Equal in Honour
The four gentlemen hostages of France, daily resorted to the court and had great cheer and were well entertained and every time they moved, stirred and required the king to pass the sea and to meet with the French king their master, whom they praised highly, affirming that if the king and he might once familiarly commune together, that there should such a constant love rise and increase between them, which afterward should never fail.
Edward Hall1
THE IDEA OF a personal meeting between Henry VIII and Francis I eventually became an international event that involved enough people to make a respectably large early-modern army. Transporting, accommodating, ordering, feeding and watering, protecting and entertaining this vast concourse of people was certainly akin to organising a royal military campaign. Participating in it may well have felt like one too.
In February 1520 Cardinal Wolsey drew up a treaty for both kings to ratify, which set out the prospective arrangements for their meeting. He also issued a proclamation declaring that the two sovereigns would come together and prepare ‘to do some fair feat of arms, as well on foot as on horseback against all comers’. Henry was to come with his wife Katherine and his sister Mary, Duchess of Suffolk, to the castle at Guînes by the end of May. Francis was to be at his town of Ardres with his wife Claude and his mother Louise within four days of the end of May. A copy of Wolsey's proclamation was sent to France.2
Given the extraordinarily detailed and expensive preparations and assembling of people to attend which were under way pursuant to Wolsey's proclamation, maintaining good relations between the two kings in the weeks leading up to the meeting was vital. In France, Sir Richard Wingfield was called upon not merely to be a cipher of the competitive spirit between them but to handle several issues which threatened to wreck the meeting altogether, even as plans for it were being finalised. The first problem that arose was where, exactly, the two kings were to have their first personal encounter.
Despite a tone of apparent neutrality struck by Wolsey's February proclamation on the purpose of the meeting, there was a definite, if initially covert, aggressiveness about the English approach to this issue. According to another ‘memoriall’, dating from 1519 for a meeting that was first projected for July that year, it had been agreed that the kings would meet on neutral ground, on the border of the Pale of Calais and France. The chosen place was Sandingfield. This ensured that, as had been customary since medieval times when two kings met to make peace, they would have equal status, neither being the host or guest on that occasion.3
Yet a second proclamation Wolsey made, on 12 March 1520, declared that because Henry had to subject himself to the labours, dangers and expenses of crossing the sea and ‘leaving his realm and puissance for certain time’, it would not accord with his honour to make the further concession of meeting Francis on neutral ground as originally envisaged. It declared, even before Francis had actually agreed to this, that the encounter would take place ‘within the territory of the said castle of Guînes … near the limits of France’. In other words, and as would be heavily emphasised to the English nobles summoned to the event, Francis had to come into English territory to meet Henry.4 This would make him the first king of France in history, not then a captive, to enter English domains conquered from France during the Hundred Years War. Such a move was tantamount, in English eyes at least, to an acknowledgement of Henry's rights over those lands in succession to Edward III and Henry V. Only then, Wolsey declared, on the day after the initial meeting, would Henry and Francis meet again ‘in some place indifferent between Ardres and Guînes’.5
Not surprisingly, the French council strenuously objected to this idea, as the Admiral Bonnivet informed Wolsey. Yet Francis chose to show princely magnanimity designed to set at naught the petty point-scoring played at by Henry and Wolsey. Having, he said, ‘full confidence’ in Wolsey, he agreed to come on to English soil to meet Henry, despite the advice of his council. In return for this gesture, he insisted that the style and formalities of the tournament being arranged should be in accordance with his preferences and according to French custom. The English grumbled at having to make even this concession, but Francis would not be gainsaid.6
No sooner had a final date for the meeting and the first encounter of the kings been agreed than Henry decided he wished to postpone the Field. This was ostensibly to allow him more time for preparation but was actually to allow him to meet Charles V in England in late May. On 16 April Francis told ambassador Wingfield that he knew that the forthcoming Franco-English meeting had prompted Charles's proposed visit to England. The ambassador rather lamely suggested that such a meeting was simply a contingency in case the winds blew Charles's ships into English ports. He didn't convince himself, much less Francis. Things maritime being in the conversation, the king then rather pointedly talked about his own ‘grete shippes, whyche He had all redye’, including a new one then being built, which was as big as Henry's largest ship. From a survey taken at the end of 1520 we know that Francis had about twenty-five great ships in ports in Brittany and Normandy and these included La Grande Francoise, which, at 1,500 tons, was indeed as large as Henry's flagship the Henri Grâce à Dieu.7 The king asserted that he had good personal knowledge of ship-building but, as Wingfield tactfully put it when reporting this interview to Henry, ‘He approchyth not Your Highness in that science’.8 Wolsey eventually brought the issue to a conclusion by telling the French that Henry was hardly in a position to decline to meet with his relative as he passed by the realm and that the king would be at Guînes by 31 May.
During these difficult negotiations, Wingfield very effectively used the privileged access granted to him by Francis to establish a good rapport with the king. He frequently hunted with Francis and would introduce into conversations information about Henry's hunting and jousting abilities, talents upon which Francis also prided himself. Immediately after his conversation with Francis on 16 April, Wingfield was invited by the king to join a chase in the forest near Blois. He was close enough to the action to send Henry a detailed description of French boar-hunting techniques and of Francis's personal skill as a huntsman. After killing the boar and cutting off its right foot, as was customary, Francis remounted and at the suggestion of the seigneur de Lautrec, but with little evident enthusiasm, followed the flight of falcons against a heron. As he rode with Wingfield, the king said that the French were the only true masters of ‘theyr hunting by force’, that is, pursuit on horseback of a fleeing quarry. Wingfield defended his master and his nation, saying that it was hardly surprising that Francis was good at the chase given that it was the only form of hunting he really practised. Henry was as good, or better, at the chase proper and equally skilled at many other forms of hunting. He could therefore offer all those who hunted with him their preferred sport: ‘In all whyche sortes of huntynge I shewed to know Your Grace to have no fellowe, for the assuryd and perftye knowledge of all that belonged to that arte’.9
Francis and Wingfield evidently enjoyed this sort of spirited repartee and towards the end of this letter, Wingfield reported that had he been one of Francis's own subjects, he could ‘no more familierly use [treat] me, then he doythe contennually’. Francis had renewed the invitation for him to enter the private royal apartments whenever he wished to, ‘with new and straycte commaundement … to all the huyssyers [ushers] to opyn unto me wheresoever he may be’. The ambassador recognised why this was so: ‘All whyche, Sir,’ he went on, ‘I know wele procedythe onlye to do Your Highness singular honour and pleasure’.10
Written in the weeks immediately before the Field of Cloth of Gold, Wingfield's letter is important for the insights it offers into how the very personal rivalry between Henry and Francis operated and how it would be expressed at that encounter. Central to that rivalry were not only their various personal accomplishments in hunting, horsemanship, archery and so on, but, in the demonstration of those skills, the assertion of princely virtues of magnificence and generosity. In his conversation on hunting with Francis, the ambassador defended his master as the greater man because his wide-ranging proficiency enabled him to offer better hospitality to his guests. Francis's own hospitality in allowing the ambassador unprecedented access to the royal apartments was itself a compelling act of generosity, which was principally designed to assert his chivalric virtue in dealings with Henry. The generous treatment of the French hostages in England was offered in the same spirit, and news of it had reached the French court – just as Henry intended.
