The mayor and companies of London received him as he approached the city; the crowds of people and citizens were zealous in their expressions of satisfaction.

But Henry, amidst this general effusion of joy, discovered still the stateliness and reserve of his temper, which made him scorn to court popularity: he entered London in a close chariot, and would not gratify the people with a sight of their new sovereign.
But the king did not so much neglect the favor of the people, as to delay giving them assurances of his marriage with the princess Elizabeth, which he knew to be so passionately desired by the nation.
On his leaving Brittany, he had artfully dropped some hints that, if he should succeed in his enterprise, and obtain the crown of England, he would espouse Anne, the heir of that duchy; and the report of this engagement had already reached England, and had begotten anxiety in the people, and even in Elizabeth herself.

Henry took care to dissipate these apprehensions, by solemnly renewing, before the council and principal nobility, the promise which he had already given to celebrate his nuptials with the English princess.

But though bound by honor, as well as by interest, to complete this alliance, he was resolved to postpone it till the ceremony of his own coronation should be finished, and till his title should be recognized by parliament.

Still anxious to support his personal and hereditary right to the throne, he dreaded lest a preceding marriage with the princess should imply a participation of sovereignty in her, and raise doubts of his own title by the house of Lancaster.
There raged at that time in London, and other parts of the kingdom, a species of malady unknown to any other age or nation, the sweating sickness, which occasioned the sudden death of great multitudes; though it seemed not to be propagated by any contagious infection, but arose from the general disposition of the air and of the human body.