reportedly asked the courtier François de Bassompiere (1579–1646) to play cards with his wife while she was in labour in 1606.50 Anne Boleyn’s birthing bedchamber had been set up with a new games table for Elizabeth’s birth in 1533.51 Much like Mary of Modena’s 1688 ceremonial birth, the traditional French royal birthing bedchamber was a crowded event with the mother at centrestage; after the birth, the onlookers increased, with Bourgeois estimating that there were around 200 people in the antechamber and birthing chamber after the successful delivery in 1601 of the future Louis XIII.52 Although this frustrated Bourgeois, who thought it ‘most improper to bring all these people in before the queen was safely in bed’, the king insisted that this was the convention for a queen’s first royal birth: ‘Don’t be angry: this child belongs to everybody, and everybody must be allowed to rejoice at it!’53 Indeed, in France under Henri IV royal births were events of major state importance, and necessitated the public presence of princes of blood to legitimise the birth. This protocol continued under later Bourbon monarchs, including Louis XIV. This was not, however, how it was done in Spain, where births were relatively private events, overseen by the camerera mayor (the equivalent of the English mistress of the robes), ladies in waiting and medical professionals.54 Apothecaries were necessary for royal births, too, to make medicinal preparations, but it seems likely that they customarily worked outside the bedchamber itself. Apothecaries were invariably involved in preparing ‘Baths, Fumigations, 198 Erin Griffey oyntments, Plaisters, odours, and such like’ for births, and numerous recipes were published to be on hand, either made specifically by the queen’s apothecary or procured through apothecary shops for labouring mothers and postnatal ailments for mother and child.55 Mary of Modena’s apothecary, James St. Amand (c. 1643–1728), testified that he prepared a number of remedies for the pregnant queen, and had made medicines prescribed by physicians for Mary during labour. Furthermore, he was present after the birth, taking a blood sample and seeing the afterbirth.56 The attendants present at royal births were thus generally far more varied and numerous than normal childbirths. The strong presence of women, though, is consistent, but male physicians were closely involved, and the king seems to have in some cases been present for at least part of the labour and/ or for the birth itself. The range of staff and witnesses called in for royal births depended to some extent on the political circumstances and the quickness with which the queen went into labour, as well as whether this was a first child. As suited the political and dynastic significance of the event, the people involved with the birth were carefully chosen and liberally rewarded. Baby boys were greatly anticipated (if not outwardly expected), providing strong dynastic branches for a stable future, since succession passed first through sons. Bourgeois received 300 ecus if Marie de Medici gave birth to a girl but a dramatically higher 500 ecus for the birth of a boy.57 However Henri IV apparently saw a consolation in having daughters, reassuring his wife that daughters were necessary to make alliances with England and France.58 Moreover, girls, like boys, could function as ‘Olive branches round about his [the king’s] table’.59 The reception of baby girls tended to be rather muted, if not outwardly negative. The marchesa of Mantua, Isabella d’Este’s (1474–1539) disappointment at the births of her first born (Eleonora, born 1493) and second child (Margherita, born 1496) is revealing. After Eleonora’s birth, she wrote to her sister, ‘You will have heard how I have given birth to a little girl, who is well, as I am, although she is not what I wanted’. The second daughter’s birth led again to her confiding in her disappointment. It was only with the birth of Federico in 1500 that she spoke of great happiness, attributing the male child to God’s grace.60 The apprehension around the gender of the new baby was joined with a host of other concerns – about the health of the mother and baby. Birth was a dangerous business and death was always a real possibility, even for queens with the best physicians, most skilful surgeons and most experienced midwives. Contemporary texts regularly describe births as ‘travails’ for good reason.61 If the mother’s survival may have been in question, the infant’s was even more precarious.62 Many queens and aristocratic women experienced miscarriage, a stillborn child and/or a child who died in infancy. It was not uncommon to suffer all three. The English Queen Anne’s (1665–1714) fate was particularly horrific: she endured 17 pregnancies, resulting in only 5 live births; 4 children died in infancy. Anne’s only surviving son, William Henry, duke of Gloucester Births 199 (1689–1700), died aged 11 of smallpox. Such was the strain on queens to provide heirs, some underwent a phantom pregnancy, as experienced by Anne, Catherine of Braganza, and the Tudor queen Mary I (1516–1558). It is no wonder, then, that royal births were treated with both great pomp – and great anxiety. The lying-in took place immediately after birth and lasted for around a month.63 The new mother was moved to her lying-in bed, which may have been in a different chamber from the one in which she had given birth but in the same set of apartments.64 The room was, like the birthing chamber, enclosed, both physically and symbolically. Curtains kept out light and there was no fresh air. The mother was propped up in her bed with her head and body slightly raised.65 And she abided by a special diet, and was given carefully prepared baths and other restorative treatments.66 The lavishly appointed chamber was a reflection of the queen’s status as a mother to the dynasty and necessary for the elite audiences who came to offer their congratulations. Moreover, the material magnificence of the lying-in chamber was a mirror of the dynastic significance of the event and a suitable stage for the queen’s central role. The lying-in bed seems to have been often newly made or at the very least freshly and lavishly modified. There is strong evidence for Henrietta Maria’s magnificent lying-in beds, which were remarkably varied in their colour and rich in their cloth and trimmings. The wardrobe accounts for the furnishings required for the 1631 birth of the Princess Royal, Mary, are particularly plentiful. Four beds were supplied, including a great bed for the lying-in of tawnycoloured velvet with rich silver embroidery and fringe as well as matching chairs, stools and cushions. There were also two carpets, a screen, a necessary stool and even a silver rail erected around the bed, possibly in the manner of a balustrade in the French fashion. This bedchamber was also freshly painted and gilt in the same period.67 The provision of several high chairs and stools anticipate an elite audience that warranted seating. This extravagant lying-in bed is followed in the accounts by a bed dressed in crimson damask with gold and silver fringe with matching counterpoint, cradle, five folding stools, one folding chair, four low stools, a low chair, a dressing table and a screen. This is presumably the bed for the nursery, and there were rails here, too, to enclose the chimney, and several quilts and pillows for the cradle. Finally, there were beds apparelled in crimson damask for the governess and wet nurse.68 The lying-in was a period of both seclusion and sociability, with the mother physically recuperating alongside gradual visits of congratulation. Often associated in contemporary literature with the extravagant feasting and chattering of women, ‘gossips’, the lying-in was the subject of extensive satire for the over-the-top demands of women for fine food, drink and baby linen.69 That is not to say that a queen could not engage in political matters while recovering ‘her strength’; just five days into her lying-in after the birth of James, Henrietta Maria had ‘much to do’: she was actively engaged in campaigning for Sir Francis Nethersole (1587–1659) and his efforts to secure money for the 200 Erin Griffey Palatinate cause.70 As the Venetian ambassador, Giovanni Giustinian put it, it was necessary ‘to do what friendship requires and express the solicitude with which your Excellencies regard the happy events of this House’.71 Official ambassadorial audiences seem to have happened at the end of the period of confinement allowing the queen time to regain her health and strength.72 A work traditionally attributed to Masaccio known as the Berlin Tondo provides a rare depiction of the lying-in of an elite Florentine lady (Figure 12.3). Here, represented on a desco da parto (birthing tray), is a rare depiction of an elite Florentine lady. A trumpeter and other men, including one himself holding a birthing tray, celebrate the birth but are positioned outside the new mother’s space. Elegantly dressed women and nuns process into the mother’s chamber on the right, bringing prayers and support, while the mother, in bed, is served by ladies, including a woman who holds the newborn baby. This depiction clearly demarcates the space of outside and inside, men and women, within the context of childbirth; and it records the gifts and celebrations that Figure 12.3 Masaccio, Lying-in