Fertility & Childbirth: The Great Leveller

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Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit. I'm Matt Lewis and today we're going to take a look at the great leveller of medieval life, at least for women. Perhaps the one thing that cared nothing for class, wealth or social standing.

In fact, it might have been better to be poorer when it comes to fertility and childbirth. I'm delighted to be joined today by Michelle Schindler, who's written a biography of Francis Lord Lovell and is working on the 15th century Dukes and Duchesses of Suffolk at the moment.

also has an interest in this most female aspect of medieval life. Thank you very much for joining us, Michelle. Thank you. Great to have you. Right, we'll jump into some questions about fertility, childbearing and childbirth. And I sort of alluded to this in my introduction, but in my view medieval childbirth is this kind of great leveller.

So it doesn't really care whether you're rich or poor and in some ways poor women had a safer passage through childbirth than rich women. Is that fair? Of a sort. In general, of course, pregnancy and childbirth work the same way for everyone, no matter how rich or poor they are.

But of course the circumstances can be very different and they were in this case for rich women as opposed to poor women. Most famously noble women and rich women would be in confinement for around a month to six weeks before the birth of... her baby until around 40 days later. This was meant to be a purely female space with no men allowed at all except maybe male physicians and completely separate from the world. And you might think that this would be good for them.

but it was also rather oppressive, at least by modern standards. Windows were supposed to be closed so no fresh air and no bad spirits could come in. and this of course by modern standards is not very hygienic you don't get any fresh air so that's no good on the other hand if you were very poor you were supposed to work right until you give birth and that's also no good so there was sort of

different sets of difficulties for rich women as opposed to poor women. But of course, speaking about confinement, this was not always kept to exactly. For example, very famously Margaret of Anjou did not stay in confinement the 40 days after giving birth to her son. And Elizabeth the Duchess of Suffolk, that's the sister of Edward IV, did at least conceive twice while still in confinement so it's...

More theoretically, perhaps. It definitely wasn't a no-male space then. No. And you have to say that for some of these rich women, especially like the Duchess of Suffolk, who could more or less do what she wanted. it probably would have been easier than for anyone else but for rich women or women whose family were trying to be in a certain circle this would have been extremely oppressive and probably not fun.

less so than for a woman who was working in a pub or something for them that it would have probably been the closest to what we know today as They wouldn't have been overworked like peasants, so to speak, but they also wouldn't have been forced to basically lie down.

Of course another difference would have been that rich women had physicians if something went wrong, but in fact only then. Only if something seemed likely to go wrong would they have had a male physician in attendance or if they were queens. But both poor and rich women would have had the help of midwives. And all of them would have been supported by female relatives. This was very, very common.

your sister, your mother, your aunt would have been present and tried to help you. I suppose normally those kinds of women bring lots of experience to the room. Yes, exactly. It wouldn't have been some sort of private experience that we today might think. your female family would have been there.

And one huge difference between the rich and poor women is that rich women often gave birth earlier than poor women. I mean of course poor women could also do so but in rich women explicitly their wealth often set this up.

Typical example is the mother of Henry VII, Margaret Beaufort. Since her money was explicitly only to be accessible to her husband after he had a child with her, this man did open up the sad opportunity for him to actually profit from making her pregnant at far too early in age.

And of course, if you don't have any money, nobody's going to exploit you for any money. I suppose that carries the risk of doing permanent harm. You know, I'm thinking in Margaret Beaufort's particular case, as far as we know, never conceived a child again. Maybe the... damage that was caused to her by being pregnant at 13. Yes, that's something that would have been very, very risky.

and there's a lot of cases also where women died because simply they gave birth to young and of course it also happened in poor women but it seems that rich women were more at risk also because they were married very early I think the general population wouldn't have married under 20, statistically speaking of course.