Nevertheless, the early days of April marked a high point of tension and uncertainty on the French side as to whether the meeting really would take place. Then, on 17 April, a reassuring indication of English goodwill arrived at the French court in the person of Thomas Benolt, Clarenceux King of Arms. He came to proclaim the June tournament in the names of the two kings who would be the chief challengers or ‘tenans’. He announced the terms of the challenge from a place ‘called the terrasse, whyche over loketh all the courte’ at the château of Blois the following day. Meanwhile, at Greenwich, Orléans King of Arms, Clarenceux's French counterpart, also proclaimed the challenge in the name of the two kings. The ambassador thought that the news cheered Francis and was taken as a sign that the meeting really would go ahead, Charles V's planned visit to England notwithstanding.11
The presence in the French court of one of England's chief heralds also prompted Francis to raise, for the first time, the prospect of an exchange of royal orders of chivalry between himself and Henry. Having lost the imperial election to Charles in 1519, Francis sought to join him in the ranks of what was then the most eminent chivalric order in Europe. This quickly became yet another competitive issue between Francis and Henry. On 18 April Wingfield had enquired where Francis would be on 23 April, St George's Day. Mention of the Garter patron's feast day prompted the Admiral Bonnivet to request an exchange of orders in June. This, he thought, should be neither strange nor difficult to accomplish and intimated that Francis was bound to ask for such an exchange at the meeting. Wingfield confirmed that the place of the deceased Emperor Maximilian as a knight of the English order was vacant but, in contrast to his witty responses to Francis's other enquiries about Henry, on this matter he ‘durst not touch in any wyse’. Francis reflected that it was honourable for Henry to have foreign princes in his order of chivalry and that he had many among the knights of the Order of St Michael. What better sign could there be of fraternal and chivalric love than that they make each other a member of their sovereign orders?12 Henry duly marked St George's Day with the knights of the Order at Greenwich and in early May received Olivier de La Vernade, seigneur de La Bastie, who had been resident ambassador between February and December 1519, and who now returned to England as special envoy in the final weeks before Henry's meeting with Francis.13
It is worth noting that at exactly the same time as the prospect of an exchange of orders was being raised at the French court, Châtillon and Worcester were busy arguing about the location of the site of the tournament to be held at the Field. It will be recalled that on 20 April Francis had written from Chambord insisting that the marshal's preferred site should be accepted as he had agreed to enter English territory for the first meeting with Henry. Yet by 13 May, the king had changed his mind. Wingfield wrote from Beauvais that he had received a letter from a servant of Sir Nicholas Vaux indicating that Worcester and Châtillon had now agreed that the tournament would be held on the place originally proposed by the English commissioner and that this had been at Francis's behest. The French marshal was apparently still resisting, but Francis had now written to him confirming his second order to accept the site chosen by Worcester.14 Practical considerations about the suitability of the site may finally have determined his decision, but Francis may also have acquiesced on the location of the tiltyard as yet another gesture of what he saw as chivalric generosity in the hope of being admitted to the Order of Garter at the event. He was to be disappointed on this occasion but Francis renewed his demand a number of times in the years that followed and finally succeeded in 1527.15
The Royal Entourages
Pursuant to the March 1520 ‘Memoriall’, the English began drawing up detailed lists of those who were to be summoned to the Field, in what capacity and with what number of attendants, so we have very nearly a complete listing for Henry's train. The principal consideration in these preparations was to ensure parity of numbers with the French because neither king wished to incur greater expense than was necessary, but nor did he wish to be outshone by his opponent's having a more splendid retinue. When the idea of the meeting was first talked about in 1519, it had originally been agreed that Henry and Francis were to be escorted to their meeting by the members of their respective households and guard and a further 100 nobles, of whom forty were to be at their first personal encounter. In accordance with this plan, on 5 March 1519 Sir Thomas Boleyn reported that ‘Francis desires to know what number the King and Wolsey will bring over, that he may appoint an equal number to meet them’. By 19 March he reported that the French would order their entourage according to a roll of the English attending, of which they now had a copy.16 When, a year later, the English began planning in earnest they specified that neither king should ‘bring with theyme a mor number of Noblemen and women servants and horsis than is contenyned in a bill indented, enterchangeably delyverd and subscribed with their handes’.17 This may refer to the 1519 agreement whose total numbers were already projected to be about 6,000 on the English side.
Given this determination to achieve numerical parity, it follows that the French entourage would have been of an equivalent order to the English one. Similar French lists must once have been made, but only one memorandum of those who were to attend Francis and his first meeting with Henry survives.18 From this we know that the French retinue comprised the realm's greatest nobles and prelates, each with his own large retinue. The officials and servants of Francis's household, who numbered about 450 in 1520, were also there with the king. So too were those of Queen Claude and Louise de Savoie. We know from eyewitnesses that beyond the household, the French entourage was headed by the great territorial magnates, the great officers of the crown and the knights of the Order of St Michael. There are also records of those who jousted at the tournament in June and some individual names of other participants are given in the many descriptions of the event. A good deal of work has, however, been done in the last thirty years on the personnel, structures and functioning of the French royal court. This research, set alongside what is known about the English party, enables us to get a better impression than we have had hitherto of the size and disposition of both royal entourages at the Field.
But who, exactly, was meeting whom in 1520? The members of the French nobility as a whole were more numerous and more broadly defined than those of England. The population of France itself was about fifteen million whereas that of England is thought to have been around two and a half million.19 Therefore the 1,130 or so principal members of the English party constituted virtually the entire English peerage and a sizeable proportion of the gentry, whereas the equivalent number on the French side represented a very much smaller proportion of the total number of their nobles. There are reckoned to have been approximately 25,000 noble households in France by c. 1560–80. Although they constituted a tiny proportion of the total French population, this number was still vastly more than the total number of both nobles and gentlemen in England combined. Moreover, although there was a rough equivalence between them at each social level, the French upper nobility was more highly stratified than the English peerage, while English gentry status was much more tightly circumscribed than French ‘nobility’ at its lower levels.20
The overall parity of numbers upon which both sides were so insistent in 1520 is, perhaps, somewhat deceptive. This is because parity did not extend to particular ranks or degrees. Given limited numbers, each king is likely to have summoned to him those nobles whose own high status best reflected his pre-eminent authority. Francis simply had more nobles of all ranks to choose from and consequently brought more individuals from the higher nobility (haute noblesse) and fewer, proportionally, of his middle-ranking nobles (moyenne noblesse) to the Field. This is borne out by the various lists and descriptions which indicate that whereas, for example, Henry was escorted by two dukes, only one of whom claimed royal blood, Francis was escorted by four dukes, three of whom were of royal blood. Whereas Henry brought eleven other peers with him, Francis had some twenty-one counts and princes (the equivalent of English peers but not themselves French pairs) in attendance.
The same is true among the ecclesiastical peers. The highest-ranked members of the French party after the king and queen were the fifteen prelates of France, several of whom were members of peerage families. In answer, as it were, to Wolsey as papal legate a latere, Francis brought four cardinals: Adrien Gouffier, Cardinal de Boisy, himself a papal legate; Amanjeu, Cardinal d'Albret; François Louis, Cardinal de Bourbon; and Jean de Guise, Cardinal de Lorraine. Etienne Poncher, the Bishop of Paris, led nine other bishops together with François de Moulins, the Great Almoner (Grand Aumônier) of France, who also headed the Chapel Royal. It was a similar story at the other end of the secular hierarchy. Whereas Henry was accompanied of necessity by knights from nearly all the shires in England, whatever their relative wealth and importance in his regime, Francis would have been able to summon, from among the middle-ranking nobility, those to whom he was personally close and those who were of greatest importance in their locality. Given the comparatively large travelling distances in France, he may also have chosen more of those whose lands lay closest to the venue and to England, in Picardy, Normandy and the Île-de-France.
