Second paragraph of third chapter:
Infancy was also the stage of experimentation and play, universal for children of all social classes, which could begin in earnest when the swaddling was finally removed. It was Cecily Burbage who was responsible for taking Princess Elizabeth out of her cradle to play,4 and it was she who, when Elizabeth was around a month old, released her hands from the swaddling bands, after which her arms were covered by loose little sleeves.5 This was the first freedom of movement Tudor babies enjoyed, allowing them to ‘use and stir’ their hands.
4 Harrison, op. cit., f34v.
5 Guillimeau, op. cit., p.22
An interesting look at the experience of half of the English people during the reigns of the five Tudor monarchs, going from top to bottom – linking the lives and deaths of princesses and queens to what is known of the rest of the population. The framework is around Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man, taken as applying to all of us, so from infancy to old age and the various options between.
There are some very good bits here; the chapters on crime and religion in particular are fertile ground for the imagination. It’s also interesting to learn of Katherine Fenkyll, a multiply married businesswoman in the City of London. As usual with this sort of book, sadly, the word “Ireland” is missing from the index, and there’s not even much about Wales. But it’s good to come at a well-known subject – life in Tudor England – from a different direction, and I certainly learned as much as I had hoped from it. You can get it here.
This was my top unread book acquired in 2018. Next on that pile is The Unsettled Dust by Robert Aickman.