Yeah, we probably get a skewed idea of that, don't we, from the idea that lots of noble women married young. We assume that everybody did it, but it was probably just the nobility. And actually, the vast majority of the population were getting married at ages that we would think were more normal.

for our age more normal definitely yes and of course this early marriage also set women up to be sexually exploited if they were married to a bad man an example being a joan baumont whose father was very much less than happy with her being pregnant age 13 but he couldn't do anything about it because she was married and her husband was technically allowed to do what he wanted to do. So there was a distinct disadvantage to being noble as opposed to normal poor women.

of course the actual birthing process would also have been a bit different than today but this would have been again very similar for poor and rich women probably everybody knows a historical film where a queen is lying in a bed giving birth and this just wouldn't have happened during the early part of labor women would have been encouraged to walk and i'm told this is still so today and then during the actual birth there was a

birthing chair in use not in bed in a birthing chair and actually i'm told that it's also slowly starting to be back in fashion because lying down is not actually the best position to give birth in so it's not something you would a it's crude medicine, but it was actually quite well thought. Yeah, they probably knew a bit more than we did, maybe. Maybe. I mean, a lot of women gave birth really, really often, so they maybe perhaps have some experience. Yeah.

Yeah, and I suppose it's that voice of experience of the female relatives as well. The midwives that you mentioned being in the room, would they have been professional midwives as we would recognise that now? Or would they just have been women with the skills to help out during birth?

It probably depends on who was giving birth. There were midwives, actual professional midwives, who were trained as midwives by older women who also had that job, but there were also women who just had experience, for example. Anne Beechamp, that's the Countess of Warwick, wife of the Kingmaker, was actually known to be a hands-on helper to women in childbirth. This is a really noble woman but she still was very concerned with that and this was seen as a good thing.

It was explicitly mentioned by her family biographer, John Roos, to praise her, to say this is great. So it would have been a mixture, but the job of midwife, so to speak, did definitely exist.

It's not something you ever associate with a countess, is it, being in the room helping women give birth? It seems an odd thing for a noblewoman to actually be doing. It's very strange, but it's on the rules roll. It's actually mentioned always. I'm not sure about the actual wording, but it's something like...

She was always very happy to be present for birthing women. Fantastic. Are there lots of sources to help you investigate these issues around kind of medieval fertility and childbirth? Or is it one of the areas that's fairly poorly recorded? I'm not sure I would say there's a lot of sources exactly, but it's perhaps more than one would expect.

Perhaps most important source is the so-called Trotula, which is three different essays. I have no idea how to pronounce it. Sorry. Treatises. Treatises. Thank you. It's three different treatises, sometimes thought to have been written by the same author. they're all on every sort of woman's trouble you can imagine from childbirth to makeup

Then there's Jacob's Well, a 1440 essay about sex, sexuality and fertility. And then there's general physicians' works, which mentions it. For example, for a woman having pains, give this herb or that. And usually those essays or those books mentioning it just have some pretty solid advice. Although some are used to moralise, like if you don't have sex, you don't have to worry about all that. Look at all the trouble you'll miss out on. And so were most of those created...

as guides, I guess, to help women? I think most of them were actually created as guides to help those who helped women, so midwives or especially physicians. Yeah, it's kind of a birthing manual. Yeah.

of a sort yeah especially the trotulas it has very specific ideas mentions a lot of really specific elements you can have fantastic so if we take it a step back from childbirth i guess What sort of fertility treatments were available in the medieval period for women who were looking to conceive?

First and foremost, there were guides of how to have sex. Now, I'm not joking. Certain sort of sex were considered to be conductive to conceiving and others were not. And not just sort of basic stuff like don't have oral sex that doesn't make babies, but very... specific explicitly

It wasn't even that sort of thing you might imagine, like the lie back and think of England thing. But on the contrary, a special focus was laid on the woman having to have an orgasm because it was thought that this was in fact necessary for her to conceive, which is of course... Also, on the flip side, the reason why women who were raped and then had a child were not considered to be actually victims of rape because you have to enjoy it to have a baby.

wow that's a pretty terrible world to live in i guess yes i mean good on the one side obviously but bad on the other yeah it has a pretty bad flip side yes so in this jacob's well which i mentioned it was suggested that a man employ foreplay and even the spell it out like stroke her breasts and slap her buttocks until and i'm not making this up until the woman begins to stammer and then that's the perfect moment then she will conceive lovely yeah this would have probably been the first thing

couple wishing to conceive would have done trying to have the appropriate sort of sex. But assuming this did not work there were other fertility treatments and some of them were not quite as fun. Especially for wealthy women who could afford to pay for advice. Stuff like take the liver and testicles of a small pig, dried and reduced to a powder in a potion.