Such variations in status among individuals at the Field did not go unnoticed in the mentality of the period and created some interesting disparities within and across the two national entourages. In time of conflict, the aristocrats of Francis's court disparaged the recent elevations and short pedigrees of even the highest English nobles, especially the duke of Suffolk. Cardinal Wolsey's lowly origins were not infrequently commented upon. The greatest French duke and an unassuming English knight would have had very little in common. Yet the bonds of chivalry and the concept of noblesse would have given them a basis for greeting and interacting with each other as gentlemen at the Field, the difference in their ranks notwithstanding.
The English ‘Memoriall’ confirms that Henry's entourage consisted of the great officers of state, the royal household (organised in its three departments of the Chapel, the King's Chamber and the Household proper), together with the king's guards. It specifies that ‘bokes’ of the names of those attending, with ‘their nombres, traynes, and horses’, were to be made, principally to ensure that sufficient shipping was prepared for them and that all could be accommodated and fed once they arrived at the event.21
The ‘Memoriall’ also states that nobles and gentry in the country were to be summoned to attend by individual letters written by the king's secretaries and sent out under the direction of the Master of the Posts. The fullest of three English lists which survive is in the Bodleian Library and is reproduced as Appendix A.22 It details the entourages of the king and queen separately, showing the numbers of peers and barons, knights, esquires, noblewomen and gentlewomen in each, together with bishops, chaplains, secretaries, musicians, physicians, heralds and others in attendance. Each of the principal members of these entourages was himself entitled to bring a specified number of attendants, according to rank, so that the dukes of Buckingham and Suffolk were each able to bring ten gentlemen, fifty-five servants, five chaplains and fifty horses. Each of the ten earls and four bishops with Henry could have six gentlemen, thirty-three servants, three chaplains and twenty horses, and so on.23 Perhaps predictably, the number of Wolsey's personal attendants as Cardinal Lord Chancellor and papal legate exceeded even those of the dukes. He was able to bring fifty gentlemen, twelve chaplains and 237 servants; that is 299 men in total and 150 horses. The Bodleian list indicates that there were 994 principal persons in Henry's retinue (excluding two named foreign ambassadors). When all the attendants, servants and horses allowed to all the principals and all the clergy, officials and servants of the king's and queen's households and stables proper are added together we reach a total English entourage of 5,832 people and 3,217 horses.
Impressive though the size and calibre of Henry's entourage was, it did not include two of the highest-ranking nobles of England. The first was the four-year-old Princess Mary. Although Mary did not accompany her parents, she did emulate them in welcoming and entertaining French courtiers. In late June, three French gentlemen arrived in England directly from the Field to greet her on behalf of the Dauphin François, whose betrothal to her had been confirmed at the event. Attended by her governess, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, by Agnes Howard, Duchess of Norfolk, and by Eleanor, Countess of Worcester, Mary greeted the Frenchmen in the Presence Chamber at Richmond Palace, ‘with most goodly countenance, proper communication and pleasant pastime’. She also played the virginals for them and, as the royal council proudly told her father, ‘greatly marvelled and rejoyced the same, her young and tender age considered’.24
The other great noble who was not at the Field was Thomas Howard, second Duke of Norfolk. He presided over the royal council in England assisted by Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester, William Atwater, Bishop of Lincoln and the Lords Berners and Darcy among others. Their main responsibility was for the governance and security of the realm in the king's absence and they sent regular reports informing Henry that England was peaceful and that no threatening news had come from Ireland or Scotland.25 Another, perhaps surprising, absentee was Howard's eldest son, Thomas, Earl of Surrey. He had recently been appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland and had taken up duties in Dublin. The family was represented solely by the duke's younger son Lord Edmund, who participated successfully in the tournament.26
Like its English counterpart, the French court was at the heart of the king's entourage. It was divided into three main departments: the chapelle, the chambre, the king's private living space and the hôtel, with its various sub-departments. In addition there was the écurie or stables, and departments responsible for hunting equipment, animals and birds, the vénerie and fauconnerie. Finally there were several companies of mounted and foot guards.27
The chapelle was formally the head of the royal household hierarchy. In 1520 its twenty-two senior members ministered to the spiritual needs of king and court and some of them at least were present at the Field. They included the king's confessor, Guillaume de Paruy, Bishop of Troyes, Symphorien de Bullioud, Bishop of Glandève (in the Alpes-Maritimes), Pierre de Montigny, Bishop of Castre, and Jean de la Baulme, Bishop of Auxerre. They were themselves attended by chaplains and clerks. With them came the men and boys of the chapel who sang at liturgical ceremonies and entertainments during the event. Although the members of the court clergy were not directly involved in policy-making in the way of the prelates mentioned above, they still maintained some spiritual influence over decision-makers, including the king himself, and interpreted royal policy to the court and the nation in religious terms that glorified the monarchy.28
In overall charge of the royal household was the Grand-Maître (Great Master) of France, René de Savoie, comte de Villars and Beaufort, governor of Provence.29 His nearest equivalents in England were the earl of Worcester as Lord Chamberlain and the earl of Shrewsbury, the Lord Steward. Each year the Grand-Maître drew up a wages roll of the king's household, showing the names and ranks of royal attendants. These noblemen usually served the king personally for a quarter or perhaps half a year at a time and the rolls therefore provide a reasonably reliable guide as to who was actually with the king for at least a part of each year. The upper section of the household payment roll for 1520 is given at Appendix B.
The department of the chambre was the true heart of the court and its members accompanied the king in significant numbers. Early in Francis's reign it was presided over by an honorary officer, the Grand chambellan (Great Chamberlain), who, in 1520, was the thirteen-year-old Claude d'Orléans, duc de Longueville. His duties would therefore have been nominal. Immediately below him was the premier chambellan, Louis II de La Trémoïlle, vicomte de Thouars. He was a veteran of the Italian wars and the king's lieutenant-general or governor of Brittany and is listed as part of Francis's retinue at the first meeting with Henry. So, too, was his grandson François, prince de Talmont.30
At his accession in 1515, Francis had created the office of gentilhomme de la chambre du roi which, over time, replaced the older and more widely held office of chambellan du roi. Their nearest antecedent would appear to be that of the écuyer de la chambre in the household of Charles the Bold of Burgundy. Olivier de la Marche's account of his household, written in 1474, describes the duke as having a group of sixteen young men who were:
Men of great houses who serve as companions to the duke whether he goes on foot or on horse, and look after his person and his clothes. They sleep near his chamber to aid in the security of his person. When the duke has worked all day on his business and given audience to everyone, and then retires to his chamber, these sixteen go with him to keep him company. Some sing, others read stories and short tales; others discuss arms or love and all make the prince gracious pastime. These squires may be in the prince's chamber all hours when he does not hold council. They have bouche of court like the maîtres d'hôtel.31
The evidence is that Francis I's gentilshommes de la chambre had very similar duties and their most important privilege was access to their master's chambre outside the times of his formal interactions with the court. In 1520, Francis had twenty-one gentilshommes de la chambre, virtually all of whom were beginning important careers in his service as local governors and officials, as ambassadors and military commanders. Seven of the gentilshommes are known from the records to have been with the king in June, but we might reasonably expect that, on such a grand occasion, more of them were in attendance.
