Monarchs of the past had some very weird customs, including sharing their beds with saints’ bodies and kissing their bed linen to test for poison. In excerpts from her latest book, The Royal Art of Poison, author Eleanor Herman explores some of the oddest practices of royals throughout history.
Henry VIII had people kiss his bed linen every morning to make sure it was not covered in poison
For thousands of years, rulers have engaged tasters to evaluate their food before eating it. However, monarchs were not only concerned about what they ate; they were also scared of touching something coated with poisons, which allowed the poison to penetrate their skin. Ambroise Paré, a 16th-century French royal physician, once wrote: “Now poisons do not only kill when taken into the body, but also when put or applied outwardly.”
Perhaps it was for this reason that the gentlemen who made Henry VIII’s bed every morning had to kiss every portion of the sheets, pillows, and blankets they had touched to swear they hadn’t put poison all over them.
The monarch was also anxious that his adversaries may poison his son, Edward’s, garments. New tailor-made garments were never to be worn by the prince; instead, they were to be washed and aired before the fireplace to remove any hazardous chemicals. Before the prince put on any attire, including hose, shirt, and doublet, his servants tested it. They either rubbed them inside and out on their flesh, or they put a boy Edward’s size in them and waited for him to cry out that his skin was on fire. Even the cushion on Edward’s chamber pot was checked before he used it, but we don’t know how.
Elizabeth I used makeup consisting of nasty chemicals that you most definitely would not want to put on your face today:
Elizabeth I, as the ‘Virgin Queen’, was not at risk of dying after childbirth or having pregnancy difficulties. In fact, her sole big illness was a terrible, nearly deadly smallpox attack when she was 29 years old in 1562, which left her skin scarred. She had no idea that her efforts to conceal the harm could have cut her life short by a few years.
Back then, having a perfect complexion was more than just about beauty. Blemishes of any kind were regarded as evidence of God’s wrath with sin or inner disorder; for example, vulgar sexual desires were considered to ‘bubble up’ from the private regions to the face. Some women filled smallpox pits with a combination of turpentine, beeswax, and human fat.
We don’t know if Elizabeth ever applied human fat to her smallpox wounds. However, after recovering from smallpox, the queen began applying a ceruse foundation on her face, neck, and chest. This pasty makeup had a tincture of white lead ore, vinegar, and occasionally arsenic, hydroxide, and carbonate. Ceruse, when applied to egg whites, filled up smallpox pits and gave the skin a striking, almost silvery whiteness that refracted light.
Many monarchs rarely bathed, with some believing that washing was dangerous:
In the late third century AD, Rome’s 11 aqueducts supplied 1,212 public fountains and 926 public bathhouses. However, in AD 537, invading Goths blocked the aqueducts, making bathing much more difficult. The early Catholic Church, which oversaw much of Rome’s day-to-day operations during this turbulent period, had no idea how to repair the aqueducts and hence decreed that bathing should be prohibited as a type of wicked hedonism performed by pagans.
Over time, physicians grew to believe that washing was perilous – so dangerous that many individuals sought advice from astrologers to choose the most fortunate time to bathe. This is the Myrour or Glasse of Health, a prominent 16th-century book, advised: “Use not baths or stews, nor sweat too much, for all openeth the pores of a man’s body and maketh the venomous air to enter and infect the blood.
In the late fifteenth century, Queen Isabella of Spain boasted that she had only washed twice in her life. Queen Elizabeth I also supposedly bathed once a month, “whether she needed it or not.” Her successors, James VI and I, had a strong dislike for water and reputedly never bathed. A court lady allegedly complained that she and her guests became “lousy [infested with lice] by sitting in a councillor’s chamber that James frequented”. The king did not even clean his hands before eating. At the dinner table, he ‘just brushed his fingers’ ends slightly with the damp end of a serviette’. His lover, the Duke of Buckingham, stated in one letter to the king: “So, craving your blessing, I kiss your dirty hands.
Some monarchs were cannibals (when it came to their medicine)
Previously, local executioners would sell human body parts, known as mumia, to apothecaries and medics. Doctors believed that some of the life energy lingered in the body after death, particularly in cases of executions or incidents in which life was abruptly snatched from an otherwise healthy young individual. The person eating the deceased’s body parts may so consume the remainder of his natural life span.
Court documents reveal that some monarchs, including Charles II and William II of England, François I of France, and Christian IV of Denmark, were cannibals when it came to medicine. It is unknown whether Elizabeth I eaten body parts, although two of her favourite royal physicians enthusiastically encouraged it to their other patients. When James I of England began suffering from gout in 1616, his physician, Théodore de Mayerne, advised “an arthritic powder composed of scrapings of an unburied human skull, herbs, white wine, and whey, to be taken at full moon”. But because “the king despises eating human bodies,” an ox’s head can be substituted in his instance.