Then there were some more basic stuff like pilgrimages, especially the shrines of Saint Anne. That's the mother of the Virgin Mary who conceived according to the Bible very late. So she's the appropriate saint for this. Then there were some I say weird stuff. For example damp wool dipped in an ass's milk and let her tie it upon her navel and let it stay there until she has intercourse and then she will conceive.

Some of it was a bit less weird. For example, the Dracula that I mentioned said you have to check both partners' weight and make sure they both have the ideal weight. which is of course pretty good because we know now today that being too thin or overweight is not conductive to conceiving a baby.

and then it even suggested losing weight it doesn't say you have to take a diet or something you have to sweat so you take a hot bath or use hot sand to make you sweat and then you will lose weight maybe i should try that But again, it sounds like they had some pretty good correct ideas about getting to the best position to be able to conceive if they're talking about being at the ideal weight. Yes.

Yes. It's not all as weird as, I thought this was fun to say you have to drink the livers and testicles of a small pig, but not all of it is as weird. Some of it is quite sound. Yeah. And even the, what sort of sex you have to have, it's known today that some of it is... less conductive to having a baby.

and what's interesting is that imagine all this doesn't work you would guess that one of them is infertile and it was not always just considered to immediately be the woman yeah for example if one of the partners was overweight it could be the man well. It could be your wife doesn't conceive because you are too fat. Go and sit in hot sand until you're the right wife. And then there was a way to find out which of the partners was infertile and this is...

You have to have urine of the woman in one pot and of the man in another pot and then you put wheat in it and let it stand for 10 days and whatever has more worms in it in the end. that one's the infertile one i have no idea why somebody came up with this i have absolutely no idea but apparently it was used then if it was the man Then he was generally advised to eat things like parsnips or onions against infertility. And women had a harder time of it.

First of all, it would have been important to find out why she wasn't fertile. It might have been because her womb was too hot or too cold. And then there were ways to find out which of these it was too. For example, you could have a cloth soaked in or another so-called hot oil, then insert it in the vagina overnight with a string tied around her leg. And if it came out during the night the womb is too hot and if it stayed in the womb is too cold.

And then depending on what conclusion is reached, then the woman was advised to use herbs to counteract it. Does this play into the medical idea of the four humours at the time? So an excess of something or a lack of something?

being an imbalance in the body that needs to be sorted out yes basically it's not a fever but it's still the idea of you're too hot you need to do this or you're too cold you need to do this for example if you were judged to be too cold you were advised to eat clove or nutmeg If you're judged to be too hot you were advised to eat clove or nutmeg and if you're too cold you were advised to eat violets or roses because that was hot and cold respectively.

So basically to counteract it. And did the treatments that were available differ for the wealthy and for those who couldn't afford to pay? Were there things that were expensive to buy and things that were available to the poorer members of the community? I think what I just mentioned, all this weird stuff that would have been available to everybody. It might not have been advised by a physician, but somebody would surely have known somebody who's aunts and so on.

but especially the weird potions that would have been almost exclusively used for the wealthier ones. and in this case also there might have been people who made something up and sold it to them if they were being desperate and said this really helps if you give me half euro. We'd call those a snake oil salesman. It's just a con man. Oh, yeah. Someone who makes something up and sells it, even though it doesn't really do anything. And I suppose some women would have been...

