What Medieval Royals Used as Toilet Paper

Picture Henry IV of England, not on the battlefield or in Parliament, but in a private chamber at Eltham Palace around 1400. The king is ill, his skin raw and painful. A servant brings a small basket of something precious, recorded in the royal accounts as cotton for the king’s “necessities.” This was not standard issue. It was medical.

That tiny, undignified detail from the accounts has sparked modern curiosity: if Henry IV was special for wiping with cotton, what did everyone else, even other royals, use in the 1300s?

Medieval Europeans did not have toilet paper in the modern sense. They used a mix of cheap plant material, scrap textiles, water, and, for the very rich or very sore, soft imported fibers like cotton. What people wiped with depended on money, geography, plumbing, and health.

Here are five things medieval nobles and royals actually used to clean up, and why Henry’s cotton habit really did say something about his body and his status.

1. Straw, Hay, and “Rushes”: The Default Wipe

For most people in northern and western Europe around 1300, the basic answer was simple: plant matter. Straw, hay, and rushes were cheap, everywhere, and already part of daily life as bedding, floor covering, and animal feed.

Household accounts and manorial records from England and France show regular purchases of straw and rushes for floors and latrines. In many castles and manor houses, garderobes (latrine shafts built into the wall) were lined or supplied with bundles of plant material. You sat on a stone or wooden seat and reached for what was to hand: straw or a handful of rushes.

We do not have a neat line in an English account book that says “x bundles of straw for wiping bums,” but we do have plenty of references to straw used for “necessities” or “for the garderobe,” which, in context, usually means both absorbing waste and wiping. Medieval writers also joked about “straw for your arse,” which only works as a joke if everyone recognizes the practice.

Take a 14th‑century manor in Yorkshire. The reeve’s accounts list straw for the stables, straw for the hall floor, and straw for the privy. No one is importing cotton for the steward. The same material that softened the floor and the animals’ bedding likely handled personal hygiene.

Straw and rushes mattered because they were the cheap, universal baseline. When someone like Henry IV is singled out for using cotton, it is precisely because the normal expectation, even for many nobles, was some kind of plant waste, not fine fiber.

2. Scraps of Cloth: Old Linen Before Toilet Paper

If you had more money, you had more fabric. And once fabric wore out, it did not go straight in the bin. It became a rag. Some of those rags ended their life in the latrine.

Medieval households, especially noble ones, were textile machines. Linen sheets, shirts, and tablecloths were expensive, but they wore thin. When they tore or became too stained, they were cut down into smaller pieces for cleaning, bandages, and other dirty jobs. Wiping after defecation was one of those jobs.

We see hints of this in late medieval and early modern sources. In 15th‑century German and Italian city records, there are complaints about people throwing rags and cloth into sewers and cesspits, which clogged them. In English and French inventories, there are categories of “old linen” and “rag cloths,” not all of which can be explained by dusting and dishwashing.

In a wealthy Parisian household around 1350, an aging linen sheet might be cut into strips. Some pieces go to the kitchen, some to the laundry, some to the surgeon’s chest, and some to a basket near the private latrine of the master and mistress. No one would waste brand‑new cloth on this, but the end‑of‑life stage of fabric was fair game.

Why does this matter for Henry IV? Because cotton in his case was not just “cloth.” Cotton was a specific, imported fiber. Most European textiles at the time were linen (from flax) or wool. Cotton was rarer and softer. When accounts specify cotton for his toilet use, they are not just saying “rag.” They are saying “special, costly rag.”

So cloth rags were a step up from straw and were common in richer households, but cotton rags for wiping were a step above even that, a sign of both wealth and medical need.

3. Water and Hands: The Other Medieval Normal

Not everyone in the medieval world wiped with dry material. In many regions, especially in the Islamic world and parts of southern Europe, the standard was water and the left hand.

Islamic legal and medical texts from the Middle Ages are very clear about toilet practice. The recommended method was to wash with water, often poured from a small vessel, and to use the left hand to assist. Dry materials like stones or clods of earth were allowed if water was not available, but water was preferred. This was not a poor substitute. It was the norm.

In cities like Cairo, Damascus, or Granada in the 13th and 14th centuries, public baths and private latrines were built with water use in mind. Archaeologists find water channels and basins associated with toilets. Travelers from Christian Europe sometimes remarked on the cleanliness of Muslim cities, which was tied to this washing culture.

Even in Christian Mediterranean regions, like parts of Italy or the Iberian Peninsula, water use was more common than in the colder north. Some late medieval Italian sources mention washing after defecation as part of daily grooming, especially among the urban elite.

So imagine a 14th‑century noble in Granada, under the Nasrid dynasty. He uses a latrine with a water channel and a small jug nearby. No straw, no rags. The cleaning tool is water, guided by the hand. For him, the idea of wiping with imported cotton would be odd, maybe even wasteful.