The activities of the chambre and its gentilshommes were actually co-ordinated on a day-to-day basis by the premier gentilhomme de la chambre (First Gentleman of the Chamber), who, in 1520, was Anne de Montmorency, one of the king's childhood friends, then known as the seigneur de La Rochepot after one his family's lordships in Burgundy. A number of gentilshommes were named participants in the tournament, including Montmorency himself and his younger brother François. Philippe de Chabot, seigneur de Brion, another childhood companion of the king, who eventually succeeded Bonnivet as Admiral of France, also jousted. He and Montmorency were to become great rivals in power at the French court in the 1530s. Other gentilshommes known to have been at the Field were François, seigneur de Saint-Marsault, René d'Anjou, seigneur de Mézières, whom Wingfield later described as being ‘in the king's chamber here and in singular good favour with him’ and Michel de Poysieu, seigneur de Saint-Mesme dit Capdorat. So too were Adrien de Tiercelin, seigneur de Brosse, and Antoine de Raffin, dit Poton, whom Henry rewarded with gold chains. All had made favourable impressions on Henry when they participated in the 1518 embassy to London and had helped to entertain English ambassadors in France thereafter. Also at the Field was Charles du Solier, seigneur de Morette, eventually one of Francis's longest-serving gentilshommes and a future ambassador to England, who was superbly portrayed by Holbein in the 1530s.32
Although the gentilshommes de la chambre were already of great significance in the court by 1520, they did not yet formally outrank the other personal servants of the king as they would do later. Francis was also attended by considerable numbers of these officers, responsible for household organisation, serving his meals and caring for his clothing and possessions. Among their ranks were men who participated in the tournament in 1520, including two of Francis's sixteen échansons (cup-bearers, responsible for the king's wine service), several of his nineteen pannetiers (table servants) and at least two of his sixteen écuyers d'écurie (esquires of the stable). One very successful participant in the tournament was Antoine de Hallewin, seigneur de Piennes. He was one of twenty-five young men in training in the royal household, known collectively as the enfants d'honneur, the French equivalents of Henry VIII's ‘henchmen’.
The French king's military establishment at the Field was led by Charles III, duc de Bourbon-Montpensier, the Constable of France, the realm's chief military officer after the king. He sponsored one of the companies of jousters at the tournament, although he does not appear to have participated personally.33 The Grand Écuyer (Master of the Horse) was the Milanese nobleman Galeazzo da San Severino who, together with the Constable, was principally responsible for the king's security at the Field. The French Admiral, Guillaume Gouffier, seigneur de Bonnivet, also attended. He was an early favourite of the king who had already been prominent in relations with England. Finally there was Galiot de Genouilhac, Great Master of the Artillery, whose officials, as we have seen, organised the French camp.
Ranking as peers because of their military office and entitled to address the king as ‘mon cousin’, were the four marshals of France, all of whom seem to have been at the Field. They were, in addition to Gaspard de Coligny, seigneur de Châtillon, whom we have already met, Jacques II de Chabannes, seigneur de La Palisse, the governor of the Lyonnais, and Odet de Foix, seigneur de Lautrec, the governor of Guyenne and of the duchy of Milan.34 The fourth marshal was Robert Stuart, seigneur d'Aubigny, who commanded the oldest and most prestigious guards company in the French royal household, the 100-strong garde écossaise, the Scots Guard. He was the head of the Stuart-Darnley dynasty after his elder brother, the earl of Lennox, had been killed at Flodden.35
The rest of the French king's guard comprised, firstly, the Deux-cents gentilshommes de l'hôtel (Two Hundred Gentlemen of the Household) commanded by Jean de Poitiers, seigneur de Saint-Vallier, and his son-in-law, Louis de Brézé, Grand Sénéchal of Normandy. They were elite noble troops, who received annual pensions and fought closely with the king in battle. The Cent suisses (One Hundred Swiss) were the king's foot guards, under their captain, the seigneur de Florange, a future marshal of France. There were also three companies of mounted archers, the last of which was a creation of Francis I. The memorandum's reference to ‘400 archers of the guard, and 4 captains’ is somewhat ambiguous, but it suggests that, in addition to the Gentlemen and the Swiss, Francis was escorted by the three companies of mounted archers together perhaps with the Scots Guard.36 If this was the case, then the total complement of 700 men in the military household made a significant contribution to the king's retinue.
It is clear that the royal household and guards formed the core of Francis's entourage in 1520 but what proportion of the total numbers on the French side they constituted is hard to say with certainty. Like their English equivalents, each nobleman who held a position in the chambre and upper household would have been accompanied by several of his own personal attendants and, if he was married, by his wife and her servants. The total complement of the king's personal retinue might, therefore, easily have been as many as 3,000 people – and this is similar to the final projected figure for Henry's personal entourage.37 The remaining 3,000 people estimated to have been in the French party comprised those in the households of Queen Claude and Louise de Savoie, together with the retinues of the peers, who attended the king.
Queen Claude, then aged 20, had been married to Francis since May 1514. Like Katherine of Aragon, she had her own entourage based upon her household within the court. This has been estimated to have numbered just over 200 people, of whom twelve were ladies-in-waiting.38 In June 1520 she was in the seventh month of pregnancy with her fifth child. Her condition had been an important, and at times rather useful, factor in the French refusal to delay the meeting. In mid-May Wingfield had assured Henry that ‘you would have had no little compassion if y[e saw] the poor creature with the charge she beareth’.39 Given her advanced pregnancy and contemporary notions of the confinement of women in its later stages, Queen Claude participated remarkably fully in the various festivities at the Field, including several times watching her husband perform at the tournament. Claude died in July 1524 after a brief illness.
Second only in status to the queen among the women at the event were the king's mother, Louise, and his sister, Marguerite, both of whom took prominent roles in welcoming and entertaining their English guests. Louise de Savoie had her own household within the court (estimated to have numbered 295 in 1531). She continued to advise her son and took some share in negotiations with Wolsey at the meeting. In 1520 Marguerite was married to Charles, duc d'Alençon. Until the birth of the Dauphin François in 1518, he had been heir presumptive and recognised as ‘the second person in the kingdom’. After Alençon's death in 1525, Marguerite married Henri d'Albret, King of Navarre, who had also been at the Field. She became an important patron of evangelical religious reform in France and Navarre.40
One of the queen's ladies whose presence at the Field of Cloth of Gold is not formally recorded was the king's first official mistress, Françoise de Foix, Madame de Châteaubriant. At some point during the event, Henry gave her a gift of a crucifix worth 2,000 crowns.41 She is known to have been at court by 1516 and was married to the rather older Jean de Laval, seigneur de Châteaubriant. Her husband and brothers, Odet, Thomas and André de Foix, were all in favour with the king in 1520. Little more is known of her except that she was displaced as Francis's mistress on his return from captivity in Spain in 1526 by Anne de Pisselieu, who became the duchesse d'Etampes.42
Antoine, duc de Lorraine, was one of the highest-ranked aristocrats listed to attend the French king at his first meeting with Henry VIII. Like Henri d'Albret, he was an independent sovereign prince, heir to the houses of Anjou and Lorraine. His lands lay within the ill-defined border between French and imperial territory and Antoine remained loyal to France until his death in 1544.43 His younger brother, Claude de Lorraine, comte de Guise, also attended.44 Alongside the Constable, the members of the Bourbon family, princes of the blood as the cadet branch of the French royal line, were present in force at the Field of Cloth of Gold. They included his cousin, another Charles, duc de Vendôme, there as governor of Picardy.45 Vendôme's younger brother, François de Bourbon, comte de Saint-Pol, then governor of the Île-de-France, joined them, as did his uncle, Louis de Bourbon, prince de Roche-sur-Yon.
