Henry and Francis were only a cannonshot apart in their temporary quarters, but they did not meet. Instead each notified the other of his presence by messenger, with Henry sending Wolsey and his entourage to Francis to arrange the time and place for the two sovereigns to meet in person. Wolsey's retinue caused a great stir. He had far more attendants than did the dukes of Suffolk and Buckingham and the archbishop of Canterbury combined. Fifty mounted gentlemen in crimson velvet preceded him, with fifty ushers bearing gold maces "as large as a man's head." His standing gold cross with its jeweled crucifix was borne solemnly before him, and the richly trapped mule he rode was surrounded by dozens of lackeys and guards wearing his device. Bishops and other ecclesiastics rode behind the cardinal, among them the grand prior of the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, and a hundred mounted archers of the king's guard, their bows bent at the ready, brought up the rear.
Wolsey's display was only partly meant to impress the official participants in the festivities. He had in mind too the watching townspeople of Guines and Ardres, the local farmers and shepherds whose animals continued to graze undisturbed in the fields as the royal tents were erected and the tiltyard constructed, and the growing crowd of curious spectators who camped on the hills around the Golden Valley and came to drink the king's wine in the courtyard of the English palace. Francis had turned back some ten thousand of these idlers who followed him on his initial journey to Ardres, and the provost marshal of the Field tried in vain to enforce the joint royal command that persons with no business in the valley should leave it within six hours "on pain of hanging." But the crowds grew unchecked, eager for the sight of finery and wealth and
eager, too, to search the faces of men and women who always had enough to eat and who could spend the long summer days in knightly pastimes. Beggars appeared at the tents of the courtiers, and peddlers from the towns and fairs tried to sell them pies and trinkets; minstrels followed them playing for coins, while from a distance laborers, villagers and poor travelers stopped on their journeys to enjoy the spectacle, and memorized its details to tell their children.
Two days after the royal parties arrived came the first great event of the Field of Cloth of Gold, the face-to-face meeting of the two kings. They left their respective camps late in the afternoon, at the sound of a cannonshot from Guines Castle. Henry and his train approached the meeting place from one side, Francis and his from the other, and when both parties reached artificial hillocks built up at opposite entrances to the valley they halted to allow the kings to go on alone. A little pavilion had been erected at the exact center of the valley, furnished with chairs, cushions and refreshments, for the first conversation between the two monarchs, and it was toward this pavilion that they now rode, slowly at first and then, after taking off their hats in token of greeting, at a fast gallop ''like two men of arms going into combat at spearpoint." They had in mind to embrace one another while still on horseback, but Henry's splendid bay proved too lively, and they had to dismount before beginning a lavish display of heartily feigned affection. An Italian eyewitness swore they threw their arms around each other more than twenty times, thrilling the French and making them weep for joy.
Inside the little pavilion—which they entered together, arm in arm, to avoid the issue of precedence—the two kings were joined by Wolsey and the French admiral Bonnivet. The articles governing the meeting were read out, and when Henry's titles were read, including the time-honored phrase "King of France," he characteristically made light of the matter and suggested in very good French that Francis' presence obviously invalidated it. When the kings had conversed for a while and drunk a great quantity of wine, the initial meeting ended, and Henry and Francis rode back to their waiting retinues to the sound of the English oboes and sackbuts and the drums and flutes of Francis' hired Switzers. Wolsey and Bonnivet reported that the good feeling at the meeting was boundless, with Francis calling Henry his brother and friend, and Henry swearing that "he never saw prince with his eyes, that might of his heart be more loved."
