ngratulations, said
he would have been better pleased had it been a son, the King replied:
"We are both young; if it was a daughter this time, by the grace of
God the sons will follow".[504] All thoughts of a divorce passed away
for the time, but the desired sons did not arrive. In August, 1517,
Catherine was reported to be again expecting issue, but nothing more
is heard of the matter, and it is probable that about this time the
Queen had various miscarriages. In July, 1518, Henry wrote to Wolsey
from Woodstock that Catherine was once more pregnant, and that he
could not move the Court to London, as it was one of the Queen's
"dangerous times".[505] His precautions were unavailing, and, on the
10th of November, his child arrived still-born. Giustinian notes the
great vexation with which the people heard the news, and expresses the
opinion that, had it occurred a month or two earlier, the Princess
Mary would not have been betrothed to the French dauphin, "as the one
fear of England was lest it should pass into subjection to France
through that marriage".[506]

[Footnote 502: _L. and P._, ii., 1505, 1573.]

[Footnote 503: _L. and P._, ii., 1563, 1610.]

[Footnote 504: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 691.]

[Footnote 505: _Cotton MS._, Vespasian, F, iii.,
fol. 34, _b_; _cf. L. and P._, ii., 4074, 4288.]

[Footnote 506: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 1103.]

The child was the last born of Catherine. For some years Henry went on
hoping against every probability that he might still have male issue
by his Queen; and in 1519 he undertook to lead a crusade against the
Turk in person if he should have an heir.[507] But physicians summoned
from Spain were no more successful than their English colleagues. (p. 178)
By 1525 the last ray of hope had flickered out. Catherine was then
forty years old; and Henry at the age of thirty-four, in the full
vigour of youthful manhood, seemed doomed by the irony of fate and by
his union with Catherine to leave a disputed inheritance. Never did
England's interests more imperatively demand a secure and peaceful
succession. Never before had there been such mortality among the
children of an English king; never before had an English king married
his brother's widow. So striking a coincidence could be only explained
by the relation of cause and effect. Men who saw the judgment of God
in the sack of Rome, mig