Many of the great dukes, like Alençon and the Bourbons and several of the marshals, were also provincial governors of France and commissioned captains of the royal compagnies d'ordonnance (ordinance companies). These comprised the heavy cavalry of the royal army, known collectively as the gendarmerie, in which noblemen served the king in war. They were paid for by national taxes but in practice they tended to be the clients of their captain, with their smaller seigneurial estates lying within his greater orbit. Numbers in such companies were reduced in times of peace, such as in 1520, but they might still have at their heart as many as thirty, sixty or 100 noblemen.46 The command of ordinance companies was an important way in which territorial magnates protected and demonstrated their status, and the great princes might potentially have brought retinues of several hundred people with them to Ardres. Some restraint on numbers was almost inevitable, but it is still likely that between a third and a half of the French present at the Field of Cloth of Gold would have been there, not as members of the royal household as such, but as the clients or servants of the higher and middle-ranking nobles. In attending on their patrons they also honoured their king, in whose name all had been summoned.
The Courts Converge
While the personal rivalries of Henry, Francis and Charles played out during the spring of 1520, thousands of people in England and in France were being informed that they were required to attend their sovereign at the farther reaches of his realm. There they were to meet and greet people from other parts of their own country, about whom they knew very little, and to encounter a horde of those foreigners who had been their bitterest enemies for centuries. This was surely a daunting prospect for most of the participants. Yet it is clear that virtually all the prominent members of the English political nation and a sizeable part of the French one obeyed their sovereign's command in the summer of 1520. How, then, was this unusual event presented to them and how did individuals react to being summoned to go? Were they compelled out of obedience to their king? And, more prosaically, how did they get there?
In England, the first official notification most people whose names were on the royal lists had of the meeting was Wolsey's proclamation of 12 March 1520.47 As the contemporaneous English ‘Memoriall’ prescribed, letters were to be sent out to all those summoned to attend. Of the hundreds sent, only a single complete one survives. It is addressed to Sir Adrian Fortescue (c. 1481–1539) of Stonor Park near Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire. Knighted in 1503 when Henry became Prince of Wales, Fortescue was a reliable, if relatively minor, ‘king's man’ in the shire. The long preamble of the letter explains that the personal meeting of the two sovereigns had been agreed in 1518 as part of the Anglo-French peace. It had been postponed from the previous year but now, the French king ‘being moche desirous to see and personally to speke with us’, Henry had agreed to meet. The letter emphasises the honour done to Henry by Francis ‘offering’ to meet him on English territory within the Pale of Calais which ‘semblable honour of preheminence hath not been yeven by any of the Frenshe kinges to our progenitors or ancestres’. This flatly contradicted the facts since the meeting within the Pale was something Wolsey had more or less forced out of Francis. Now it was trumpeted to Henry's political elite as a triumph over his rival. Henry's ‘honour and dignitie royall’ required that he, having ‘condescended’ to meet Francis, should be honourably attended. Fortescue is therefore commanded ‘for the honour of us and this our reame’ to attend on the queen ‘in apparaill as to your degree, the honour of us and this our reame it apperteigneth’ together with ‘ten tall personnages well and convenienently apparailled for this pourpose’.48 He and his retinue were to be with the queen by 1 May 1520.
Henry's VIII's reputation among his subjects as a powerful and successful king is at the heart of the letter and it compelled a willing response. In emphasising the king's honour, the need for dress and physical bearing appropriate to station, even among servants, the letter to Fortescue articulates contemporary expectations of all gentry in general and Henry's view of their role at the Field in particular. It made clear to its recipient that he, along with hundreds of others, was part of a deliberately impressive demonstration of royal and national power to the ancient enemy. It was an invitation no gentleman could refuse. It was also rather like a call to arms – and a kind of war it was indeed. Fortescue had participated in the war of 1512–13 in the retinue of Sir William Sandys and was now summoned once more to join the royal ‘host’ on this chivalric expedition to France.49
Doubtless there were those who baulked at the prospect of being taken away from their pressing commitments at the start of the summer to accompany the king across the Narrow Sea and then being camped for two weeks in the windy Pale of Calais. Not all would have enjoyed the prospect of confronting vast numbers of their French equivalents, whose language was gradually becoming less and less familiar to many English nobles and gentry and whose manners, dress and customs were not infrequently derided by English authors.50
The costs associated with such a journey would also be considerable. As in wartime, basic expenses, accommodation and food were provided by the king but, unlike in war, there were no daily wages on this occasion. They were at least spared the enormous expense of providing their retinues with armour and weapons. As was conventional, Henry only paid for wages, livery and material for members of the household, including lengths of sarsenet, damask and satin for coats and linings.51 As Henry's letter reminded Fortescue, his personal adornment was expected to be of a high standard, according to his degree. Advances on future wages, grants of property and gifts from the crown might, in the longer term, compensate some for expenses incurred by those who travelled with the king, but these were not automatic.
In his play Henry VIII, Shakespeare makes the duke of Buckingham chief spokesman for those who allegedly ‘have broke their backs with laying manors on 'em for this great journey’. He blames Wolsey for leading the king into such an extravagant event at a time when Buckingham himself had financial troubles. The duke's debts did rise sharply at this time, although there is no suggestion in the play, or in reality, that the expense of attending the Field was crippling. Shakespeare's lines draw on an observation of Polydore Vergil and echo Du Bellay's better-known quip that many on both sides ‘carried their mills, their forests and their fields on their shoulders’ in attending. Both authors stress the extravagance of the Field, but it is doubtful that anyone was actually impoverished by their attendance.52 Sir Adrian Fortescue was a wealthy man, due mainly to the estate acquired by his marriage (by 1499) to Anne Stonor, which was worth several hundred pounds a year. A widower since 1518, Fortescue is unlikely to have found too onerous the expense of equipping himself and the required number of servants to attend upon Queen Katherine at the Field.
Whatever its cost, an invitation to a major court event might well have been welcome to most, particularly to someone like Fortescue. His standing as a local man of consequence had suffered since 1515 when he ceased sitting on county commissions. To be again among ‘the great and the good’ would have been reassuring. He was not a parliamentarian and the Field was an ideal opportunity to be back at the heart of the kingdom's politics, if only briefly. There he might meet others of his rank and above from other localities, renew old acquaintances and make new ones, exchange news and gossip and perhaps have occasion to get himself noticed by the king with the prospect that might entail of a return to front-line duties by which his reputation and family fortunes might be enhanced.53
In Henry VIII, Norfolk (who was not in fact there) waxes lyrical about the excitement of the event, affirming that it was a wonderful spectacle and a distinct privilege to be in the king's company on such an occasion. His lines evoke what would probably have been the appeal for most members of the elite of England or France summoned to the Field. Seen in this light, it was unlikely that Fortescue would not go at the king's command. Most knights and nobles summoned probably reacted in a similar way, seeing it as part of their duty and as fitting with their own honour as gentlemen to attend him to the Field. Their servants would have gone because that is where their masters went.
The French king's entourage was probably summoned in a similar way to Henry's but virtually no documentation of the process survives. Letters, delivered by the messengers of the royal écurie, would have begun to reach French noblemen beyond the court during April, at about the same time as their English counterparts were receiving theirs. One significant difference, however, is that whereas the English entourage had to be pre-assembled, as it were, to be shipped across the Narrow Sea (as the letter to Fortescue makes clear), the French entourage had only to constitute itself by the end of May at or near Ardres. It was not necessary for it to travel en masse. As a good proportion of the high nobles at the Field had lands and houses in the north of France, they would have been able to make the comparatively short journey to the northern border of the realm without too much trouble. Most of those included whose lands lay elsewhere in France, such as René de Savoie, were already with the king as part of their period of service in the royal household and so were away from home anyway. On arrival, they were to be issued with passes by Gabriel de la Chastre, seigneur de Nançay, one of the maîtres d'hôtel at the court.54 Francis came to Montreuil in the last days of May and while he was there, the Chancellor, Antoine Duprat, made an important proclamation about the Field. Possibly this was the first main rendezvous point for the French.55
Both courts had officers responsible for the accommodation of the royal household. In France they were the fourriers. Working under the supervision of four senior household officials, called the maréchaux des logis, the fourriers secured lodgings for the French entourage. Their English counterparts were the ‘harbingers’. Armed with lists of those attending the Field, both sets of officers arrived in the area in good time, probably by mid-May, as the English entourage began to gather and as the train of carts bearing the tents for the French camp began arriving at Boulogne and Ardres. There, and in the surrounding villages, they sought rooms and whole houses for rent and/or allocated the tents being erected outside the two towns to individual nobles and their retinues.