Three weeks of feasting, jousting and fierce competition followed. Francis gave banquets for Henry's knights, Henry for Francis' knights; the two kings dined together in a hall lined with pink brocade; Queens Katherine and Claude feasted one another; Francis feasted Katherine, and Henry Claude; and Wolsey entertained the French queen dowager, Louise of Savoy. According to one account, an inexhaustible supply of dishes were served at each of these banquets, with the food and wine so abundant that the courtiers choked themselves, but another observer noted that the guests of honor did nothing but converse, having eaten before they came.^
Each day the order of the jousting was arranged by heralds standing at the foot of a huge artificial "tree of nobility," nearly a hundred and thirty feet high and forty feet wide, which bore the escutcheons of the combatants and celebrated famous tournaments of the past. Both the French and English bands tilted furiously, breaking hundreds of lances (the English brought fifteen hundred with them) and fighting valiantly at the barriers. For the French, Francis, St.-Pol, Fleuranges and a dozen other knights won prizes, while Henry, Suffolk, Dorset, Francis Bryan, Anthony Brown, William Carey, John Neville and Richard Jemingham—who was nearly unhorsed in the last week of the jousting—gained prizes among the English knights. In all, the weapons forge that was brought from Greenwich and set up at Guines repaired as many swords for William Kingston, Giles Chapel, Nicholas Carew and Anthony Knevet as for Henry himself.
It could not be said, though, that the subjects outdid their sovereigns. Francis, an observer wrote, ''shivered spears like reeds, and never missed a stroke," while Henry lived up to his unparalleled reputation as a jouster and expert horseman, tiring six horses in rapid succession one day in the exercises of the manage, "laughing the whole time, being in truth very merry, and remaining in the lists for upwards of two hours."^ To be sure, Francis went down to defeat to one of the English knights, Weston Brown, and suffered a slight wound and a great momentary humiliation, but he got his revenge: he challenged Henry to an impromptu wrestling match and quickly threw his burly rival to the ground. Both men surpassed themselves in fighting at the barriers, dealing blows "with such force that the fire sprang out of their armor," and in the final tally neither went away the loser.
The royal ladies were appraised as carefully as the kings. Francis' mother, Louise of Savoy, a great beauty in her youth and an extremely powerful figure at her son's court, eclipsed her pregnant, retiring daughter-in-law Queen Claude. When Francis was not dressing or dining or hunting or keeping a rendezvous, he was nearly always to be found with his mother, who looked on him as her crowning achievement and a fitting consolation for the indignities of her earlier life. In her eyes Francis was "my glorious son and triumphant Caesar," and she spurred on his ambitions for conquest with all the enthusiasm of a matron of ancient Rome.^
The English Queen Katherine too stood out, riding in her gilt-columned open litter upholstered in cloth of gold and trimmed in crimson satin. Wearing a becoming Spanish headdress that left her long auburn hair hanging free over her shoulders and gown, she made "a very beautiful sight," and it was easy to forget—from a distance at least—that she had already reached the advanced age of thirty-five.^ "The beautiful Lady Mary, the king's sister," was also conspicuous among the English women. Though she was now Charles Brandon's wife Mary still kept the title and heraldic symbols of a queen of France; the fleur-de-lis and the monogram L and M, for Louis and Mary, decorated her litter, along with Louis XII's symbol, the porcupine.^ Among Katherine's ladies, Anne Brown, sister of his nemesis Weston Brown, found favor with Francis.
Her handsomeness was widely remarked, and the French king chose her as his dancing partner and dinner companion several times.^ The drinking of the English ladies scandalized a Venetian diplomat, who saw them pass flasks and then large cups of wine from hand to hand as they watched the tilting, draining more than twenty of the cups and sharing them freely with the French lords/
Miraculously,
there was no recorded treachery, no brawling, and none of the practical jokes for which both Henry's minions and Francis' playful companions were famous. There were constant disputes: over the English markers torn down by the French, over the location of the tiltyard and the poor view of it from the ladies' scaffold, over the one-sided wrestling contest held when the powerful Breton wrestlers were absent.* But none of these arguments erupted into violence and both French and English confined their volatile passions to the jousts. The weather was a hindrance. At best it was uncomfortably hot—"hotter than St. Peter's in Rome," an Italian wrote—and at worst the winds were so high the jousters "could not couch their lances," and dust blinded the horses and parched the throats of the spectators. The high wind blew Francis' great pavilion away toward the sea and damaged the smaller tents. Injuries to the combatants were unavoidable. Francis emerged from the tiltyard with a black eye, and had to wear a rakish eyepatch for a few days, and later a fiery English knight sliced the plume clean off his helmet. Henry sprained his hand. A French knight, tilting against his brother, was hurt so badly he died of his wounds.
