Meanwhile, elaborate preparations had been made for the advent of Mary’s passionately longed for child. Public prayers were offered for the Queen’s safety, and Parliament had petitioned Philip that “if it should happen to the queen otherwise than well, in the time of her travail, he would take upon himself the government of the realm during the minority of her majesty’s issue, with the rule, order, education and government of the said issue”.[504] In the Royal Library in Paris is a letter addressed to the Queen of Navarre, and describing an interview with Philip and Mary, at which the latter informed the writer, that the first desire of her heart was to have a son. Letters were written as the expected time approached, to announce the joyful intelligence of the birth of a child, blank spaces being left for the date and the sex to be filled in afterwards. But the time wore on and passed, and it was at last clear that what had been mistaken for the promise of motherhood, was but the beginning of a fatal disease. Mary clung to the hope long after her physicians had assured her that she would never give birth to a child, and most of those around her flattered the hope, while they pitied the delusion. One of her women was however more sincere and a contemporary document relates, “How Mrs. Clarentius and divers others, as parasites about her, assured her to be with child, insomuch as the Queen was fully so persuaded herself, being right desirous thereof, if God had been so pleased, that it might have been a comfort to all Catholic posterity, as she declared by her oration in the Guild Hall at London, at the rising of Wyatt, which was so worthy a speech made by her there, touching the cause of her marriage and why, that it made them that were there, though of contrary religion, to relent into tears, and hardly could she suffer any that would not say as she said, touching her being with child. Mrs. Frideswide Strelley, a good honourable woman of hers would not yield to her desire, and never told her an untruth....”[505] The writer then describes that “when the rockers and cradle, and all such things were provided for the Queen’s delivery, that her time should be nigh, as it was supposed, and those parasites had had all the spoil of such things amongst them, and no such matter in the end ... then when the uttermost time was come, and the Queen thus deluded, she sent for Sterly (_sic_) her woman again, to whom she said, ‘Ah, Strelly, Strelly, I see they be all flatterers, and none true to me but thou,’ and then was she more in favour than ever she was before”.