The officer of the French royal household responsible for policing the court precincts, including on this occasion the camp below the walls of Ardres, was the Prévôt de l'hôtel. He had extensive legal powers within five miles of the king's person, including the right to exclude people from the area and to try any offences occurring within it. The equivalent jurisdiction within ‘the verge’ of the English court was exercised by the Knight Marshal, aided by the Lord Steward. He was empowered to ensure the exclusion of ‘boyes and vile persons, and punishment of vagabonds and mighty beggars, not permitting any of them to remaine lie in, about or nere unto the court’.56 At the Field, the exclusion of such people proved rather harder to ensure, not least because free drink and food were, at different times, offered to all and sundry outside the English king's temporary palace.
Chancellor Duprat's May proclamation also instructed merchants and artisans who wished to supply goods and services to the French court at the Field to obtain permits to trade from the Prévôt. Under his supervision, the fourriers also seem to have taken some responsibility at least for providing supplies at recognised rates, not just for the royal household itself, but for the entire French and indeed the English entourages as well. Nicolas de Bossu, comte de Longueval, was the royal commissioner responsible for provisioning the court while it was at Ardres. Most of this was arranged through Amiens, the provincial capital of Picardy. The town's council worked with its royal captain, François de Lannoy, seigneur de Morvilliers, and with the regional governor, the duc de Vendôme. The town council's records show that the two men assessed the grain available at Amiens and that sheep were taken (or driven) from there to the royal encampment at Ardres.57
On the English side, the Deputy of Calais, Sir John Peche, warned Wolsey at the outset of preparations of the need to provide sufficient food and fuel for the event. Part of an undated set of instructions issued by Wolsey to one ‘Waren’, presumably a member of his household, seems to have anticipated or responded to these concerns. Waren was to confer with Sir John about a house, possibly ‘Mrs Baynam's’, for Wolsey at Calais. He was also to ‘take his opinion of purveyance’, and the relative costs of commodities, especially whether ‘beer be as cheap, good and plentiful there as in England’ and whether wine and a specified list of types of poultry and game could be had locally. Waren was then to pass on to Guînes and confer with Sir Edward Belknap about ensuring a prime location for Wolsey's tents in a ‘dry and convenient place’ before returning to inform Wolsey of what progress he had made.58 Hall's Chronicle captures something of the air of urgency, even panic, about the search for adequate supplies in May 1520:
Forests, parks, field, salt seas, rivers, moats and ponds were searched and sought through countries for the delicacy of viands, well was that man rewarded that could bring anything of liking or pleasure.59
While the English court established itself at Calais and Guînes, the French court began its journey towards Ardres. At the start of the year Francis had travelled from Poitiers in south-western France into the Charente Valley, arriving at his birthplace, Cognac, on 19 February. There he remained until the end of March before moving north into the Loire Valley and to Blois, where the tournament which was the reason for the Field of Cloth of Gold was formally proclaimed on 18 April.60 Immediately afterwards, the French court moved on to Chambord. From here it travelled eastwards and slightly south on the Loire to Gien. River transport was both more secure and more comfortable (especially for the heavily pregnant queen) than horseback and litters. At Gien the king and queen attended the wedding of Odet de Foix, seigneur de Lautrec, to Charlotte d'Albret, the third daughter of Jean d'Albret, seigneur d'Orval. From here the royal entourage turned north and Francis reached the capital on or about 27 April. He spent about ten days there as the royal household completed its preparations, before moving north towards Ardres, hunting as he went. The court had reached Crèvecoeur or Beauvais by Monday 14 May and Francis intended to be at Montreuil on or about 20 May.61
For the next week the records are silent as to the rate of progress, but Francis and Queen Claude evidently removed from Beauvais, bypassing Amiens, and came up to the Somme at Picquigny. From here, they and their courtiers travelled by river to Abbeville, using royal barges and boats supplied through Amiens. The sight of the royal party on the river would have been quite a spectacle for those in the several dozen villages along that stretch of the Somme. Partly enclosed, brightly painted and manned by liveried boatmen, the royal barges and those of the great nobles would have made their way at a stately pace, accompanied by music, with banners and streamers bearing the king's salamander and queen's heraldic ermine fluttering from the tops of the cabins, and a large banner with the royal arms at the stern where the master of the vessel stood to the rudder. The barges were accompanied by a fleet of boats for the upper members of the household, while the royal baggage train wound its way along the south bank of the river. Two boat owners from Amiens were paid 40 sous over and above what they received from the king's fourriers for supplying vessels to the royal party. One Jacques Carpetier, a tapestry-maker, was paid 50 sous for refurbishing and hanging tapestries in the boats or barges. One of the aldermen of the town was recompensed for costs in providing forty-four oarsmen and covers of some kind used on these vessels.62
The town council of Abbeville prepared for the king's arrival and on 15 May nominated an alderman to present him with the keys of the town. From Abbeville, the king had reached Montreuil on the river Canche by Monday 21 May.63 While the court was there, Chancellor Duprat made the king's proclamation noted above and Francis called together ‘the great personages of the realm’ who had by then assembled there. He reminded them of the need to maintain the highest standards of courtesy and friendliness towards the English nobles and gentry whom they were shortly to meet.64 From Montreuil, on 30 May, Francis moved north to the town of Marquise where he left the queen and his mother.
