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 Henry VIII., lost her only son in his teens.

The appalling death-rate among Tudor infants cannot be attributed solely to medical ignorance, for Yorkist babies clung to life with a tenacity which was quite as inconvenient as the readiness with which Tudor infants relinquished it; and Richard III., Henry VII.
and Henry VIII.