A Midwife, a Royal Birth, and Fake News
In 1688, an English midwife found herself at the center of controversy. Judith Wilks had helped birth a royal baby — or had she? King James and his queen needed a male heir, but Mary had had a string of miscarriages, still births, and infant deaths. When a living prince was born that June, political opposition launched a barrage of fake news, claiming that the baby had been smuggled into the birthing room in a warming pan. Within that firestorm of publicity, we can glean details of a royal birth that were usually invisible.
Further Reading
McTague, John, ‘Anti-Catholicism, Incorrigibility, and Credulity in the Warming Pan Scandal of 1688-9’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 36 (2013), 433-448.
Weil, Rachel J, “The Politics of Legitimacy: Women and the Warming-Pan Scandal,” The Revolution of 1688-1689: Changing Perspectives, ed. Lois G. Schwoerer, (New York: Cambridge UP, 1992): 65-82.
Fissell, Mary E., "The Restoration Crisis in Paternity" in Vernacular Bodies: The Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern England, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004):196-243.