When it came to power in Tudor England, most women were shut out or, for the noble women, sidelined. They couldnt sit on councils, hold office, or even legally own property. Yet, there existed one room where they reignedquite literallywith blood on their hands. That room was the dark, warm confines of the birthing chamber, a place that men were barred from. In that secretive, candlelit space, midwives didnt just deliver babies, they guided dynasties. For the women who oversaw the births of Tudor royalty, the stakes were sky-high. A healthy heir could mean favor, reward, or even reverence. But a death, especially of the wrong person, could bring disgrace, ostracization, or worse. This walk on the high beam was the perilous, powerful domain of Tudor midwives.Some of the Names We KnowMidwife in Chambers, 1433. Source: Wikimedia CommonsDespite holding royal lives in their hands, Tudor midwives were often written out of history the moment their work was done. Only a few names slip through the cracks of court records and printed manuals, and their stories offer a rare look into the lives of the women trusted to deliver the babies of both the peasantry and the nobility.One of the best-documented midwives from the Tudor Era was a London midwife who attended the birth of Elizabeth of Yorks last child, a daughter who tragically died shortly after birth. We know of her not because she wrote anything herself, but because she was paid from the royal coffers, noted in archival expense ledgers. She likely also attended the birth of Prince Edmund and may have been part of the team present for the births of Arthur and Henry VIII. Clearly, she had some sort of relationship with the first family of the Tudor Dynasty.Worth mentioning also is Jane Sharp, who lived later in the 17th century but deserves a name-drop for her incredible book The Midwives Book, or The Whole Art of Midwifery Discovered, published in 1671. It was one of the first medical texts on childbirth written by a woman, and it is delightfully blunt, deeply knowledgeable, and just a bit scandalously forward in tone. While not a Tudor herself, Sharp gives us a crucial glimpse into the long oral tradition of midwifery that had been passed down among practitioners for generations, and she dared to write it at a time when male physicians were beginning to edge midwives out of their own profession.Birth of a Child, by Friedrich Sustris, 1563-67. Source: Wikimedia CommonsWe also catch glimpses of unnamed midwives in the records of Anne Boleyns miscarriage in 1536. During this instance, the midwife was hastily summoned and, one imagines, equally hastily dismissed when the baby, reportedly a malformed boy, was lost. The birth was politically devastating, and the midwife would have been the first to see both the tragedy unfold and how Queen Anne reacted to it.These knowledgeable women rarely signed their names into history. Yet we know they were therein candlelit rooms, with trembling hands, and prayers whispered under their breathas the future of England gasped its first breath or failed to take one at all.The Only Women Who Could BaptizeThe Birthing Chair, 1513. Source: Wellcome CollectionIn the heat of Tudor childbirth, when the line between life and death was as thin as a birthing sheet, midwives had one unique power that no priest, bishop, or even king denied them during this period: the authority to perform emergency baptisms.Midwives, and only midwives, were granted special permission by the Church to administer this sacrament. This made them the only women in catholicism who could make a soul ready for Heaven, a particularly special privilege. If a baby was born blue, breathless, or on the brink, it was up to the midwife to sprinkle holy water and say the words that would send that childs soul to heaven rather than limbo. In an era where infant mortality was sky-high and theology was inconveniently specific about this one aspect of deliverance, that was no small thing.This power, while crucial, also placed midwives in a deeply controversial space. They were theologically trusted and equally suspect. Male clerics, unsurprisingly, did not love the idea of laywomen handling spiritual business that they were paid to manage. However, the alternativewaiting for a priest while a dying baby slipped awaywas too horrifying to risk, even for men drunk on their own power. So midwives walked a strange and sacred line: not clergy, but allowed to step into that role in one very particular tragedy.The Birth of Benjamin and the Death of Rachel, by Francesco Furini, 17th century. Source: Wikimedia CommonsThere are accountssome whispered, some outright accusedof midwives claiming theyd baptized a baby that they hadnt or that a baby was born breathing that had really never taken an earthly gasp. This wasnt malicious