Keen, desperate enough maybe even to have bought into ideas like that. But have you come across anything that there is modern evidence that suggests any of these things might actually have been effective? Or were they all just guesswork?

i mean there's a lot of guesswork but as we said the thing with losing weight is not too stupid and there was also a stress put on well don't stress yourself try to Accept it as God's will and we also know that stress is not conductive to conceiving So there's that but a lot of those actual things you have to eat or drink them i don't think there's a lot of evidence that those really work i mean maybe some of the herbs i'm not exactly an expert on herbs but in general

And where did women go to get these treatments? We talked a little bit then about the kind of con man who might make something up. But who would make these things and where would women go to get them? Well, of course, it depends on what sort of woman, if you're noble or not. I think the poor women, there would have been just, they talked about it and maybe somebody knows someone. and the richer woman may have been consulting physicians.

or even priests for religious ideas. Religion played a huge part and it's not always very understandable why. For example, St. Anne was prayed to to conceive. That makes sense. For example, Thomas Beckett was prayed to ensure a safe... delivery and Thomas Beckett was famously chased. So no idea why him. How on earth he gets involved in women giving birth to children.

I have no idea. And there's lots of relics involved, I think, as well, isn't there? I heard an account of Elizabeth of York, Henry the Seventh Queen, wearing a girdle from Westminster Abbey that was meant to have belonged to the Virgin Mary. Yes, the relics there were usually used but a lot of relics and religion was for when you had already conceived. To guard against miscarriages or make sure that the delivery was safe and that both mother and baby survived.

The fertility was more of a hush-hush thing. Especially in Elizabeth of York's case, it would have been something that would just be expected that she give birth. And nobody would have wanted to think about her not being... fertile because that could cause trouble in queens. If it's just me or my aunt or someone, well, that's bad for me or my aunt, but...

nobody cares but in the higher echelons of society that's the difficulties because if you're a nobleman you need heirs. There's much more weight of expectation on a noblewoman to deliver, literally. Yes, literally. Although... There's a thing, maybe we all have Henry VIII in mind a bit, because there are several cases of important noble women being married without children for quite a long time. For example, William de la Pauli.

Earl and later Duke of Suffolk was nearly 50 when he finally became a father and nobody seemed to find that very strange and also sometimes it would have been the men who were looked at for example Charles the Bold of Burgundy. He had only one daughter. And there's a lot of French sources who said, well, maybe he should go see his wife more often. He's not doing his part. So assuming a woman was able to conceive and become pregnant.

How did pregnancy and childbirth affect a woman's social standing or her place in the community or the community's perception of her? I think that pregnancy and childbirth in itself were just a means to an end. It's having children that's considered desirable and useful. For noble women, she did her job. That's basically her job. She had to make sure that the title and family name lived on.

you usually had to have at least two sons one heir and one spare and if you had a couple of daughters to make marriage alliances that's good but it's the sons that were most important and interestingly in lower classes it would have been well help around the house but according at least to oral tradition the lower classes what would

dismissively be called the peasants were perfectly happy to marry unwed mothers because it proved she was able to have many children to later help with the everyday work. There wasn't much to bequeath anyway so that any man would have to worry about passing on something to his son. not his and the illegitimate child would also be able to join in the work. So that's definitely that.

lower born women had more freedom in that way. In both cases of course it was having a child, not actually producing the child that was seen as desirable. But of course it's very hard to separate the two as one follows the other. And if a man already had a child? then a woman he married not having children was not considered bad and it also didn't really reflect badly on her again i think of margaret beaufort and she married thomas stanley and he had three or four sons from an earlier marriage

wasn't a single comment recorded about her not giving him any children. It didn't matter. I suppose once he's got children, it frees him to make marriages for other reasons without having to worry. You know, maybe there'll be children, maybe they won't, but it doesn't matter anymore. Yes, exactly that. Because, well...

Maybe he wanted them, but that's not anybody else's business. Nobody would care. He has his children, that's fine then. And it also then didn't reflect on his wife because she didn't have that duty of hanging over her.

