Eighteen months after the arrival of their first child, the royal couple were again parents, this time of a girl, Mary, the Princess Royal, born on 4 November 1631. The little princess was not as healthy as her strapping brother, however, and there were fears that she might not survive, resulting in a hasty and low-key christening by Archbishop Laud. ‘Some apprehension there was at first,’ it was reported, ‘of danger in the child, whereof his majesty made a pious use, and caused her forthwith to bebaptized by the name of Mary, without other solemnity than the rights of the Church.’ The doubts surrounding the new princess’s health were short-lived. She and Henrietta were soon said to be in perfect health, ‘so nothing is wanting to make this joy entire, both to his majesty and the entire kingdom’. . .