Mary Tudor - Anna Whitelock [47]
In April, the Privy Council recommended that Mary and Elizabeth be “made of some estimation” and since Mary was the elder, “and more apt to make a present alliance than the other,” it “might please the King to declare her according to his laws” so that she might be more attractive as a bride, as a means of ensuring that the king “may provide himself of a present friend.”23 Although Charles pressed for a match with Dom Luis of Portugal, the young brother of the king of Portugal, the advice was not taken. Jane was pregnant, and Henry was optimistic that it would be a son. Any negotiation for a betrothal would now depend on public recognition of Mary’s illegitimacy.
CHAPTER 20
DELIVERANCE OF A GOODLY PRINCE
Right trust and well beloved, we greet you well. And forasmuch as by the inestimable Goodness and grace of Almighty God we be delivered and brought in child bed of a Prince conceived in most Lawful Matrimony between my lord the King’s Majesty and us, doubting not but that for the love and affection which ye bear unto us and to the common wealth of this Realm the Knowledge thereof should be joyous and glad tidings unto you, we have thought good to certify you of the same.1
—JANE SEYMOUR TO CROMWELL, OCTOBER 12, 1527
AT TWO IN THE MORNING OF FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1537, JANE Seymour gave birth to a son at Hampton Court. Born on the Feast of Saint Edward the Confessor, he was named after the royal saint.
By eight o’clock Te Deums had been sung in every parish church in London; bonfires were lit, and the firing of the Tower guns continued well into the evening.2 Messengers were dispatched around the country and to courts across Europe proclaiming the birth. “Here be no news, but very good news,” wrote Thomas Cromwell to Sir Thomas Wyatt, the ambassador to Spain, who had been imprisoned after the fall of Anne Boleyn. “It hath pleased Almighty God of his goodness, to send unto the Queen’s Grace deliverance of a goodly Prince, to the great comfort, rejoice and consolation of the King’s Majesty, and of all us his most humble, loving and obedient subjects.”3 Finally Henry had a legitimate male heir.
Anticipation of the birth had been growing since the spring. On May 23, Jane’s pregnancy was made known at court, and four days later a Te Deum was celebrated at St. Paul’s upon the “quickening” of her child.4 The king added a nursery to the building works at Hampton Court in preparation for the queen’s confinement, and Mary was summoned to attend on the queen.5 On Sunday, September 16, Jane took to her chamber, where she remained for three weeks before going into a prolonged and arduous thirty-hour labor. A solemn procession was made at St. Paul’s “to pray for the Queen that was then in labour of child.”6 On the following morning, Jane was safely delivered. As news of the birth rang out from the bells of St. Paul’s, Henry hurried back from Esher in Surrey, to which he had been forced to move on account of the plague, to begin a round of celebratory banquets.7
Three days after the birth, Mary stood as godmother at the font in the newly decorated Chapel Royal at Hampton Court as Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, performed the rites of baptism over the infant prince.8 Although the plague limited the size of the retinues coming to court, it was a lavish ceremony. Some three or four hundred