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Something that we don't hear a great deal about, which I happen to know you're quite fascinated by, is the idea of twins and multiple births during the medieval period. So when I was writing about the anarchy, I came across the Beaumont twins, Walleran and Robert. But I can't think of any other twins during the medieval period off the top of my head. Did you find out a bit more about multiple births? Were there more than we think or are they not very well recorded? Both.

It's rarely if ever mentioned at birth or in infancy, exception of course when the twins were born to an important man or born to royalty. For example Isabella of Castile had twins. and James II had a twin brother, Alexander, who died in infancy. But more often it's guesswork, people being said to be the same age, that's Francis and Joan Lovell, their great-grandfather, William and John Philip.

Joan Becham and Elizabeth Mowbray or simply because it doesn't fit the timeline otherwise. That's often said the first three children of Joan Beaufort and Ralph Neville it doesn't quite fit so there must have been a pair of twins.

and sometimes when the twins were older they were mentioned as such as adults for example edward ii had two grandsons edward and william who were mentioned as as twins and in some of the sources the actual pregnancy and birthing part it was seen as unusual and complicated and there's one english tract saying it's unkindly and unnatural and this was not just a quirk of english physicians or western european physicians there's a hebrew tract from

I think the 12th or 13th century that class twin pregnancy is similar to a miscarriage, a pregnancy by a very old woman or even uterine diseases because it's so difficult. this is just in general though they knew that twin pregnancy could and did happen so there's also practical advice for midwives to be found and what's interesting is that most of those advisors seem to think that in a twin birth both babies would want to come out at the same time. It's like they are clashing.

so you would have to hold one back while fetching the other. In itself, the pregnancy was considered to be twice as much in everything. Twice as bad as a normal pregnancy. which I suppose makes sense. For example it was considered that a woman would experience twice as many cravings, twice as much pain. and especially speaking about the cravings for some reason it was considered if a woman really really badly wanted fruit that might point to a twin pregnancy.

but that's the practical part and sometimes the consequences went much deeper it was considered that the more hot of a kind so the more horny a woman was the more likely she was to conceive twins so there's often a sort of judgment made about a twin mother to be more sexually loose. Though it's hard to know how much of this is theoretical in those essays and how much of twin mothers were actually

subjected to that kind of prejudice about them. Are these essays that are written by men by any chance? Almost certainly, although the Dracula is considered to be written by a woman. Sounds like the sort of thing men would have been saying about women in the medieval period. any reason to criticize yes probably but you know we can also be unfair i don't have a child and she has two that's just because she is

I mean, most of those texts would have been written by men regardless, but not all of them. So do you think it's probably the case that there were twin births and things like that were as common as they are now? We just don't hear about it so much because unless it happened to a noble woman... it wouldn't be recorded anywhere yes that seems to be the case it's actually in the 15th century you find quite a lot even in the nobility i've just mentioned a couple so i'm just guessing that

The statistics would have also carried over to the lesser recorded population. Yeah, seems reasonable. So was there any stigma attached to a woman's inability to conceive? We talked a little bit about how they might investigate.

which one of the partners might be responsible for the inability to conceive? Was there a stigma attached to it that perhaps fuelled that market in fertility treatments?

yes there was definitely stigma attached how much would have been applied to the woman and how much to a man that changed of course depending on the circle people moved in and depending what sort of person it was if it was just your neighbors or if it was the duke of birth indeed but there was definitely a sort of stigma and i suppose that gets worse for

noblewomen perhaps because obviously their purpose for being married is to produce the next generation for their husband to keep the family going so is there more stigma for a noblewoman who can't conceive than for a common woman? probably although it's hard to say because it would have been much more recorded for a noblewoman than for

a regular woman but yes and especially if she was married only to have that child or she was otherwise considered unsuitable. For example Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Cluster, the wife of Humphrey of Cluster comes to mind. and she was very unpopular and then she should have at least done her job and had a child and she didn't and this is also a very good example of a woman who was desperate for conception and then turned towards some sort of what did you say snakes snake oil salesman

Snake oil salesman. Yeah, to find some way to conceive. And this could end very badly, as her case shows. It got her into all sorts of trouble because they accused her of witchcraft and treason, didn't they? When she claimed that she was just trying to get a fertility treatment. Yes.

