THIS BOOK IS about an extraordinary meeting that took place in northern France in the summer of 1520 between Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France: the Field of Cloth of Gold. The two kings and their vast entourages were accommodated in tents and pavilions that were dressed in luxuriant fabrics, especially the cloth of gold that gives the event its name. At the Field each king strove to show his rival that he was a successful warrior, an effective governor and a great patron in a way that he hoped would secure the other's co-operation, or at least acquiescence, in his own plans. There has never been anything in the history of Europe since that quite equals it. So the Field offers a unique insight into many aspects of the world of Renaissance princes.
In contemplating writing a book on the subject it seemed me that, for all its extraordinariness, the Field of Cloth of Gold has recently been rather overlooked and certainly much misunderstood. It lives vaguely in public historical consciousness as some sort of medieval ‘peace festival’ or the occasion of a wrestling match between Henry and Francis. As we begin to approach its 500th anniversary in 2020, a new account is timely – particularly given the fact that the last book on the subject was published more than forty years ago.
For all their considerable antiquarian scholarship, the accounts of the Field of Cloth of Gold written to date have expressed a pronounced scepticism about the significance of the meeting. While devoting much care and attention to its details, they have characterised the Field as being either an elaborate sham designed by each side to deceive the other as to its ‘real’, belligerent, intention, or ‘merely an excuse for a party on the grandest scale’, as one historian has put it, which had ‘no tangible result’. Such a view, however, raises more questions than it answers. Why, for example, would two national elites whose centuries-old rivalry had recently intensified even want to entertain each other at a huge party merely for the sake of doing so? That medieval and Renaissance elites valued theatrical ‘extravagance’ is beyond doubt, but this was a very different thing from pointless frivolity. It seems to me important, then, to interpret the Field in ways that would have meant something to those attending it but that are also, hopefully, understandable to a modern reader.
Proceeding from the premise that people do not generally spend huge amounts of money on major social and political events unless they really mean something to them, this book tries to make better sense of the Field. The description of its organisation, provisioning, its various set-piece encounters and activities, is based on the relatively large amount of primary source material that survives. Much of this has, naturally, been used in previous accounts, but a reasonable proportion, especially on the French side, is newly presented here. In reinterpreting the Field, this book draws on the wide body of research into Renaissance political and material culture which has been done since the 1980s. New evidence and perspectives have changed our view of the conduct of international politics and its relationship to domestic politics in general and Anglo-French relations in particular. Whole new discourses and debates relevant to the Field have emerged in recent decades. These include discussions on the nature and role of the royal court, its presentation of monarchy and of royal political and artistic patronage. New insights have been gained into forms of entertainment and public spectacle, display and hospitality in Renaissance society. Important research has been done on gender, gender relations and particularly on concepts of masculine honour and chivalry among sixteenth-century social elites. This list is very far from exhaustive, but, as far as possible, I have tried to bring new insights gleaned from these discussions to bear on the evidence about the Field. The book gives a much fuller account of the political, diplomatic and cultural contexts of the Field than has yet been offered. In so doing, it also offers a wider (although necessarily concise) account of Anglo-French relations during the first half of the sixteenth century.
Some of the research for the book was conducted in Paris in 2008 with the aid of a Small Research Grant from the British Academy. A Scouloudi Foundation Historical Award in 2010 enabled me to visit a number of French regional archives and libraries. Support from St Mary's University College Research Fund enabled me to present a paper on the Field at the Sixteenth Century Society Conference in St Louis, Missouri, USA in October 2008. I am grateful to the School of Theology, Philosophy and History at St Mary's University College for a Research Grant that helped me to visit the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC in 2011, and for a partial sabbatical during 2012.
The scholarly debts I owe to the many historians whose work has inspired and guided my own will be clear from the endnotes and bibliography. A number of colleagues and friends offered useful advice in the course of helpful discussions. Sidney Anglo, Joseph Bispham, Andrea Clarke, Judith Curthoys, Brett Dolman, David Grummitt, Alasdair Hawkyard, Julian Munby, Kent Rawlinson and Jennifer Scott all generously shared their expertise in response to my enquiries about different aspects of the staging of the Field and its subsequent representation. Susan Doran, Daniel Grey, Steven Gunn, Maria Hayward, Robert Knecht, Simon Lambe, Roger Mettam and Dominic Omissi all read and commented helpfully on drafts of the book at various stages. David Potter also offered advice on archives and, with Mark Greengrass, kindly supported my funding applications. I am particularly grateful to John Murphy who helped me to clarify my ideas and who made many perceptive suggestions about the book's content, structure and style.
Thanks are also due to my colleagues at St Mary's University College who have shown generous and supportive interest in my work. I am grateful for invitations to give papers about the Field to the Society for Court Studies and to the Tudor and Stuart Seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. My work over the years has benefited a great deal from conversations with students at St Mary's and with those attending the various study-day lectures and summer schools I have offered through Oxford University Department for Continuing Education. I would like to thank David Beard, Christine Jackson and Shirley Fawdrey at OUDCE for these opportunities. My particular thanks go to Heather McCallum at Yale University Press for the opportunity to write this book and to Rachael Lonsdale and Tami Halliday whose gentle but insistent guidance in all stages of production was helpful in completing the project. I am also grateful to Yale's anonymous readers who offered constructive advice on the initial proposal and on a first full draft of the book. The dedication is to my two beautiful daughters.