Henry VIII had people kiss his bed linen every morning to make sure it was not covered in poison
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For thousands of years, kings have hired tasters to test their food before they consumed it. But monarchs weren’t only worried about what they consumed – they were also terrified of touching something that was coated with toxins which allowed the poison to enter their skin. As Ambroise Paré, the 16th-century French royal physician once wrote: “Now poisons do not only kill being taken into the bodie, but som being put or applied outwardly.”
It was for this reason, perhaps, that the gentleman who made Henry VIII's bed every morning were required to kiss every part of the sheets, pillows and blankets they had touched - to prove they had not smeared poison on them.
The king was also quite concerned that his enemies might try to poison the clothing belonging to his son, Edward. New garments straight from the tailor were never to be put on the prince; They must first be washed and aired before the fireplace to remove any harmful substances.
Before the prince donned any items of clothing – trousers, shirt, or doublet – his servants tested them. Either they rubbed them, inside and outside, against their skin, or they dressed a boy Edward's size in them and waited to see if he cried out that his skin was on fire. Even the cushion on Edward’s chamber pot was tested before he used it, though we are not sure how.
Elizabeth I used makeup consisting of nasty chemicals that you most definitely would not want to put on your face today
As the ‘Virgin Queen’, Elizabeth I didn’t run the risk of dying in childbirth or suffering pregnancy complications. In fact, her only significant illness was a severe, almost fatal infection of smallpox in 1562 at the age of 29, which left her skin pitted. Little did she know, her efforts to hide the damage may well have shaved a few years off her life.
Back then, a flawless complexion was not simply a question of beauty. Blemishes of any kind were seen as proof of God’s displeasure at sin or inner derangement: lewd sexual fantasies, for example, were thought to ‘bubble up’ from the private parts to the face. Some women filled in smallpox pits with a mixture of turpentine, beeswax, and even human fat. You could purchase the latter at a local apothecary (or, cutting out the middleman, directly from the town executioner, who sliced it from the still-warm corpses of condemned criminals).