ith (p. 012)
Henry's son; and now their ambassador wrote triumphantly that there
remained in England not a doubtful drop of royal blood.[26] There were
no more pretenders, and for the rest of Henry's reign England enjoyed
such peace as it had not known for nearly a century. The end which
Henry had sought by fair means and foul was attained, and there was no
practical alternative to his children in the succession to the English
throne.

[Footnote 24: Perkin was the first of Lady
Catherine Gordon's four husbands; her second was
James Strangways, gentleman-usher to Henry VIII.,
her third Sir Matthew Cradock (d. 1531), and her
fourth Christopher Ashton, also gentleman-usher;
she died in 1537 and was buried in Fyfield Church
(_L. and P._, ii., 3512).]

[Footnote 25: See the present writer in _Dict. Nat.
Biog._, lxiii., 172.]

[Footnote 26: _Sp. Cal._, i., No. 249; see below,
p. 179.]

But all his statecraft, his patience and labour would have been writ
in water without children to succeed him and carry on the work which
he had begun; and at times it seemed probable that this necessary
condition would remain unfulfilled. For the Tudors were singularly
luckless in the matter of children. They were scarcely a sterile race,
but their offspring had an unfortunate habit of dying in childhood. It
was the desire for a male heir that involved Henry VIII. in his breach
with Rome, and led Mary into a marriage which raised a revolt; the
last of the Tudors perceived that heirs might be purchased at too
great a cost, and solved the difficulty by admitting its insolubility.
Henry VIII. had six wives, but only three children who survived
infancy; of these, Edward VI. withered away at the age of fifteen, and
Mary died childless at forty-two. By his two[27] mistresses he seems
to have had only one son, who died at the age of eleven, and as far as
we know, he had not a single grandchild, legitimate or other. His
sisters were hardly more fortunate. Margaret's eldest son by James IV.
died a year after his birth; her eldest daughter died at birth; her
second son lived only nine months; her second daughter died at (p. 013)
birth; her third son lived to be James V., but her fourth found an
early grave. Mary, the other sister of Hen