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Overview
Throughout most of the late medieval period, from 1300 to 1500, England and France were bitter enemies, often at war or on the brink of it. In 1520, in an effort to bring conflict to an end, England’s monarch, Henry VIII, and Francis I of France agreed to meet, surrounded by virtually their entire political nations, at “the Field of Cloth of Gold.” In the midst of a spectacular festival of competition and entertainment, the rival leaders hoped to secure a permanent settlement between them, as part of a European-wide “Universal Peace.” Richardson offers a bold new appraisal of this remarkable historical event, describing the preparations and execution of the magnificent gathering, exploring its ramifications, and arguing that it was far more than the extravagant elitist theater and cynical charade it historically has been considered to be.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780300248029 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Yale University Press |
| Publication date: | 07/21/2020 |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.00(w) x 7.75(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Field of Cloth of Gold
By Glenn Richardson
Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2013 Glenn RichardsonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-300-14886-2
CHAPTER 1
European War and 'Universal Peace'
The two kings, Equal in lustre were now best, now worst As presence did present them; him in eye, Still him in praise; and being present both Twas said they saw but one, and no discerner Durst wag his tongue in censure.
Henry VIII Act I, SC. I
Thus William Shakespeare evoked the spirit of the Field of Cloth of Gold. By the time they met, Henry VIII and Francis I had already done a great deal to gain reputations as exceptional monarchs. They had frequently compared themselves with each other and had, themselves, been compared by others. The Venetian ambassador Niccolo Sagudino, spoke for many. Writing from England in 1515 shortly after arriving there from the court of France, Sagudino had observed:
The like of two such courts and two such kings as those of France and England, have, I fancy, not been witnessed by any ambassadors who have gone out of Venice these past fifty years.
Sagudino saw both men at close quarters and clearly thought them exceptional because of the compelling image each projected. Since their earliest years, both men had been imbued with the glamour of chivalric kingship. Each was a young, charismatic male at the head of a strongly patriarchal and militaristic elite. Their awareness of each other developed into an intense personal rivalry. It is with the context of that rivalry firmly in mind that their meeting in 1520 is best understood.
Henry had succeeded his father Henry VII on 21 April 1509. His accession was greeted with a mixture of carefully choreographed ritual and spontaneous public rejoicing. One of his first decisions was to marry Katherine of Aragon. After their wedding on 11 June, they were crowned together on 24 June 1509. Henry inherited a kingdom at peace. Although he did his best publicly to distance himself from his father's unpopular regime, Henry certainly benefited from it. Henry VII had quietened, if not entirely removed, the competitive ambitions among the nobles of England that had marked the Wars of the Roses. The most recent estimates are that at his death, his annual income was between £100,000 and £110,000. This wealth, though modest by Continental royal standards, had been safeguarded in part by Henry VII's avoidance of war and his conduct of financially successful diplomacy with France.
Henry VIII's attitude to France differed from his father's. He determined immediately to emulate the deeds of Edward III, of Edward the Black Prince and of Henry V. These predecessors seemed to incarnate an ideal of heroic kingship that appealed strongly to him. To Henry's youthful and conservative cast of mind, this meant nothing less than renewing the Hundred Years War with France. From the outset, he made no secret of his bellicose ambition. His coronation procession displayed his territorial claims in France more explicitly than had the coronations of his father or Richard III before him. He impressed the Venetian ambassadors who had come to congratulate him on his accession as already being a great enemy of the French.