On Thursday 31 May, the date specified in the treaty, Francis and his immediate entourage arrived at the little town of Ardres.65 This was his first visit to the town so the king made a formal joyeuse entrée welcomed by the council, the trade guilds, the clergy and the people. As part of his formal entry, the king conferred a new coat of arms on the town, which it bears to this day. Its central device is a double-headed eagle taken from the arms of Arnoul II of Ardres, who had died on crusade in Jerusalem in 1099. The eagle is supplemented by the motto brave et fidèle. The new arms honoured a town that, since the fall of Calais to the English in 1347, had looked in two directions: out towards enemy territory in the Pale of Calais and back towards France, to which it had remained loyal and for which loyalty it had frequently suffered.66 Having made his entry, Francis sent François, seigneur de Saint-Marsault, one of his gentilshommes de la chambre, to Calais to inform Henry of his arrival.67
The king of England had begun his journey to the Field from Greenwich on Sunday 20 May. The same day Charles V sailed from La Coruña. His fleet of sixty ships had crossed the Bay of Biscay and was contacted off Plymouth by 23 May. Three days later it arrived off the coast of Kent where it was met by a squadron of ships under the command of Sir William Fitzwilliam, the Vice-Admiral of England, who had been appointed to ‘waste and scowre the sees from tyme to tyme’ to ensure the security of the king's fleet as it prepared to cross to Calais.68 He was on station from late May in command, at least according to the ‘Memoriall’, of the Mary Rose, the Great Bark, the Less Bark and two other small ships.69
Travelling via Leeds Castle in Kent, Henry arrived at Canterbury on Friday 25 May and lodged at St Augustine's Abbey.70 The next day the court was at Dover to greet Charles V on his arrival. Wolsey met him at the quayside and escorted him to meet Henry at Dover Castle. Charles greeted Katherine and Henry with a demonstrative affection uncharacteristic of him. From Dover they moved to Canterbury where the two sovereigns kept Pentecost Sunday. For the next five days the English court entertained the emperor's large and splendidly arrayed suite. There was, it seems, a last-minute scare that a French war fleet was being equipped. Wolsey demanded that ambassador La Bastie obtain assurances to the contrary from Francis before he would allow Henry to move further, but it was evidently not taken that seriously, because the ambassador would barely have had time to act before the royal entourage set off on the next stage of the journey. On 31 May, Wolsey escorted Charles to Sandwich from where the emperor crossed to Flanders.71
Transporting the English entourage to Calais was the responsibility of a team headed by Sir Edward Poynings, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. He also provided a number of ships from these harbours for the voyage. Henry VIII is thought to have had about thirty ships of his own in 1520, around half of which were in operational readiness at any one time. The vessels known to have been used by the king's immediate entourage for the crossing were the Mary and John (180 tons), the Great Bark (250 tons), the Less Bark (180 tons) and two rowbarges, the Sweepstake and Swallow (each 80 tons).72 Despite the claims once made on the strength of the Hampton Court painting called The Embarkation at Dover, Henry did not cross to Calais in 1520 on board his flagship, the Henri Grâce à Dieu, usually called the Great Harry. At 1,500 tons, it was then the largest English warship. Its immense carrying capacity would certainly have been useful on this occasion, but it was so large that it could not be accommodated in either Dover or Calais harbour and it is not mentioned in the records of expenses for the royal voyages in May or July.73 The king and queen sailed to Calais aboard Henry's newest vessel, the Katherine Plesaunce (100 tons) built the previous autumn at a cost of £323 13s. 9d.74 Described by one commentator as ‘like a very early royal yacht’, it was fitted out with particular luxury, having ‘cabins and chambers’ of wainscot for the king and queen, the windows of which were glazed with 112 feet of glass, including panes with their respective arms.75
Ferrying around 6,000 people and their baggage and horses across to Calais and back was a major operation by any standards. Together with the king's ships and those Poynings obtained from the Cinque Ports, Miles Gerard, Thomas Partridge and Sir Wistan Browne were charged with securing some forty hoys to help with the task.76 These were small, sloop-rigged, coastal ships or heavy barges used for freight and passengers, usually displacing about 60 tons. Some indication of the cost of hiring ships and hoys is given in the accounts Sir Edward Guilford, Master of the Armoury, submitted later in 1520. Early in the year he had hired vessels to bring horses purchased in the Netherlands back to England and in May and July paid for transporting armour, horses and equipment over to Calais and back. Two hoys were hired to carry horses to England for a total of £6. Another ship of 44 tons was hired from Greenwich to transport the mill of the royal armoury's forge to Calais for just over £7. A total of thirty-eight wagonloads of ‘armory’ stuff was brought back from the site of the tournament field and Guînes to Calais at a cost of £7 18s. 8d. Most of this was presumably then shipped back to England.77
The personal bedding, furniture and clothes of the king and queen were transported by the officers of the wardrobes of the Robes and Beds, sub-departments of the Chamber, using a range of packing materials, cases and coffers. The king's plate, for example, was trussed in cotton and packed into baskets. Carts and sumpter horses were used to move these possessions to the docksides, to Guînes and back, supplemented by carts hired in Calais.78 The king's jewels were transported in the Christopher of Hyde, presumably one of Poynings's ships, whose master was paid 20s. for the task.79 For the crossing to Calais, or for the return, part of the king's armour, his ‘headpieces and mantlets’, were stuffed with 13lbs of wool at a cost of 5d. Three short standard chests were made by, or purchased from, one Philip Sewaker at a cost £3 each, and a longer one at £6 to transport items used by the king in the tournament. The Revels Office paid the master of another ship, the Clement, £5 for shipping ‘the King's stuff’ to, or from, Calais.80
Some proportion of the people, baggage and horses would have been shipped ahead of, or after, the main party which set out with the king himself as happened in war – the nearest analogous operation. The entourage required careful organising and marshalling by officers of the royal household to ensure that people were where they needed to be on time for an early-morning departure. The captains of Dover and Calais, the municipal authorities and their officers were occupied in ensuring that both towns were ready for the thousands of people who briefly thronged the streets, taverns and docksides. The port authorities needed to ensure that sufficient labour and equipment was on hand for loading and unloading of ships. All of this was, of course, well within their capacities, as had been demonstrated seven years earlier when Henry had passed through the same ports with similar numbers on his way to war in France. Then, the quartermaster-general and presiding intelligence over the operation had been the industrious, up-and-coming, royal almoner Thomas Wolsey. Now, Cardinal-Archbishop and Lord Chancellor Wolsey played a similar role but from a more elevated perspective and certainly with a much higher profile. It is known that Wolsey did not travel with the king because he was escorting the emperor to Sandwich when Henry took ship and he may himself have sailed from Sandwich or Deal.
Finally, preparations complete, early on the morning of Thursday 31 May, Henry and Katherine boarded the Katherine Plesaunce to cross the Narrow Sea. The painting The Embarkation at Dover, at Hampton Court Palace, was once thought to document Henry's actual crossing that morning but art and naval historians are now more inclined to accept it as a general evocation of the strength and power of Henry's navy, albeit one with a possible allegorical reference to the 1520 meeting in the cloth of gold sails which are a prominent feature of the vessel upon which the king is shown standing. This depiction of Henry's principal ships in or around 1520 certainly gives a lively impression of what the scene might have been like. The painting presents the viewer with a veritable forest of masts, of sails and rigging. When set alongside contemporary pictures of the king's ships, it suggests how the vessels used might have been decorated for the occasion. Their decks are depicted flying standards and flags with the royal arms and king's beasts supplemented by deck shields (pavises) showing the royal arms, the Tudor livery colours of white and green and Tudor roses. From the mastheads fly streamers with the cross of St George.
The painting also shows the frenzied activity surrounding the king's departure, with boats ferrying people and last-minute supplies out to join the ships. Sailors are shown climbing the rigging and one almost hears the shouted orders of masters and boatswains as sails are hoisted to billow out in the strong breeze. Guns fire in salute as each captain turns his fully laden vessel before the wind and the flotilla gets under way. The sailing conditions the painting shows, with clear skies, a fair wind and sea swell, were not just artistic licence or intimations of good fortune either. The English ships made good sail and had a quick crossing of some few hours or so, in sunny weather. The king and queen arrived in Calais around 11a.m.
According to the treaty arranging the Anglo-French meeting, Henry was due to have been at Guînes by 31 May, but took advantage of a respite of four days conceded by Francis earlier in the spring, and now reiterated on his arrival at Calais, to take a few days' rest. As the baggage, equipment and horses of the English entourage were brought across from England, the king and queen were accommodated at the Exchequer in Calais and Wolsey completed the final negotiations prior to the personal encounter between the two sovereigns.
