Henry VI’s Bed-Chamber Tutor?
There’s a new book on Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou coming out, in which historian Lauren Johnson surmises that the over-pious Henry VI may have had a few problems in the bedroom department and hence had attendants who would ‘guide’ him in the ways of love. Henry was a notably prudish man who once erupted in shocked fury when some female dancers arrived at court wearing gowns that ‘exposed their bosom.’ He also suffered some kind of serious mental health issues, even becoming catatonic for an extended period, an illness inherited through his mother, Catherine of Valois, whose father Charles had also suffered severe mental illness (he thought he was made of glass), as did several other members of the extended family.
It was about 8 years before Henry and Margaret produced a child, Edward of Westminster, and the baby was born during one of the King’s bouts of illness; the monarch did not respond or acknowledge his child, even when the Duke of Buckingham placed the baby in his arms. Later, he did come round but promptly exclaimed that the baby must have ‘been brought by the Holy Ghost’.
As one might expect, rumours went around that the child was not his, but was the son of Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset.
In his play Henry VI, Shakespeare had Margaret have a passionate fling with William de la Pole, the Duke of Suffolk but that does not seem to have been a contemporary rumour–however, it is interesting to note that one of the figures who was supposed to be helping Henry out in the ‘bedroom department’ was none other than the…Duke of Suffolk. Maybe the Duke decided to be a little TOO helpful on occasion… The other ‘attendant’ of note happens to be Ralph Botiller–that would be Eleanor Talbot‘s father-in-law, Lord Sudeley–although no one has ever accused him of having an affair with Margaret of Anjou. Her image, however, is on the exterior of the chapel he built at Sudeley, along with that of Henry.
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