genealogical understandings and the case of Henry VIII and his wives and
issue, since his marriages were central to the course of the English
Reformation, are among the best reported and most scrutinized of all. But a
good deal of cant has been written about it.
A theory was put forward some years ago, in Retha Warnicke's biography of
Anne Boleyn, that the male fetus Anne miscarried in January 1536 was
deformed. Warnicke argues that since deformed children were thought to
result from incest or other sexual transgressions, Henry VIII got the idea
that Anne had committed incest, or at least that the deformed fetus was used
to prove that she had committed incest w/her brother. There is however no
contemporary reference to a deformed fetus in January 1536, nor was such an
argument used in the trials of Queen Anne or her brother. In fact a report
from an Italian ambassador at the time says that Anne was only in the 4th
month of pregnancy when she miscarried, so while it may have been possible
to determine that it was male, only the grossest deformity would have been
visible--and again, no known source at the time mentions any such deformity.
Warnicke's work has not met with general approval.
The theory that Henry VIII had venereal disease originated only in the 19th
century. It is known that Henry suffered for decades before his death with
a venous ulcer on one leg. Such a lesion can be a sign of syphilis but
there can be many other causes as well. As Victorian historians were always
ready to deal with scandal, however, it quickly became a byword that the
early deaths of many of Henry's children, including Edward VI, resulted from
hereditary syphilis. Mary I's childlessness was also blamed on Henry's
supposed venereal disease.
We know that Henry suffered a bad leg injury in a tournament (not the fall
that supposedly led to Anne Boleyn's miscarriage in 1536). An equally
persuasive post-facto diagnosis is that he developed chronic osteomyelitis
after the broken leg and the ulcer resulted from that disease. Just
possibly, the long existence of such a chronic infection could have lowered
his fertility levels, or ended them, explaining why he failed to impregnate
the Katherines Howard & Parr. (The evidence seems quite overwhelming that
the marriage to Anne of Cleves was never consummated. It is also possible
that given Henry's age and extremely poor health by the time he married
Katherine Parr, that was only a marriage of companionship. Certainly during
that marriage there was far less speculation about more children than there
had been with Katherine Howard, though Katherine Parr as queen was in her
thirties, significantly older than her predecessor. On the other hand, she
died in 1548 giving birth to a daughter by her last huband, Thomas Seymour.)
One sidelight here is that despite her promiscuity, Katherine Howard never
became pregnant by any of the sexual partners she had in addition to Henry
VIII. Dereham and Culpeper were younger men and in good health, and
Katherine was in her teens and twenties. Was there any effective
contraceptive knowledge at that time, and did Katherine have access to it?
(Abstinence clearly does not apply here!)
Katharine of Aragon's gynaecological history recalls that of her mother,
Isabella the Catholic, who had several unsuccessful pregnancies in addition
to those that ended with live births. Ives' book proves that Anne Boleyn
also suffered a miscarriage in August 1534, less than a year after Elizabeth
I was born. There were probably many more such medieval family tragedies
that escaped notice in our records, so Katharine and Anne aren't necessarily
unique in that sense.
Regards
John P.
From: "Leo van de Pas" <leovdpas@netspeed.com.au
To: GEN-MEDIEVAL-L@rootsweb.com
Subject: Re: DNB corrections? Henry VIII v Carey
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 12:15:03 +1000
What do you mean? He had monsters later, born dead? By whom?
Leo
----- Original Message ----- From: <WJhonson@aol.com
To: <GEN-MEDIEVAL-L@rootsweb.com
Sent: Monday, September 26, 2005 11:28 AM
Subject: Re: DNB corrections? Henry VIII v Carey
In a message dated 9/25/2005 4:18:30 PM Pacific Standard Time,
leovdpas@netspeed.com.au writes:
I understand that when a veneral disease is involved female children have
a
better chance than male children. But could this be a hit and miss
situation, like with the blood disease where males suffer and women are
carriers? Not all males suffer and not all females are carriers.
I'm not sure that would explain the monsters that he was said to have had
later, born dead.
Will Johnson