On Friday 1 June Wolsey set out from Calais to meet the king of France for the first time. He went in some style, escorted by the fifty gentlemen of his household. Wolsey wore scarlet silk and velvet robes and a clerical hat and rode a mule richly caparisoned in gold and red, preceded by another caparisoned mule. Carried before him was his galero, the broad-brimmed, multi-tasseled hat of a Renaissance cardinal. In front of Wolsey rode six of the eight English bishops who had come to France. These ecclesiastical grandees were joined by Thomas Docwra, Prior of the Order of St John. The whole procession was escorted by 100 archers of the king's guard, fifty riding before and fifty after it. It made its way under two crosses. One signified Wolsey's status as Archbishop of York and was not carried beyond the confines of the lordship of Guînes. The second, a double cross, signified his episcopal and legatine status and, together with Docwra's presence, reminded all who saw it that the Anglo-French peace of 1518 under which the two kings would meet was part of a Europe-wide peace orchestrated by Wolsey, ostensibly under papal auspices, as the prelude to military action against the Ottomans.81
Francis sent the Admiral Bonnivet and Marshal Lescun to Calais to meet Wolsey. Once the cardinal was on French territory, not too far from Ardres, he was met by the dukes of Alençon, Bourbon and Vendôme, by Marshal Châtillon, the seigneur de La Trémoïlle and other gentlemen together with fifty archers of the royal guard. As he arrived at Ardres, the recently installed artillery boomed in salute from the renovated battlements. The archers of the cardinal's guard stopped outside the town and through its gate came Francis, escorted by more of his archers, to meet Wolsey. The two men embraced and Wolsey removed his hat as a mark of respect for Francis but, as he stood in place of the pope himself, Wolsey made no other deferential gesture, nor did he dismount. They rode together to the king's lodging in the town, escorted on foot on each side by the Swiss Guard. After dismounting, the king and cardinal embraced again.
Wolsey's splendid procession and his assurance in meeting the king of France in the way he did seems at first sight to have been characteristic of that lordly arrogance which his critics scorned in him. Doubtless Wolsey did enjoy the grandeur of ceremony inherent in his high offices and of this occasion in particular. But his behaviour on 1 June 1520 should be seen in its proper context. His journey to Ardres that day was the first time Wolsey had left English soil and appeared in a foreign country as Cardinal Legate a latere and Lord Chancellor of England. According to Hall, the French record of the procession was notable for ‘shewyng the triumphant dooynges of the Cardinalles royaltie’.82 Its emphasis on his ‘royalty’ is important. Wolsey came as no ordinary ambassador to the French king, however exalted. He came, in effect, as the pope himself and, just as importantly for him, as the personal representative of a king whose international status he was charged with maintaining at the meeting.
On a more personal level Wolsey wanted to impress and persuade Francis with his power, dignity and personal charm. Since 1514 he had been receiving and negotiating with French ambassadors who had sent reports of him back to their master. Foreign envoys, especially the Venetians, had given the king of France detailed, and not always entirely favourable, accounts of the English cardinal. Francis knew that Wolsey was ‘ipse rex’ in English foreign as well as domestic affairs, but Wolsey still wanted to emphasise his importance in the recent past and for the immediate future of Anglo-French relations. Moreover, as Hall reminds us, Wolsey knew that his audience was not just the king of France and his entourage of nobles but the whole French political nation and European observers beyond it. The meeting was being written up for immediate publication in France and elsewhere. His entry to Ardres was in fact first described in L'Ordonnance et ordre. It is likely that Hall used this pamphlet when constructing his narrative of Wolsey's ride to Ardres. In short, Wolsey was acutely aware of the eyes of the world upon him during such an event. Today the French would describe him as ‘médiatique’, knowing instinctively how to play his part before this audience.
That Wolsey's effort to impress Francis with his ecclesiastical status and legal authority in England was not merely cosmetic was made clear in the negotiations with the French that followed. Hall says that Wolsey remained at Ardres negotiating for two days before going to Guînes where he found Henry. That Henry did not in fact move from Calais until 5 June matters less for Hall's account than his emphasis on Wolsey's request for plenipotentiary power from Henry when they met. This being granted, Wolsey then went back to Ardres and demanded the same from Francis in order to dispense with French and English councils and negotiate directly between the two kings. A man sent from the pope's side would hardly have expected less. Apparently anxious to close a deal, Francis was effectively bounced into granting Wosley equivalent plenipotentiary power. Then, having demanded this power, Wolsey scrupulously refused to accept it unless and until he had Henry's express permission to do so. To do otherwise would have contravened his duty to Henry, but in the circumstances Wolsey's action allowed Henry effectively to arbitrate on Francis's decision to delegate his own sovereign power to Wolsey. Thus, Henry assumed a subtly superior position as the one whose final consent was required for Wolsey to exercise both royal and papal power. As Hall smugly put it, ‘It was highly esteemed & taken for great love that the Frenche Kyng had geven so greate power to the Kyng of England's subject’.83 Wolsey did this as yet another way of reassuring Henry of his fidelity and publicly exalting the king upon whose favour his own career entirely depended.
No record has survived of the negotiations Wolsey conducted at Ardres with this ample power. They evidently dealt with Anglo-Scottish disputes and may have touched on the disputes between Francis I and Charles V. Wolsey may have soothed the French council over Henry's recent meeting with the emperor and the one shortly to follow. The resultant treaty of 6 June was essentially diplomatic housekeeping, which ratified the agreements of the previous six years, taking into account financial and other obligations now met, such as the return of Tournai. It confirmed a total French debt to Henry of one million crowns, to be paid in six-monthly instalments of 50,000 crowns; some of this had already been paid by the French. The annual ‘pension’, as the French referred to these payments, was to continue beyond the payment of the debt for the remainder of Henry's life should Princess Mary's marriage to the Dauphin François go ahead. It would then continue into their reigns as well. If the marriage did not happen, then only the main debt of one million to Henry was to be paid.84 Charles V had recently suggested his own marriage to Princess Mary despite the difference in their ages – something Wolsey was sure to have brought to the attention of the French. That would have been a worrying development for them, and the generous terms to which they soon agreed and the visit to the princess directly from the Field by a delegation of French gentlemen were very pointed demonstrations of their commitment to keeping Henry and Charles as distant from each other as possible. The 1520 treaty also provided that Wolsey and Louise de Savoie would work together to resolve outstanding issues between England and Scotland. A price Henry was prepared to pay for securing the other more attractive terms of the treaty, this mediation began in rather dilatory fashion and was overtaken by events the following year when war broke out between Francis and Charles V.
While Wolsey talked at Ardres, the lords and ladies of France and England began to introduce themselves to each other. Doubtless to reciprocate Wolsey's going to Ardres, on Saturday 2 June his counterpart as Lord Chancellor, Antoine Duprat, together with the Admiral Bonnivet, went to Calais and were graciously received by Henry and Katherine. Observing the same strict reciprocity that was the hallmark and safeguard for the whole event, a number of English gentlemen came simultaneously to Ardres to meet Francis. The talks concluded that day and Francis went to Marquise where he remained until Monday evening, then returned to Ardres. On Tuesday 5 June, Queen Claude and Louise de Savoie brought their retinues and the rest of the principal members of the French entourage to join the king. The same day, Henry and Katherine moved from Calais and took up residence in the castle at Guînes. The Hampton Court painting apparently shows Henry's train entering the town that day, making its way into the castle as its cannons fire in salute, frightening the swans in the moat. As we shall see, however, it does not represent that event, which was relatively low-key. On Wednesday 6 June there were further exchanges of visitors. The Chancellor and the Admiral called on Henry once more. So did Francis's premier chambellan, Louis II de La Trémoïlle. Received by Sir John Peche and the earl of Shrewsbury as Lord Steward, the three French nobles and their retinues were feasted by the English ‘as if they were brothers’.85 Then, nothing remained but the first, great and most difficult set-piece of the whole encounter – the personal meeting the following day for the first time in their lives of Henry of England and Francis of France.