When we consider that this “_young and tender age_” represented but four short years, we cannot but feel sorry for the small lady, obliged to entertain visitors with “proper communication,” instead of amusing herself with her “rosemary bushes with gold spangles,” her “gold pomanders,” and other sixteenth century toys, which were continually being brought to her as presents. The Princess’s _Household Book_ for 1520 informs us that she regaled those “gentlemen from France” with “four gallons of Ypocras, with cherries, old apples, wafers, and strawberries, the cost of which amounted to thirty-five shillings and threepence”. Tokens were constantly exchanged between the Dauphin and his _fiancée_. In January 1521, Sir Peter Carew was sent over to Paris, to condole with Francis I. on an accident he had met with, and to inquire after his health. He took with him some rubies as presents, and the French defrayed his expenses, and prepared “some scents and smocks” for him to take back with him, as presents to the Princess.[27] According to the existing arrangements, the Dauphin was to be sent over to England to be brought up in this country when he was a few years old; but long before the time specified, Mary had been solemnly affianced to the Emperor, although her marriage-contract with the Dauphin was never annulled. Until Mary was twelve years old, her health and education were the subjects of Henry’s constant solicitude, and apart from the value he set upon her as an important item in his political schemes, he appears to have regarded her with affection, as long as there was room in his character for natural feeling, or any sentiment unconnected with his dominant passions. The care of her health necessitated her frequent removal from one royal residence to another, as a precaution against infectious disease, rendered necessary by the conditions of life in England during the first half of the sixteenth century. The well-known letter written by Erasmus to Wolsey’s physician, testifies to the perpetual recurrence of the plague in this country, which was to be attributed, the writer considered, mainly to the construction of the houses, full indeed of windows, but as these were not made to open, light was admitted into the dwellings, but no air. He complains of the chalk floors and of the rushes laid thereon, but so carelessly renewed, that the bottom layer often remained for twenty years, harbouring all sorts of offal.