The Rule of the Tudors 1485 - 1603

The victim of the slander would taker her case before the judge, often bringing neighbours to court
with her to swear their belief in her innocence. Women had to guard their reputation for sexual
'honesty', not least because they feared being charged with adultery themselves. The most common
insult for men was 'whoreson'. Husbands were often called 'cuckold' - the logical counterpoint of
their wives' alleged infidelity - and taunted by signs of horns. A double standard prevailed. When,
in 1601, Sergeant Harris proposed in the House of Commons (all male, of course) that the penalty
for women taken in adultery should be lowered to equal that of men guilty of the same offence,
'all the House cried ''Away with it'' 'and 'gave a monstrous great ''No'' '. Death, not divorce, was the
quietus of a marriage. Only in the rarest cases would the Church annul a marriage; where it was 
judged invalid from its beginning. Every way was sought to bring reconciliation. Priests would ask
soul-searching questions in confession, because they were ordained to be parish peace-makers, the
arbiters of quarrels. In 1527-8 the wife of Peter Fernandez, a London physician, came often to her
confessor, telling him of her husband's threats. The priest sought to make peace between them,
unavailingly. The Church could not grant divorce on account of infidelity or cruelty, but could offer
a decree of separation which allowed neither party to remarry. Happily or unhappily, a couple might
be a long time married, for those who lived to be old enough to marry might expect to live on for
another three decades. Till death us do part. In Ireland, however, divorce was lightly granted under
the secular custom of the brehon law. When Richard Burke of Clanrickard died in 1582 he left five
wives behind, and a sixth had predeceased him. Catholics were exhorted constantly to remember
the four last things - death, judgement, hell and heaven; 'in all thy works remember thine ending day'.
Inscriptions on tombs adjured passers-by to consider 'I am what you shall be. I was what you are.
Pray for me, I beseech you.' Woodcuts showed angels and demons at the deathbed, vying for the
sinner's soul. Death was the last chance to repent and make amends for a life misspent, to cast off
sin. All Catholics were taught the art of dying well, although not everyone learnt the lesson.
'Some have I seen,' wrote Thomas More, 'sit up in their deathbed underpropped by pillows, take
their playfellows to them, and comfort themselves with cards.' They gambled with their immortal
souls. Yet even the wicked would be saved, if penitent at the last, for God's mercy is infinite.
Shortly before his execution in the aftermath of Bosworth, Richard III's counsellor, William Catesby,
made a last will full of requests for prayers for his sinning soul and pervaded by a spirit of repentance
and remorse for wrongs done during a ruthless and treacherous career.
All Catholics prayed that death would not take them suddenly - they prayed especially to St Barbara
for this grace - so that they might have time to repent and confess. Desperate deathbed confessions
were made to priests hurriedly summoned. The priest carried the Blessed Sacrament and a crucifix
through the streets to the dying, and hearing the last confession gave final absolution and ministered
the last rites - the sacraments of unction, confession and Communion. At this rite of departure dying
Christians were expected to forgive all who had wronged them and seek forgiveness of those whom
they had wronged, affirming their faith and hope for reconciliation with God and the world.
Never was the need to be in charity so urgent. The desperation that good Christians should die
reconciled with the Almighty was clear at Alice Grisby's deathbed in Aldermanbury, London in
1538. While she lay dying, too ill to speak, her curate and women friends sat anxiously about her,
imploring her to look upon the blessed sacrament, to remember the passion of Christ. They pleaded,
'What, will ye die like a hellhound and a beast, not remembering your maker? At the last, Alice lifted
her eyes and held up her hands 'until the extreme pains of death'. So she died a Christian death.
The inordinate relief of her friends at the propriety of her manner of dying says much about the anxiety of the community for the Christian life of others as well as about the obsession with dying
well. Paintings of The Dance of the Dead, like those at Hexham Abbey or on the north wall of
the cloisters of St Paul's, showed the ghastly figure of Death leading the ranks of humanity, grand
and lowly, in a grotesque round. Sermons and plays taught that with death comes judgement, and
that Christians would be judged not according to who they were, but how they had lived their lives.
Yet nothing distinguished the life of a prince from that of a pauper more than the ceremonies at the
leaving of it. Magnificent in death as in life, the lord processed for the last time at his funeral,
attended still by his household and retinue who wore his badge, and with a brilliant display of heraldic
banners. Priests, his poor neighbours and tenants, russet-livered beggars who had never known him,
followed his hearse, bearing lighted candles and praying for his soul. The lord's funeral demonstrated
the honour and continuity of his family, surviving the death of its head, but it also celebrated the
spiritual affinity between dead and living, rich and poor, the aspiration of the whole community to
collective  salvation as it prayed for the lord's soul and all Christian souls.