Many false alarms, mostly, it would seem, set afloat by the meddling friar, and dwelt upon by him in his letters with quite unbecoming minuteness, kept the Court agog as to the possibility of an heir to the crown being born. Henry himself, who was always fond of children, was desperately anxious for a son; and when, on New Year's Day 1511, the looked-for heir was born at Richmond, the King's unrestrained rejoicing again took his favourite form of sumptuous entertainments, after he had ridden to the shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham in Norfolk to give thanks for the favour vouchsafed to him. Once again Westminster glittered with cloth of gold and gems and velvet. Once again courtiers came to the lists disguised as hermits, to kneel before Katharine, and then to cast off their gowns and stand in full panoply before her, craving for leave to tilt in her honour. Once again fairy bowers of gold and artificial flowers sheltered sylvan beauties richly bedizened, the King and his favourites standing by in purple satin garments with the solid gold initials of himself and his wife sewn upon them. Whilst the dazzling company was dancing the "scenery" was rolled back. It came too near the crowd of lieges at the end of the hall, and pilfering fingers began to pluck the golden ornaments from the bowers. Emboldened by their immunity for this, people broke the bounds, swarmed into the central space, and in the twinkling of an eye all the lords and ladies, even the King himself, found themselves stripped of their finery to their very shirts, the golden letters and precious tissues intended as presents for fine ladies being plunder now in grimy hands that turned them doubtless to better account. Henry in his bluff fashion made the best of it, and called the booty largesse. Little recked he, if the tiny heir whose existence fed his vanity throve. But the babe died soon after this costly celebration of his birth.