Of course the treason was not that she tried to become pregnant but that this person she tried to get those treatments from was considered a witch which is a pretty late medieval and... renaissance thing it wouldn't have happened during most of the

medieval period. Anyway, and it was said that she had also colluded with her to predict the death of Henry VI, and that's of course treason. It's not the fertility treatment in itself. But once you go to... disresputable places to become pregnant it's of course easy to throw that mud at you to say no you were there for other even worse reasons Yeah. And was infertility often a grounds for a man to look for a way? I'm thinking again of the nobility, really.

for a man to find a way to end the marriage. I'm thinking particularly in my head of Eleanor of Aquitaine being married to the King of France, producing two daughters but no sons, and all of a sudden he decides to get rid of her. And obviously then we know she marries Henry II and goes on to produce lots of sons. But was it a reason that men would find a convenient way to rid themselves of their wives?

Not as often as we might think. It could happen and, for example, in this case of Louis, he really needed a son, but it wasn't as easy as that, especially if there were daughters, for example. You could see that in Henry VIII, nobody really saw it as a reason for him to divorce. And so this is the same, but...

Many men might have wanted to get out, but there would have been to be a stronger reason than just, she's not giving me any sons. Then usually, if it happened, there would have been some excuse made. For example, the dispensation to marry her didn't come.

that she was my grandmother's fifth husband's second grandchild something like that but it was almost never simply because of infertility or at least i have found very very few cases And even in the case of Eleanor of Aquitaine, the Pope repeatedly said, no, no, you have to stay married, you have to stay married, just do your duty.

but none of them. On the way back from the Crusades, the Pope even provided them with a bed that he personally blessed and encouraged them to sleep together in to conceive a son, didn't he? And she did conceive, but it turned out to be another daughter. So the Pope was obviously quite happy to act as a kind of pimp for the King and Queen of France. Does it count as a pimp if they're married? I guess probably not, but you know, he's laying on the facilities for them. Yes.

I mean, in this case, it seems as if they needed somebody to do so. Eleanor's saying she thought she had married a king and she had married a monk, so maybe it was more on his side again than on hers. Yeah, so she gets the head monk in to get him to get on with the business. And so when a woman reaches the point of childbirth, so a noble woman normally in her confinement and a less noble woman...

When she's unable to work anymore, she gets into the point of childbirth. What kind of complications could arise during the medieval period for a woman then? It's obviously a pretty dangerous point in a woman's life. Hey, what's up? It's Mario Lopez. Back to school. It's an exciting time, but it can also be overwhelming and kids may feel isolated. A vulnerability that human traffickers can exploit. Human trafficking doesn't always look like what you expect.

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Yeah, short answer a lot. Basically the same things that can go wrong today, but in our modern age we have sufficient medical knowledge to be able to treat such issues. And perhaps the most common issue then as now is that the baby or the babies do not lie correctly and its head is not down. Actually, while today often in such cases c-sections are advised, there are still midwives trained in breech birth and there would have been more.

more medwives who specialized on that at the time but it can also happen that the baby is tangled in the umbilical cord which often means that it cannot really push down to be born and then the woman may not have hips wide enough for the baby to come out naturally if a baby like me I'm told has a very big head then there's stuff like tears of the womb can happen and this leads to extreme bleeding which in the middle ages was

almost certainly a death sentence. The labor might not start soon enough after the waters break which can mean infection can set in. Today for example you get antibiotics if that happens and then of course even if the baby is born infection can set in, the childbed fever that really could kill anyone. It's Elizabeth of York for example. It's not something that could have been more widespread among poor people who didn't get as good care.

and those are probably the most common ones but there are probably a whole host of other issues that I don't even want to imagine. Yeah. So I suppose infections, it sounds like infections could happen equally to both. So a common woman might live in less clean circumstances.