This matters because it reminds us that Henry IV’s cotton habit is a very specific, north‑western European, late medieval thing. In other cultures of the same era, the “luxury” was abundant water and built plumbing, not soft fiber.

4. Paper and Odd Materials: From China to French Jokes

Toilet paper as a concept did exist in the medieval world, just not in Henry IV’s England. It was in China.

Chinese sources from the Tang and Song dynasties mention paper used for the toilet. By the 14th century, there are records from the Ming dynasty of huge quantities of special paper produced for the imperial household, some of it explicitly for the emperor’s toilet use. One often‑quoted source mentions tens of thousands of sheets made for this purpose in a single year.

That paper was not the same as the smooth rolls we know today, but it was recognizably “paper for wiping.” It was a product of a society that had mass paper production centuries before western Europe.

In medieval Europe, paper was still relatively expensive and associated with writing, not wiping. When Europeans joke about paper in the toilet, it is usually in satire. A 16th‑century French writer, François Rabelais, famously joked about the best material to wipe with, testing everything from goose necks to silk. He mentions paper as one of many options, but as a literary gag, not a real inventory list.

Other odd materials pop up in jokes and insults. Some French and Italian texts mock people for wiping with their shirts, or with their hands, or with “the hem of their cloak.” The comedy works because everyone knows that is not what you are supposed to use. It is like a medieval version of a bad camping story.

So while the Chinese court could afford actual toilet paper, and later early modern Europeans would experiment with paper for this purpose, Henry IV’s England was not there yet. Cotton for wiping was unusual not because no one had thought of using soft fibers, but because Europe’s paper economy and hygiene habits had not moved in that direction.

This matters because it shows that the idea of a dedicated wiping material was not universal. In Henry’s world, using a specific, expensive material for toilet use was a medical or luxury exception, not the norm, which is exactly why it caught the attention of modern historians reading his accounts.

5. Henry IV’s Cotton: Painful Skin and Expensive Comfort

So what about Henry IV and his cotton? The podcast you heard is picking up on a real pattern in the royal financial records. Henry’s household accounts include purchases of cotton specifically for his private use, and some historians have connected this to his chronic skin problems.

Henry IV (reigned 1399–1413) suffered from a long‑running illness. Contemporary chroniclers comment on his disfigured face, scaly skin, and bouts of pain. Modern scholars have suggested various diagnoses, from leprosy (now largely rejected) to psoriasis or some other chronic dermatological condition. Whatever it was, it made his skin sensitive.

Cotton in late medieval England was an imported fiber, coming through Mediterranean trade. It was not as common as linen. It was valued for padding, stuffing, and some luxury textiles. When royal accounts specify cotton for “the king’s necessities” or similar phrases, and when that cotton is not shared with the rest of the household, it is reasonable to read it as special soft material for his toilet use.

Imagine Henry at Windsor or Westminster, in his later years. The standard options are straw, maybe rough linen rags. For a man with inflamed or ulcerated skin around his buttocks and thighs, those would be agony. So his physicians and servants arrange for softer cotton, perhaps used as a kind of disposable pad or as a reusable cloth washed carefully.

We do not have a doctor’s note saying “prescribed cotton for anal fissures,” but the pattern of purchases, combined with comments on his condition, supports the idea that his wiping habits were medically driven. The fact that this cotton is described as for his use alone, not for the queen or the princes, reinforces that it was not just a generic luxury upgrade for the whole family.

Why does this matter? Because it shows how something as mundane as toilet practice can reveal both personal suffering and social hierarchy. Henry’s cotton tells us that:

• He likely had chronic skin issues long before they became dramatically visible.

• The royal household could and did customize even the most private aspects of his life to manage his pain.

• Other nobles, even close kin, probably did not have the same level of comfort in the garderobe, which reminds us that medieval “luxury” was uneven and deeply personal.

Henry IV’s cotton habit was weird in the sense that it was unusual and medically specific. It was also a rich man’s thing, but not every rich man did it. That is why it stands out in the records and why historians latch onto it as a clue to his health.

So what do we learn from all this? Medieval nobles and royals wiped with whatever matched their environment and their budget: straw and rushes as the basic option, old linen rags in richer houses, water in much of the Islamic and Mediterranean world, and, very rarely in western Europe, soft imported fibers like cotton for those who could pay and had reason to care.

Henry IV’s cotton does not mean everyone at court had fluffy bottoms. It means one sick, powerful man could bend trade routes and household routines to spare himself a little pain in the one place no chronicler would politely describe. That tiny detail, buried in the accounts, is how we get from a modern Reddit question to a very human glimpse of a medieval king on the toilet.