But overall the thousands who attended the celebrated meeting behaved as if their cordiality was real, and did credit to their genteel upbringing. The amity between the two sovereigns and their courtiers was symbolized by exchanges of lavish gifts. Henry gave Francis a jeweled collar with a great pendant ruby in the shape of a heart. Claude gave Katherine a gorgeous litter, with its mules and pages; in return she received beautifully trapped riding horses. Francis made a present of gold vases worth twenty thousand crowns to Wolsey, and his mother presented the cardinal with a jeweled crucifix; Wolsey's gift to the French king was not recorded, but to Louise he offered a relic of the true cross, set with precious stones.^ Of all the gifts befitting royalty the noblest were fine horses, and both kings received their share. Henry admired the mount of one of the French knights; later, after he had run his courses, the man dismounted, kissed the king's hand, and made him a present of it. Henry gave a number of valuable horses to Francis, but in the opinion of a Mantuan who saw them all, the finest horses at the Field were those Francis gave Henry—a splendid sorrel mare, Mantellino, a high-stepping jouster who ran twelve courses without swerving, and the prize of them all. Dappled Mozaurcha.^^
After three weeks of guarded sociability it could almost have been said that the English and French were able to get along well together. At the elaborate concluding ceremonies, where Wolsey officiated at mass (a rare event) in a temporary chapel built overnight in the tiltyard, the two kings vowed to dedicate a permanent church to "Our Lady of Friendship" and
to return to the Golden Valley often with their courtiers. High-spirited as ever, Henry seemed "as well pleased with this interview as if he had gained a great realm/' and Francis was equally satisfied. But though the sovereigns parted with effusive displays of sorrow their followers were eager to return home, and were hardly out of earshot before they began to heap insults on one another. "If I had a drop of French blood in my body," Lord Leonard Grey was overheard to remark to a companion, "I would cut myself open to get rid of it." "And so would I," was the reply.^' When he heard of this Henry had both men arrested, but no amount of royal wrath could wipe away the ill feeling between the English and French, an echo of hatreds centuries old and soon to be rekindled. And besides, it was hardly out of consideration for his brother monarch Francis that Henry traveled immediately to Gravelines, where he and Charles V set to work to undermine French interests.
The eighth wonder of the world came and went too quickly to leave a lasting memorial. The church to Our Lady of Friendship was never built, and it is doubtful whether either sovereign seriously considered meeting the other again soon, except in battle. The French and English disliked and distrusted each other even more than before, and the meeting stirred old fears of invasion and conquest on both sides.
Still less did the Field of Cloth of Gold touch the lives of the French and English people. To the thousands who came to gape at the spectacle at first hand it was a shimmering vision never to be forgotten, but to most people it was only an evocative name. For while the Field was in progress, the citizens of London spent their days and nights as they always had, heedless of the marvels across the Channel.
By an odd chance we know what some Londoners were doing on a summer night at about the time of the Field.^^ Because apprentices and others in the city had recently rioted against London's foreign craftsmen, threatening to rise up and kill them all, searches were made from time to time in the suburbs for "suspected persons." A document has survived which tells us, on one July night, what the searchers found.
In Paddington, a tailor and his servant, a servant of the abbot of Westminster and his son, and another man "played all night till four o'clock in the morning" at cards and dice, at which time the game was broken up and the players reported to the constable. In St. Martin's, Southwark, Lambeth and Stepney, many "masterless men" were found in shabby rooms, though few of them were judged to be the sort of "vagabond and misdemeanored persons" the searchers were looking for. Ten Germans were seized in Southwark, in the parish of St. Woloff s, and seven Frenchmen along with them in a house in a neighboring street; five mariners lodged in victualing houses were questioned, but were found to be honest crewmen of a ship called The Christ.