but tenderly merciful. A midwife might see a baby born asleep and quickly swaddle it away from the mothers eyes, all while performing a quick, private baptism. When asked, shed simply say she managed to anoint the babe before it passed, saving the family the spiritual panic of an unbaptized child.It is important to recall that, in this era, it was believed babies had souls, and those souls could not be admitted to Gods kingdom until they were successfully baptized. If a baptized mother had a child that passed before being christened, her everlasting soul would spend eternity without her baby.It wasnt strictly allowed, and, in another sense, it was one of the many ways that midwives had to make themselves comfortable in gray, liminal spaces. Midwives made the call in those moments when theology and humanity collided in a room full of blood and desperate hope. While it may have raised a few ecclesiastical eyebrows, many a mother likely thanked God that the midwife of all people was the one there with her when it counted most.Midwives in King Henry VII & VIIIs CourtsSketch of Margaret Tudor. Source: PicrylIn the Tudor world, a royal midwife stood at the center of power and peril. She operated with one hand on the belly of a queen, the other practically touching the crown. Should the baby liveand better yet, be a healthy boyshe could walk away with gold and royal favor. If the child died, or worse, if the queen herself failed to rise from her childbed, the midwife might find herself a mere step from disgrace.Unlike common women, queens werent expected to muck about changing diapers with bags under their eyes for midnight feeds. Their job was strictly to grow the heir, survive the birth, and recover quickly enough to get back in bed with the king. Anne Boleyn reportedly wanted to nurse her daughter, Elizabeth, but that innate initial maternal sentiment was adamantly stamped out. It was too risky. Someone else could indeed feed her child. No one else could carry the next royal babe, and thus, the future of England. Anne was likely pregnant again by the time Elizabeth was three months old. Some have wondered whether, for both Catherine and Anne, the reason so many of their pregnancies failed was because of how often they fell pregnant and how draining the toll of those consecutive gestations took on their bodies.Childbirth for noble women was its own sacred theater, half a medical event and half a communion with the holy, filled with ritual. In the final month, the queen would be taken to her chambera cloistered, candle-lit world of women only. Male servants were dismissed. Priests offered prayers from afar. Superstition ran thick through the air. Curtains were drawn, herbs were burned, and the midwife stood ready in the shadows, not just to usher in life but to secure the soul of the newborn if death came uninvitedly knocking.A Midwife giving the Virgin Mary a bath, 1599-1664. Source: The Wellcome CollectionThat power wasnt just spiritual. It was practical, political, and rooted in centuries of womens medical knowledgesome of it surprisingly progressive for the time. One of the most influential texts on womens medicine in medieval Europe was the Trotula, a 12th-century compendium out of southern Italy that covered everything from fertility boosting brews to childbirth interventions. Though not written specifically for midwives, it circulated widely and informed the practices of those assisting birthing mothers at all levels of society.The Trotula advised things like walking during labor and, if delivery stalled, even rolling a woman on a sheet to shift a dead fetus. Tossing the laboring mother in the air? As strange as it sounds, that too may have been employedrumors of its use in noble births, like that of Margaret Beaufort, have floated about for ages.Portrait of Lady Margaret Beaufort, by Meynart Weywyck, 1510, after restoration work in 2023. Source: The National Portrait GalleryMargarets experience is particularly harrowing. Married off at twelve and giving birth at just 13 as a new widow, her labor was so traumatic that she never bore another child. The midwives attending her may have relied on the Trotula or other traditional techniques, but nothing could undo the damage in that era. Margaret would later advise against early marriages for her descendants, likely haunted by the memory of her own death-defying delivery. Her only child, her son, would become Henry VII, founder of the Tudor Dynasty.Midwives were responsible for an extraordinary range of care. They guided the frightened and the young, like Margaret, whose bodies were barely ready for motherhood. They also assisted seasoned noblewomen, like Catherine of Aragon, who kept trying for a male heir into her 30s (bearing her last child, a short-lived girl, at the end of 1518 when