"Given under our Signet, att my Lord's Mannor of Hampton Courte, the xii
daie of October."[10]

Edward was christened with great state, on the Monday following, in the
chapel at Hampton Court, Archbishop Cranmer, and the Duke of Norfolk being
the godfathers, and his sister, the Princess Mary, godmother.[11] "At his
birth," says Hall, "was great fires made through the whole realme, and
great joye made with thankesgeuyng to Almightie God which had sent so
noble a prince to succeed to the crowne of this realme."[12]

The joy, however, which the birth of a son and heir to the throne, excited
in the mind of Henry was soon dispelled by the death of his queen. It was
deemed necessary, both for the preservation of her life, and that of her
offspring, to bring the latter into the world by means of the Caesarian
operation, a mode which in the greater number of cases proves fatal to the
mother. It has been maliciously, and without the least appearance of truth,
asserted by Sanders,[13] one of the most bitter writers of the opposite
party, that the question was put to the King by the physicians, whether
the life of the Queen or the child should be saved, for it was judged
impossible to preserve both? "The child's," he replied, "for I shall be
able to find wives enough." Whether, however, her death originated from
that terrible cause, we cannot, at this distant period, pretend to affirm,
but from the report to the Privy Council of the birth of Edward the Sixth,
still extant, it would appear not, as it informs us she was "happily"
delivered, and died afterwards of a distemper incidental to women in that
condition.

The death of Jane Seymour, like the birth of her son, is involved in
considerable obscurity. Most of the chroniclers who appear to have