of a Florentine Lady, c. 1423, Tempera on wood, 56 cm in diameter, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin © Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo MPTBG1 Births 201 accompany it as well as the well-appointed room of the new mother, complete with wall hangings, a red coverlet – and neatly encompassed by the protective bodies of her attendant ladies. While not an image of a birth at court, the tondo commemorates an elite birth in a manner akin to a Nativity of Christ, thus promoting the social status of the couple – and presumably, the birth of a much-desired son. Bosse also depicts a lying-in scene (Figure 12.4) in the same series as the one in which he represented childbirth (Figure 12.1). This is situated in a different room from the one for childbirth. The lying-in bed, complete with lavish embroidered or brocaded silk hangings with deep fringe and topped with plume-filled cups, is exceptionally rich. The mother is shown sitting up in bed and wearing fine clothing. Even if Masaccio’s and Bosse’s images are not necessarily exact mirrors of elite births and lyings-in, they document furnishings and rituals around birth and lying-in that are largely consistent with the accounts of the period. There are some representations of the lying-in at the French court. Predictably, a stately bed is depicted with a host of courtly figures present. The birth of sons was clearly of particular import. On 6 August 1682, Maria Figure 12.4 Abraham Bosse, Visit to the New Mother, from the series Marriage in the City, 1633, Etching with engraving (1st state of two), 26.4 × 34.5 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York © Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1951 202 Erin Griffey Anna Victoria of Bavaria (1660–1690) gave birth to the son of the grand dauphin, Louis (1661–1711), himself the eldest son of Louis XIV. A painting by Antoine Dieu (Figure 12.5) shows Louis XIV with the dauphin, his wife and son and other members of the nobility, with a rich green bed in the background demarcated by a balustrade. Similarly, the French royal almanac from 1683 depicts the lying-in as a state event, the luxurious bed hangings and counterpoint appropriate for a bed of state.73 With a clear line of male heirs, this was a monumental childbirth for the Bourbon dynasty. In conclusion, childbirth at the early modern court was inherently political. It promised dynastic continuity, political stability and diplomatic opportunity through the marital alliances of the children. Across Europe, there were examples of childless couples, such as the Archduke Albert (1559–1621) and Archduchess Isabella (1566–1633) of the Netherlands; and King Louis XIII of France and Anne of Austria (1601–1666) had to wait 23 long years for an heir. Consorts who only bore female children, too, proved problematic in the case of Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, and many other women were marked for their inability to bear a living heir. Further, the fragility of surviving infants and children was a reminder that a single heir was not sufficient, and there were stark reminders of the vicissitudes of fortunes, such as the death of the beloved Henry, prince of Wales, who was succeeded by a younger brother who grew up in his shadow. If childbirth was highly politicised, it was also highly ritualised. Preparations, rituals, furnishings and decorations for royal births and lying-in were carefully calculated to promote the magnificence of the monarch and dynasty and to conform to contemporary medical opinion. Figure 12.5 Antoine Dieu, Birth of the Duke of Burgundy in 1682, 1715, Oil on canvas, 343 × 563 cm, Palace of Versailles © The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo MNXMP0 Births 203 Spaces were adapted, furnishings sourced and ordered, staff were appointed. Craftsmen laboured intensively to cut, embroider and trim the finest fabrics and materials and the upholsterer set up rooms with an impeccable eye for detail. Royal births were the stage not just of dynastic succession but for material splendour. Notes 1 ‘n’avoit desire être mère que pour le salut de l’Etat’; Mémoires du Cardinal Richelieu Sur le Régne de Louis XIII, Depuis 1610 Jusqu’a 1638, ed. M. Petitot, III (Paris: Foucault, 1823), 306. 2 Lisa W. Smith, ‘Imagining Women’s Fertility before Technology’, Journal of Medical Humanities 31, no. 1 (2010): 69–79; Linda A. Pollock, ‘Embarking on a Rough Passage: The Experience of Pregnancy in Early-Modern Society’, in Women as Mothers in PreIndustrial England: Essays in Memory of Dorothy Mclaren, ed.Valerie A. Fildes and Dorothy McLaren (London: Routledge, 1990). 