Catherine was 33 years old). In a time before prenatal scans or C-sections, midwives were the only hope women had for surviving labor and bringing a baby safely into the world.Elizabeth of York, 16th century, 1470-98. Source: The Royal CollectionTake Alice Massey, for exampleroyal midwife to Elizabeth of York. She was noted for having not lost one of the queens babies and was richly rewarded for it from the state coffers. That kind of record wasnt just professional goldit was life insurance. In the eyes of a desperate dynasty, every live birth was a triumph, and every dead heir a potential dynastic implosion.Even notoriously stingy Henry VII spared no expense for his childrens care, lavishing money on nurseries, rockers, tutors, and trappings. He may have been calculating, but he understood the stakes. His very own son, Henry VIII, became obsessed with birth, heirs, and the women who could provide them.At the very center of this high-stakes game was the midwife. Competent, discreet, often invisiblebut always essential.The Midwife and the Conspiracy TheoryQueen Elizabeth I, 1575. Source: Wikimedia CommonsIn Tudor England, midwives werent just birth attendantsthey were gatekeepers of life, witnesses to death, and, on occasion, alleged accomplices to treason. After all, when you hold the power to declare a birth real or false, seen or unseen, you hold something dangerously close to influence. In the world of royal secrets and shifting thrones, that made midwives essential, feared, and often the center of the most persistent conspiracy theories.One of the most compelling of these theories was that Elizabeth Ithe so-called Virgin Queensecretly bore a bastard child.Enter author and history lover Ella March Chase. While traveling in England, Chase fell down the same rabbit hole that has claimed many a curious historian: the Tower of London, the whispering stones of Traitors Gate, the chapel floor just barely concealing the bones of beheaded queens, and of course, the spectral mystery of the princes in the Tower. It was as she combed through biographies of Elizabeth, a quieter, stranger rumor kept surfacingsuggestions that the Virgin Queen may have, against all odds and public declarations, borne a child in secret. Was the child the unclaimed heir of that devil, Thomas Seymour? Was it proof of the love she harbored for her longtime favorite, Robert Dudley? Only Elizabeth, the man, and the midwife would have known for certain.Robert Dudley, 1564. Source: Waddeson ManorChase was hooked. The idea that Elizabeth, the woman who swore she had the heart and stomach of a king, might have also harbored a maternal hearthidden or deniedwas too rich to ignore. One version of the rumor even claimed that a midwife had confessed to delivering a baby to a very fair lady, whom she suspected, or perhaps knew, was Elizabeth herself.This midwifeunnamed, untraceable, but tantalizingbecame the seed of Chases historical fiction novel The Virgin Queens Daughter. The book explores what might have happened if the child had been spirited away by the midwife and raised in secret. Said midwife then turned nursemaid, guarding the greatest secret in England. Above it all, a queen willing to deny her own child for the sake of the security of the throne.Queen Mary I, by Anthonis Mor, 1554. Source: Wikimedia CommonsThis wasnt the only time a midwife might have found herself in the center of a royal pregnancy drama. When Mary I, Elizabeths older half-sister, announced she was pregnant in 1554, the nation prepared for a Catholic heir (which would have changed everything). Months passed, no child appeared, and behind palace doors, the midwife and Marys childhood nurse reportedly voiced doubts that shed ever been with child. The queen, they said, could still draw her knees to her chestsomething physically impossible late in pregnancy. Theyd seen Mary suffer agonizing menstrual pain for years and suspected what few dared say: there was no baby. Instead, their ruler was full of the desperate hope of a woman who longed to be both queen and motherand who would be neither for long.Midwives knew these things. They could tell the difference between a swelling belly and swelling pride. They witnessed real births and tragic deaths, and they understood that a single cry, or the absence of one, could change the course of English history. A baby born or hidden, a pregnancy real or imaginedthese were not just personal matters. They were matters of state.So, when you picture a Tudor midwife, see not only a woman swaddling a sweet child with herbs and calm hands, see instead a figure standing at the crossroads of power, knowledge, and silence. Someone who could bring forth life, or bury a secret so deep that it would take centuries for novelists, historians, and curious tourists to dig it back up again.