and pick up an infection that way. A more noble woman, although she's in a room, you know, being well looked after, that's probably fairly clean. Like you said, there's no air moving around, so it becomes a hotbed for infection for her as well. So both were at risk for different reasons. Yes.

it's definitely the case and then again there's this thing that noble women could be too young and it's actually an interesting point that i forgot to mention earlier that if you think that a woman's job or a noble woman's job was primarily to give her husband

son then that was still not considered her only reason of being so to speak because margaret beaufort there were a lot of people saying she's too young and john beaumont as well her father even saying she's married to her husband to the wrath of god so that says a lot if it was just her reason of being he would have been like great she did her job first but

No. And their sons, that's Henry VII and Francis Love respectively, really paid attention that their daughter and their sisters only married after 16, so that this would not happen what happened to their mother. and so yes this was something that the lives of women were always considered more important it's something of a medieval trope that you imagine

women were just there to marry and make children and it's not really the case. I think we tend to think of medieval families, you know, caring less if children died because they had more of them and...

not caring if the women died because they were just there to produce babies. We kind of forget that these people had feelings. Yes, that happens a lot, yes. And especially the women and the baby-making machine, and it's... a bit of a an idea that still has repercussions today you know the certain sort of people like you're you're supposed to just have a baby and shut up and i'm sure there were people like that as well but it wasn't really the most widespread common idea

for most of society. And are there any other specific examples of individuals who had complications during childbirth that we know of? During childbirth, of course, there's Elizabeth of York. I've mentioned her. Then there's Richard II's wife, Anne of Bohemia. There's some evidence she had an ectopic pregnancy. The herbs she bought seem to indicate that. she died of it or at least she died shortly after buying those herbs

And it seems suggested, for example, by Richard II's biographer, Catherine Warner, she said that there's really no evidence she actually died of the plague, as is often said. So this could be... Then, for example, Joan Beaumont, I mentioned her, she died. That's William Stanley's wife, William Stanley of Bothworth fame. She died in childbirth. And there's Edward I's daughter, Elizabeth.

also died in childbirth. So there's a lot of really noble women who probably would have had the best of care who died. Was there any sense during the medieval period that... care for pregnant women improved or was it fairly steady throughout the medieval period there was no kind of big leaps forwards or developments? There were developments although if I would say there were

Judging by a modern lens particularly helpful is another matter. But there were some developments in how midwives should help birthing children. how to prevent some sort of infection, how to prevent miscarriages. There was a development over the thousands or so years of the Middle Ages. But I think what we would call safe childbirth that only happened much, much later. Fantastic. And what are you working on at the moment, Michelle?

What are we going to see from you next? Well, I've written a book last year in lockdown about the Dukes of Suffolk, or really specifically John, Duke of Suffolk, and his son, John Earl of Lincoln. That's, by the way, the same John, Duke of Suffolk, whose wife conceived twice in confinement and then there's I've written a book about his mother Alice Chaucer who's also very interesting especially if you're talking about fertility because she only had two children and she was married to two

well technically three but one died when she was still a child very high-born man and nobody commented on it nobody said she should have more children why is she not doing her job so that's also a book on alice chaucer and currently i'm working on one on mental health

and mental illnesses in the late medieval period. That sounds fascinating. Might have to have you back on to talk about that. You had an incredibly productive lockdown. I'm really, really jealous. I think I went unproductive and you went massively productive in lockdown. Yeah. I had to, I had to work. I couldn't sit still. Fantastic. I think there's lots to look forward to there.

So this has been such a fascinating topic to explore. I think childbearing has always been a dangerous part of women's lives, but it was interesting perhaps just how much they knew. in the Middle Ages that we're returning to and becoming more and more aware of now, even if they got lots of things wrong as well. So don't forget to subscribe to Gone Medieval wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval.

I'd like to give a quick mention to Dan Snow's history hit in a particular episode on Joan of Arc, one of the medieval period's most intriguing women and saddest of stories. So anyway, I'll let you go. I've been Matt Lewis, and we've just gone medieval with History Hits.