During Tudor times, conventional restrictions on human congress with non-human species were more relaxed than they are today. If bluff King Hal wished to penetrate a she-goat, or a newly discovered Stellar Sea Lion from America or, indeed, the other Boleyn girl, nobody was going to stand in his way. This trend naturally gained momentum among his courtiers. Before long, anyone who was anyone had a sexual curriculum vitae extending across several species, genera and families.
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Understanding of genetic transfer was limited in those times. Knowledge of one’s lineage was often a matter of conjecture and carefully-manufactured fiction. With the increase in openness about sexual histories in Henry VIII’s time came some interesting revelations. Whilst families had always boasted of partaking of the qualities of particular animals, the vaunted courage of the lion being a popular example, patriarchs now began to proclaim to their peers that their predecessors had indulged in sex with selected animals, evidence that the qualities of which they had boasted were really in their blood.
Thomas Dacre was on the losing side at the Battle of Bosworth but this did not prevent him from adopting these Tudor ideas in respect of his own family and indeed sexual habits. The Dacre Beasts, now at the Victoria and Albert Museum, show four creatures claimed by Dacre as part of his family. The salmon represents his wife, Elizabeth de Greystoke.
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