When Europeans first arrived in the Americas, their guns, horses, and, perhaps most importantly, diseases, made relatively quick work of conquering native populations. But while Indigenous weaponry was ultimately not a match for the steels and gunpowder of the Conquistadors, the Inca, Aztec, Maya and other native populations had long crafted impressive and effective tools of war. While designed for the distinct realities of warfare on the American continent, these weapons, combined with unique battle tactics and knowledge of the terrain, ultimately felled a fair number of their conquerors as well.The Aztec: Fiercest FoesAztec warriors wielding macahuitl clubs. Florentine Codex, Bernardino de Sahagn, 16th century. Source: Wikimedia CommonsAs the most warlike of the three primary American civilizations, the Aztecs had a reputation for aggression and military prowess. War was central to Aztec societyfor expanding territory, demonstrating political strength, and capturing victims for sacrifice. Warriors trained extensively and were held in high esteem in the Aztec Empire. Six levels of military achievement were recorded in Aztec records, and the most skilled warriors were rewarded with the finest weapons and regalia. Even in its later years, when conflict evolved to be less about expansion and more a ritual demonstration of strength, with predetermined encounters like the Flower Wars, warfare remained an essential element of the society whose patron was Huitzilopochtli, god of war.Aztec weapons included both projectiles, like slings, blow darts (tipped with frog poison!) and bows and arrows, as well as small arms like clubs and daggers for hand-to-hand combat. Though the Aztec had some basic knowledge of metallurgy, it was generally not used in crafting armaments. Instead, fragile but razor-sharp obsidian glass was used to create the Empires deadliest weapons, while thickly woven cotton was used to fashion surprisingly sturdy armor and hardwood employed for helmets. Spear points, arrowheads, and similar piercing elements were made from not only obsidian but stone, bone, and hardened wood as well.Aztec atlatl or spear-thrower made of wood, shell, thread, 1400-1521. Source: The British MuseumPerhaps the most renowned weapon of the Aztecs was the macuahuitl, a sort of club-sword hybrid measuring up to three feet in length. Made of wood and shaped like a modern cricket bat, it was edged at intervals with obsidian blades or teeth. Historians believe it was not intended to kill opponents, but rather to injure and incapacitate them so they could be captured and brought back to the capital for ritual sacrifice. However, as there are no surviving examples, conclusions about how the macuahuitl was used and how effective it was are based solely on illustrations in Aztec codices and contemporary accounts from the Conquistadors themselves. Several sixteenth century chronicles recount the damage done by the club to Spanish horses, while modern scholars note that the brittle nature of obsidian wouldve made it a less effective weapon against armed and armored men.The Aztecs other notable weapon was the atlatl, a spear or dart thrower. Rather than aiming and throwing light spears by hand alone, the Aztecs fashioned a device that provided leverage that could hurl their spears both farther and faster. Often elaborately carved, the atlatl was the length of a warriors forearm, with a grip at one end and a hook at the other. Similar spear throwers had existed for thousands of years but had long been out-of-use in Europe at the time of the conquest and therefore seemed novel to the Spanish. The spears they launched were tipped with obsidian and their use was reserved for the most skilled warriors.Weapons of the Peaceful MayaMural depicting war scenes, discovered at Bonampak in modern-day Mexico, 580-800 CE. Source: LatinAmericanStudies.orgWhen earnest study of the pre-Columbian civilizations began, researchers often suggested that the Maya civilization was largely peaceful. Because it had collapsed before the conquest, the Conquistadors encountered not an organized empire to be conquered but small jungle communities and loosely organized city-states, leading to sporadic engagements lasting nearly two hundred years. Early knowledge of the Maya was based primarily on Spanish records of these encounters and what structures had not been reclaimed by the jungle. As more extensive excavations were done, the original theory of the peaceful Maya collapsed. Though perhaps not as aggressive as their Aztec neighbors, warfare was a consistent element of Mayan society, with frequent disputes between city-states during the Classic period.Given their proximity to the Aztec and the overlap and intermixing of these cultures in Mesoamerica, its no surprise that much Mayan weaponry was similar in nature. The Maya also used the macuahuitl club and atlatl spear-thrower as well as obsidian or stone-tipped arrows and small axes with bronze or stone heads. Wood was perhaps the most ubiquitous material to be used for weapons, and while wooden stakes and spears may have been a poor match for gunpowder, the Maya used fire to harden them and reportedly lined pits with them for Spanish horses to fall into.Obsidian blade with face carving, 250-900 CE, Classic Maya. Source: The British MuseumOf particular importance to the Maya were blowguns, though it is unclear whether they were used against enemies or solely for hunting. Made from lightweight wood, blowguns varied in length and were used to launch projectiles, including stones and poisoned darts. Scholars suggest