3 Cathy McClive, ‘The Hidden Truths of the Belly: The Uncertainties of Pregnancy in Early Modern Europe’, Social History of Medicine 15, no. 2 (2002): 212, 214–18, 209–27; Pollock, ‘Embarking’, 50–1. 4 For seventeenth-century obstetric advice, see Jacques Guillemeau, Child-Birth, or, The Happy Deliverie of Women (London: A. Hatfield, 1612), 102–3. See also Wendy Perkins, Midwifery and Medicine in Early Modern France: Louise Bourgeois, 33; Jacques Gélis, History of Childbirth: Fertility, Pregnancy and Birth in Early Modern Europe, trans. Rosemary Morris (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1991), 96–7; Audrey Eccles, Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Tudor and Stuart England (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1982), 91. 5 On the physical enclosure of the bedchamber for childbirth and the lying-in, see Adrian Wilson, ‘The Ceremony of Childbirth and its Interpretation’, in Women as Mothers in Pre-Industrial England, ed. Valerie Fildes (London: Routledge, 1990), 73; Adrian Wilson, ‘Participant or Patient: Seventeenth-Century Childbirth from the Mother’s Point of View’, in Patients and Practitioners: Lay Perceptions of Medicine in Pre-Industrial Society, ed. Roy Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 134–5. 6 Guillemeau, Child-Birth, 103. 7 J.W. Kirby, ‘Building Work at Placentia 1532–1533’, Transactions of the Greenwich and Lewisham Antiquarian Society 5 (1957): 48–9. 8 See for example Jane Sharp, The Midwives Book, or, The Whole Art of Midwifry Discovered (London: Simon Miller, 1671), 184–5. 9 See Guillemeau, Child-Birth, 87. His instructions for childbirth on 86–9 are useful to read alongside this image. 10 Guillemeau, Child-Birth, 87. 11 Jean Héroard, Journal de Jean Hérourd sur l’enfance et la jeunesse de Louis XIII, II (Paris: F. Didot, 1868), 2; Louise Bourgeois, Les Six Couches de Marie de Médicis, ed. Achille Chéreau (Paris: L. Willem, 1875), 114. 12 Bourgeois, Six Couches, 136 and 148. 13 María Cruz de Carlos Varona, ‘Entre el riesgo y la necesidad: embarazo, alumbramiento y culto a la Virgen en los espacios femeninos del Alcázar de Madrid (siglo XVII)’, Arenal 13, no. 2 (2006): 272. 14 The National Archives [hereafter TNA], LR5/64, bill for midsummer quarter 1631.This is the only such chair I have found in the queen’s bills, and may have been used for all of the births. 15 Raynalde discusses the use of such stools in France and Germany in its first edition of 1540, The Birth of Man-Kinde, First Book, fol. 21r, but first illustrates ‘the womans stool’ in the 1560 edition. 204 Erin Griffey 16 For this description, see Raynalde, Birth of Man-Kinde (London: H. Lownes, 1626), 100. On the history of the birthing stool, and later chair, see Gélis, History of Childbirth, 129–30. 17 The Court Midwife, ed. and trans. Lynne Tatlock (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 86, 154 and 234. 18 Guillemeau, Child-Birth, 87–8. 19 Tatlock, Court Midwife, 197–9. 20 Tatlock, Court Midwife, 198. 21 Depositions made in council on Monday, 22 October 1688, concerning the birth of the prince of Wales. 22 Hayward, Dress at the Court of King Henry VIII (London: Routledge, 2017), 198, citing TNA, E101/417/3, no. 84/LP I.i, 394.2. 23 María Cruz de Carlos Varona, ‘Representar el nacimiento: imágenes y cultura material de un espacio de sociabilidad femenina en la Espãna altomoderna’, Goya: Revista de arte, 319/320 (2007): 234. 24 Mary E. Fissell, Vernacular Bodies: The Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 14–16, 22–4. 25 Gilbert Burnet, History of His Own Time (London: Printed for Thomas Ward, 1724), I, 749. 26 British Museum, London, no. 1896,0501.920.1-51. 27 Woolley, The Gentlewomans Companion; or A Guide to the Female Sex (London, 1673), 8. 28 Cited in Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, The Art and Ritual of Childbirth in Renaissance Italy (New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 1999), 130. 29 Charles W. Ingrao and Andrew L. Thomas, ‘Piety and Power: The Empresses-Consort of the High Baroque’, in Queenship in Europe, 1600–1815: The Role of the Consort, ed. Clarissa Campbell Orr (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 114. 30 Ruth Norrington, My Dearest Minette: The Letters between Charles II and His Sister Henriette, Duchesse d’Orléans (London: Peter Owen, 1996), 97. 31 Fissell, Vernacular Bodies, 65–6 and 207–8; Gélis, History of Childbirth, 53; Eccles, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, 64–5. 32 The biblical story most commonly cited in the seventeenth century to support this is the Genesis story of Jacob and the spotted sheep; see Genesis 30: 27–43. 