The stews yielded fifty-four men and women to be detained under suspicion, though many houses were merely crowded with their ordinary tenants in varying states of discomfort and mundane vice. Two women, "an old drab and a young wench," were found lying huddled together on a dirty sheet on the bare ground in the cellar of a house; upstairs were Hugh
Lewis and Alice Ball, "taken in bed together, not being man and wife." John a Park, a brewer, and one Agnes Cotes were taken "in like manner," while Philip Humphrey, who claimed to be a royal servant, was found "in a house by himself in a chamber, and a woman in a chamber underneath, without shutting of doors." In the Rose tavern at Westminster the officers questioned Anne Southwick, "late dwelling within the bars of Westminster," and released her. In Tothill Street, at the buckler-maker's house, they detained Elizabeth Hammond, who said she had been brought there by one John Thomas of Brondwood, whose child she was carrying. In all the number of undesirables was small. Most of the inns and lodging houses of Knightsbridge, Kensington and Hammersmith were filled with honest craftsmen and laborers—"mowers, haymakers, makers of tile and brick." There were four countrymen at the sign of the Katherine, and at the White Hart, two men bringing oxen to Wolsey at court. Two carters were found snoring side by side at the sign of the Plough; other lodgings yielded a tailor, a parish clerk, an old man without work and four men of the west country who had a suit at Whitehall before the dean of the chapel. At Chelsea, toward morning, the king's servants found only two men sent to clean a house for their lord, and in a bam, a beggar and his wife.
But alas! what a griefe is this That princes subjects cannot be true, But still the devill hath some of his, Will play their parts whatever ensue; Forgetting what a grievous thing It is to offend the anointed king? Alas for woe, why should it be so. This makes a sorrowful heigh ho.
In the same year that the Field of Cloth of Gold celebrated the glory and majesty of Henry VIII, the king confided to Wolsey a haunting suspicion of the men around him. "I would you should make good watch on the duke of Suffolk, on the duke of Buckingham, on my lord of Northumberland, on my lord of Derby, on my lord of Wiltshire and on others which you think suspect," he wrote, adding that the reasons for his mistrust were so secret he was disclosing them to "none other but you and I."^ No record remains of the exact nature of Henry's suspicions, though they were very likely associated with accusations brought against the duke of Buckingham in the following year. The letter belied the apparent concord surrounding the king and brought to the surface, perhaps for the first time, dangerous undercurrents of conflict and potential rebellion that ran far below the smooth surface of court life.
This was not the first shadow to f
all across the reign. In the spring of 1517 the hatred of foreigners that had been building among London apprentices erupted into large-scale violence. Isolated attacks on foreign artisans and merchants gave way to mass assaults on the quarters where the French and Flemish workers lived, and on the embattled houses of the Florentines and Genoese. Closing the city gates to prevent the king's soldiers from reinforcing the city guard, the rioters temporarily took control; in Richmond, the king was roused from his bed at midnight by stories of mayhem in the capital and made ready to lead his soldiers against the thousands of apprentices and the ne'er-do-wells and criminals who had joined them. In a matter of hours royal forces under Norfolk and his son the earl of Surrey had fought their way through into the city and eventually restored order, and overall the damage was found to be light.
Henry's judgment against the captured rebels was swift and spectacular, however. Some four hundred of the malefactors were brought before the king and his chief lords in the great hall at Westminster, "all in their shirts and barefoot, and each with a halter round his neck," and heard him
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condemn them to death. They cried for mercy; Wolsey and several of the other lords urged clemency, and at length, after keeping them for some time in fear of their lives, Henry relented. The pardoned men leaped for joy, tearing the halters from their necks and throwing them in the air, and making a great impression on the spectators. The quartered bodies of forty others, denied pardon, made another sort of impression. "At the city gates one sees nothing but gibbets and the quarters of these scelerats," a visitor to London wrote, "so that it is horrible to pass near them."2
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