that the Maya favored ambush style attacks when encountering the Spanish, in which case the blowgun would make sense as a surreptitious weapon. Blowguns feature prominently in Mayan mythology and iconography, most notably as weapons carried by prominent gods and by various figures in their creation myth. Another weapon that appears in Mayan mythology, specifically the Popol Vuh, is the hornet bomb, a gourd filled with angry wasps or hornets that could be launched at the enemy. Sadly there is no evidence of this ingenious weapon actually being put to use.The best offense is a good defense, or so they say. And while metal armor of the kind used by the Spanish was unheard of in the Americas, the Maya, as well as Aztec, utilized an ingenious method to create a cotton armor that was so effectiveas well as comparatively comfortableit was reportedly adopted by some Conquistadors over their plate armor. Called ichcahuipilliin Nahuatl, this cotton armor was created by sandwiching densely packed cotton fibers between layers of tightly woven cotton fabric, which were then quilted together in a diamond pattern. The armor was then soaked in a salted brine and hung out to dry, allowing the salt to crystallize and further strengthen the fabric. Designed to repel darts, obsidian blades and arrowheads, it reportedly also fared surprisingly well against musket balls.Building an Empire: Inca WeaponsUniform of the Inca soldier, a standard-issue tunic in camelid fiber. 1400-1535 CE. Source: The Met MuseumAs conquerors, the Inca were no strangers to combat, though evidence suggests they favored diplomacy and political coercion over military engagement when possible. Ultimately, building an empire that stretched from modern day southeastern Colombia down to Santiago, Chile and westward into Bolivia and Argentina required a formidable, well-trained and well-equipped army. Military service was obligatory in the Empire for men aged 25-50. Chronicles from the 16th century claim that the Empire kept a standing army of approximately 200,000 well-organized soldiers who started training as young as 10 years old.One notable difference between the Inca and the Mesoamerican civilizations is that the Inca had pack animals. While llamas certainly could not be ridden into battle like the horses of the Spanish, they were available to help transport equipment, carrying up to 75 pounds over the rugged Andean terrain. Still, given the size of the Empire, hauling weaponry and equipment to various locations wouldve been a challenge, one the organized Inca solved by stockpiling weapons and materials in the various storehouses built along the Qapaq an, the Inca road system. These would include helmets, made of wood and sometimes plated in soft metals, wooden shields often covered with leather, and standard tunics.Star-shaped club head, bronze. Source: The British MuseumInca weapons were designed not to capture enemies for ritual sacrifice but to subdue defending armies and conquer new territories. They primarily favored weapons for hand-to-hand combat. Various kinds of clubs were used, including one similar to a mace that featured a star-shaped copper, bronze or stone ball at the top with protruding points, designed to crack skulls. They also wielded axes, daggers, lances and spears made with bronze or stone, but none sharp enough to pierce Spanish plate armor. The bow and arrow were primarily used by those cultures in conquered territory in the jungle and not in common use among the Inca soldiers.The Incas sling shots, waraka were perhaps their most formidable weapon and the most common, given to young warriors during initiation rites. In the case of the Spanish, they were more effective at disarming or slowing down the Conquistadors than inflicting injury but for regional warfare they could be far more deadly. Warriors wielding waraka, woven from cotton, llama or alpaca fiber, were capable of launching stone or soft metal projectiles with such force and accuracy they could snap a steel sword in half. Similarly, Inca bolas, a seemingly humble weapon of cords with weights on the ends, could be hurled into the fray to tangle around feet or, in the case of the Spanish, hooves, and were effective at slowing advances.Germ Warfare: The True BattleImage from the Codex Telleriano-Remensis illustrating outbreaks of disease in the former Aztec Empire, 1563. Source: Dumbarton OaksMany researchers have argued that the reason the Spanish ultimately succeeded in conquering the Indigenous peoples of the Americas had less to do with their innovative weapons or military experience than with another, completely unplanned, advantage. It was not their firepower or mounted soldiers that outmaneuvered the Indigenous population, but something much smaller: the humble germ.In fact, both sides of the conquest harbored diseases that were unique to the opposing side and for which their enemy had no immunity. But the primary illness the Indigenous brought to the fight was syphilis, which wasnt as deadly or easily transmissible as the numerous diseases the Spanish brought: smallpox, measles, chicken pox, influenza, and even bubonic plague, among others. These diseases led to dramatic depopulation in the Americas, preceding the Conquistadors themselves in many cases, the conquest of the Inca Empire in particular. The result was that, while steel, gunpowder and horses certainly gave the Spanish a tactical advantage, they also had millions fewer Indigenous peoples to contend with than they would have in the absence of their germs.

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