33 Ambroise Paré, Des Monstres et prodigies, On Monsters and Marvels, trans. Janis L. Pallister (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 45; see 45–51 for examples. 34 María Cruz de Carlos Varona, ‘Entre el riesgo y la necessidad: embarazo, alumbramiento y culto a la Virgen en los espacios femeninos del Alcázar de Madrid (siglo XVII)’, Arenal 13, no. 2 (2006): 279–80. 35 Carlos Varona, ‘Entre el riesgo y la necessidad’, 286–7. 36 Carlos Varona, ‘Entre el riesgo y la necessidad’, 287. 37 This quote is taken from the description of Elizabeth of York’s inner chamber, where she gave birth in 1486; cited by Hayward, Dress at the Court of King Henry VIII, 199. 38 As was the case with Anne of Austria; see Gélis, History of Childbirth, 17–18. See also more generally, 69–70. 39 Cyprien de Gamache in Thomas Birch, ed., The Court and Times of Charles the First; Illustrated by Authentic and Confidential Letters, from Various Public and Private Collections (London: Henry Colburn, 1848–1849), II, 330–1. 40 Bourgeois, Six Couches, 110. 41 Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, ‘Conception and Birth’, in At Home in Renaissance Italy, ed. Marta Ajmar-Wollheim and Flora Dennis (London:V&A Publications, 2006), 128. 42 See Laura Gowing, Common Bodies: Women, Touch and Power in Seventeenth-Century England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), especially 149–54; Wilson, ‘Ceremony of Childbirth’; Wilson, ‘Participant or Patient’, 132 and 134; Fissell, Vernacular Bodies, 70. 43 Numerous obstetric texts outline the qualities and duties of the midwife. See for example Guillemeau, Child-Birth, 84–103. Births 205 44 See also Pollock, ‘Embarking’, 53. 45 Pollock, ‘Embarking’. 46 Elizabeth Lane Furdell, The Royal Doctors, 1485–1714, Medical Personnel at the Tudor and Stuart Courts (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2001), 113, and Jack Dewhurst, Royal Confinements (London: Wiedenfeld and Nicolson, 1980), 5. For a contemporary account of the 1629 birth, see Birch, Court and Times of Charles the First (London, 1848), I, 355–6. 47 On Mayerne, see Furdell, Royal Doctors, 101–5 and 120. 48 Bridgette Sheridan, ‘At Birth: The Modern State, Modern Medicine, and the Royal Midwife Louise Bourgeois in Seventeenth-Century France’, Dynamis: Acta Hispanica ad Medicinae Scientiarumque Historiam Illustrandam 19 (1999): 152. On Bourgeois’s account of the birth of the dauphin generally, see 152–5, or see the original account, Six Couches, 103–25; Bourgeois lists five physicians and a surgeon for the birth of the dauphin, 107. 49 Sheridan, ‘At Birth’, 154. 50 François de Bassompiere, Journal de ma Vie: Mémoires du Maréchal de Bassompiere, ed. Marquis de Chantérac, 4 vols. (Paris: Mme Ve. J. Renouard, 1870–1877), I, 174. 51 Kirby, ‘Building Work at Placentia’, 23. 52 For her account of the birth, see Récit, 163–5. See also Gélis, History of Childbirth, 192, and Sheridan, ‘At Birth’, 146. 53 Quoted in and translated by Gélis, History of Childbirth, 192; see also Sheridan, ‘At Birth’, 147, and Bourgeois, Six Couches, 104. 54 Carlos Varona, ‘Entre el riesgo y la necessidad’, 270. 55 Raynalde, Birth (London, 1626), 138, with recipes on 149–53. 56 Depositions made in council on Monday, 22 October 1688, concerning the birth of the prince of Wales. 57 Bourgeois, Six Couches, 154. 58 See Bourgeois’s account of the birth of Elisabeth of France, Six Couches, 135. 59 See for example Anonymous, Thankesgiuing for the Queenes Maiesties Safe deliuerance 9. April 1605 (London: Robert Barker, 1605), A2. 60 Christine Shaw, Isabella d’Este: A Renaissance Princess (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), 33–5. 61 See for example Bourgeois, Six Couches, 109, and Raynalde, Birth (London, 1626), 41. 62 Pollock, ‘Embarking’, 47–9. 63 Bourgeois, Six Couches, 125; Guillemeau, Child-Birth, 189. Anonymous, The English Midwife (London, 1682), 251, recommends 5–6 weeks. 64 Tatlock, Court Midwife, 199. 65 Anonymous, The English Midwife (London, 1682), 241–2. 66 Guillemeau, Child-Birth, 189–203. 67 TNA, E351/3266: Account of Henry Wicks from 1 October 1632 to 30 September 1633. 68 TNA, LC5/132, 269. 69 See Gowing, Common Bodies, 172–6. 70 Calendar of State Papers of the Reign of Charles I, vol. 6: 1633–1634, ed. John Bruce (London: Longman, 1863); 19 October 1633, 253–4. 71 27 July 1640 account of the Venetian ambassador Giovanni Giustinian, Calendar of State Papers,Venice, vol. 25, 1640–1642, ed. Allen B. Hinds (London: H.M.S.O., 1924) 54–61. 72 See for example the 18 November 1633 dispatch from the Venetian ambassador, Vincenzo Gussoni, Calendar of State Papers,Venice, vol. 23, 1632–1636, ed. Allen B. Hinds (London: H.M.S.O., 1921), 159–68. 73 Nicolas Larmessin II; Palace of Versailles, engraving, 1683.