“I know things were more difficult in those days, but the purpose of pregnancy is to produce children who make it out of the cradle, so I would still say that she AND HENRY had fertility problems.”
Nine pregnancies - including stillborn births and live births - means she had no fertility problems. If she were infertile, there would have been no pregnancies.
“In fact, as we now know but they did not, the failure to produce male offspring lies entirely with the father. Henry had a lot of wives and not too many children.”
Actually he had a number of children - at least four of whom made it to the age of 15. Two of those lived to be full adults. Henry acknowledged only one of his natural children: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegitimate_children_of_Henry_VIII
“I know he had a bastard son, don’t know how old he lived to be,”
if you mean Henry Fitzroy, 17.
“but of his legit children only Elizabeth lived a full live.”
Mary lived to be 42. In her day that was a rather full life.
“But of course, as I said above, things were a lot more difficult then.”
They sure were.
“While one can sympathize with Henry’s desire for a son it’s impossible to condone the lengths he went to to get one.”
Agreed: theft, murder, divorce, adultery, schism. Disgusting.
“Divorcing Katherine was bad enough, but the rest of it, just awful.”
Agreed.
“They were really so violent in those days, and it’s amazing how many of the elites who had great power ended up being executed themselves.”
Because they made that possible by sheepishly going along with the tyrant in the first place.
“I can’t imagine living at such a time, every day must have seemed fraught with peril.”
I’m sure it was - and we’ll probably see something akin to it politically in our own day. God help us!
“Henry Fitzroy, 17.”
Yes, that’s the fellow. Only 17, how did he die? Natural causes?
I mean you really could die of just about anything in those days. That was one sad bit in the first book, Cromwell’s beloved wife is felled by “the sweat”. One day you are fine, next morning you are sick and by the end of that day you are dead. Or so it was in the book, and I did google it since I’d never heard of it, but nobody seems to know too much about what it actually was or why we don’t get that anymore. I mean even with the plague people lingered and even some recovered. I suppose some with the sweat recovered too, but still, awful that young, healthy people are struck down like that. The Spanish Flu did that too, but I can’t think of anything more recent than that.
I wondered if you would say something about our own time becoming fraught with peril, I was thinking that too.
I’m in my mid-50s, I don’t really think I’ll live to see it. But I think this country, and world, are definitely cruising for a bruising.
Mary, indeed, had fertility problems, as the Catholics claim she had only ONE child: Jesus of Nazareth.
(Maybe Joseph was shooting blanks?)
Why should HE?
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Are you still killing your unborn? -- GOD |