Why we need to stop looking for sex: letters and LGBT+ royal history

'How do you know?'

I've been asked this a lot recently when I've been talking about LGBT+ royal history. I'm glad to be asked it, because it gets to the heart of studying LGBT+ identities in the past. In this post, I'd like to talk about the evidence and assumptions, which tell us a lot about sexuality in the past, and today.

All history is built on the traces and survivals people in the past have left us. Think about your life: how much of it could a historian in 300 years time piece together? Do you keep all your letters? Archive all your emails? Keep receipts for everything you've bought? Do you keep a diary, and what do you write in it? What about the things that never get written down? Every day you'll have conversations, some mundane, some life changing. Do you record these or are they lost forever?

It's the same with people in the past. We only know them from the traces of evidence made at the time, which have survived to our own day. We'll never know what was lost, and even more, we'll never know what was whispered from one person to another – secrets that were never meant to be repeated, let alone written down.

Lord Hervey wrote to his great love, Stephen 'Ste' Fox, in 1727:

'You have left some such remembrance behind you that I assure you (if 'tis any satisfaction to you to know it) you are not in the least Danger of being forgotten. The favours I have received at Your Honour's Hands are of such a Nature that tho' the impression might wear out of my Mind, yet they are written in such lasting characters upon every Limb, that 'tis impossible for me to look on a Leg or an Arm without having my Memory refresh'd.'

Is Hervey suggesting that Ste has left physical marks on his body from a passionate romantic encounter? Or that the memory of Ste's touch has left an indelible mental impression? The letter is open to interpretation, but the strength of the sentiment communicates strongly.

By now we can see the problems we can run into when we use letters as sources to identify LGBT+ orientations and identities in people in the past. James VI and I, Queen Anne, and Lord Hervey lived in a different age and, as is often said, sexuality was understood differently then. Written records from court reports to pornography attest that same-sex sex was widely experienced and understood in the time of James VI and I, Anne, and Lord Hervey. Today we think of sexuality as something you are, but in the past it was something you did or felt. For this reason, projecting our modern ideas of sexuality onto people in the past just doesn't work.

The problem is much bigger than this though.

In so much research to find evidence of LGBT+ people in the past we look for evidence of physical sexual activity as a gold standard. It seems to be the perfect evidence. We need to stop doing this, because there is so much more to sexuality and sexual identity than sex.

Think about your own life. If you are in, or have ever been in, a close romantic relationship with someone, you will know that sex is only a part of love and relationships. Companionship, emotional attraction, shared values, or a sense of humour all contribute to the emotional bond. Also, thinking about the evidence we leave for history, how often do we write down or record sexual encounters?

Some people might confide to their diaries or their friends, but I expect that most people today won't leave behind the kind of evidence for future historians that we expect people in the past to have left for us. Until very recently same-sex sex between women was taboo and between men a capital offence. Is it any wonder people didn't leave an incriminating written record even if they did have same-sex physical encounters?

Instead, we need to understand people in the past in their own terms. We know that same sex love and desire and many experiences of gender have existed in every human society. If we really want to understand people in the past we need to look at what the evidence that survives tells us, rather than looking for experiences that match our modern expectations.

In 1623, James VI and I, near the end of his life, finished a letter to the Duke of Buckingham, who was 26 years younger than him, with the lines:

'I desire only to live in this world for your sake, and that I had rather live banished in any part of the earth with you than live a sorrowful widow's life without you. And so God bless you, my sweet child and wife, and grant that ye may ever be a comfort to your dear dad and husband.'

James takes on the role of father and husband to the younger man. The strength of feeling is clear to us, but its expression is different to our modern understanding of romantic love. We also shouldn't forget that this relationship was based as much on politics and power as shared feeling. Buckingham rose through the ranks of society and the aristocracy thanks to James's patronage.

Similarly, Anne as a princess wrote to Lady Sarah Churchill in 1692:

'I had rather live in a cottage with you than reign empress of the world without you.'

Anne reveals her intense emotional and practical reliance on Sarah, but I suspect that the politically ambitious Sarah wouldn't have shared Anne's view. Anne was far more useful to Sarah as a ruler than as a companion in a cottage.