But even Oxford could be no permanent resting-place for the Queen. Her foes were gathering round it, and unless she wished to run the risk of seeing the horrors of a siege, it was time to be gone. She had, moreover, to care for another life, for she was about again to become a mother. The King could not, of course, leave his headquarters, and the husband and wife prepared to part once more, and this time for ever. Henrietta left Oxford on April 17th, 1644. The parting between her and her husband, which took place at Abingdon, was sufficiently sad, even though the knowledge that it was final was hidden from her. Then, escorted by Jermyn, whose loyalty had been rewarded by a barony, and whose presence at her side excited scurrilous comments which she scornfully ignored, she turned to the south-west. By the 21st of April she was in Bath. She pushed on by the great city of Bristol, which formed part of her dowry, and thence to Exeter, where she arrived in a condition so serious that it seemed likely her troubles would soon find their surest consolation. "Mayerne, for the love of me, go to my wife,"[301] wrote Charles, and Henrietta herself penned a short, piteous note to her old physician. "My disease will invite you more strongly, I hope, than many lines would do."[302] The faithful Swiss needed no further summons. He was at the Queen's side when, on June 16th, the child, whose short life and tragic death were to be in keeping with the circumstances of her birth, was born at Bedford House, in the city of Exeter. The little princess was an unusually pretty baby, and the father she was never to see wrote expressing great pleasure at the reports of her beauty, and requesting that she might be christened in the cathedral of her birthplace, an injunction which aroused the wrath of the Puritans all the more because Charles had just attempted to silence the unpleasant rumours current on the subject of his religion by issuing a declaration of his unalterable attachment to the Protestant faith.[303]