Somewhat frustrated by his council's more pacific instincts, the king continued to hone the martial skills first developed in him as a boy and otherwise busied himself in the 'pastyme with good company' of which he wrote in song. Day succeeded day in an apparently endless round of banquets, disguisings, music-making and hunting. As the chronicler Edward Hall's many descriptions of him attest, Henry's physical and sporting prowess as a young man had impressed observers at his father's court. Henry was 6 feet 2 inches tall, physically strong and ideally suited to the paramilitary sports of hunting and archery at which he excelled. He loved the competitions of the tournament – although he did not joust until after he became king. He was also a very enthusiastic and athletic dancer, performing no less dramatically in the banqueting hall than he did on the tournament ground. The Venetian ambassador Giustinian summarised the 29-year-old king's talents and demeanour thus:
He was very fair, and his whole frame admirably proportioned. Hearing that King Francis wore a beard, he allowed his own to grow, and as it was reddish, he had then got a beard which looked like gold. He was very accomplished and a good musician; composed well; was a capital horseman, and a fine jouster; spoke good French, Latin, and Spanish; was very religious; heard three masses daily when he hunted, and sometimes five on other days, besides hearing the office daily in the Queen's chamber, that is to say, vespers and compline. He was extremely fond of hunting, and never took that diversion without tiring eight or ten horses, which he caused to be stationed beforehand along the line of country he meant to take. He was also fond of tennis, at which game it was the prettiest thing in the world to see him play; his fair skin glowing through a shirt of the finest texture. He gambled with the French hostages to the amount, occasionally, it was said, of from 6,000 to 8,000 ducats in a day.
The ambassador's emphasis on the king's physicality and handsomeness would have pleased Henry deeply. He lost no opportunity to demonstrate his strength in order to impress and intimidate his courtiers, female and male alike, and to reassure them that he had the makings of a fine king. Henry's height and strength seemed to prove his aptness to lead other men, not just on the tournament field but, when the time came, in war against England's ancient enemy.
On New Year's Day 1511 Queen Katherine gave birth to her first child, Prince Henry. The king and queen were ecstatic – the realm no less so. Siring a male heir apparently proved Henry's fertility and fulfilled one of the first duties of a king. It also demonstrated his potential to have yet more children by whom the succession would be further secured. Extravagant celebrations followed, including a tournament at Westminster at which Henry, as the proud father and husband, jousted as 'Sir Loyal Heart'. Henry's display of his athletic talents to celebrate the getting of a male heir was no accident. His prowess in one activity evoked his success in the other. Both achievements attracted the admiration and approval of his nobles and of foreign ambassadors. The 'Great Tournament Roll of Westminster' recorded this occasion. Lavishly illuminated, the roll depicts the king charging down the lists in full armour – the very incarnation of the dashing knight. It remains the iconic image of the young Henry to set against the more famous Holbein portrait of his later years. Sadly for Henry and significantly for English history, Prince Henry died barely six weeks after his birth.
As Thomas Wolsey rose to prominence, he progressively relieved the king of much of the tedium of government with which the older generation of councillors had tried to saddle him. It was in no small measure due to the king's almoner that Henry's enjoyment of sports and games in the 'summer sun' of his own accession was so prolonged. With Wolsey's help, he eventually overcame the objections of his own council to war. In October 1511, following a series of disputes between himself and Louis XII of France, Pope Julius II formed a Holy League against France which Henry promptly joined. In March 1512, Julius excommunicated Louis, recognised Henry as king of France and spoke privately of crowning him at Paris. The following month Lancaster Herald defied Louis in Henry's name. Yet, for all his preparations and personal bravado, Henry's first attempt at Continental warfare in a joint invasion of Gascony in alliance with Ferdinand of Aragon was little short of disastrous. Fortunately for him, the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian soon also declared war on Louis. The spring of 1513 saw naval action off the Breton coast and Henry spent the summer on active campaign in command of a well-equipped army, the like of which had not been seen in France for sixty years. The English invasion did not culminate in another Agincourt, but Henry did take the town of Therouanne and the city of Tournai. On the morning of 16 August, during the siege of Therouanne, Henry's forces won the only recognised battle of the campaign, a cavalry skirmish at Guinegatte, known as the 'Battle of Spurs'. Henry celebrated his debut with banquets and jousts following a triumphal entry to Tournai in September. Wolsey, who had masterminded the turn to war and then acted as quartermaster-general for the English army, was rewarded with nomination as bishop both of Tournai and Lincoln.
Unfortunately for Henry's plans, in the opening months of 1514 Louis XII was reconciled to the newly elected Pope Leo X, who accepted him as legitimate king of France. This removed Henry's principal cause for war. Louis quickly made peace with Henry's two allies, leaving him effectively isolated once more in Europe. Although galled at this duplicity, he had no option but to accept initiatives for peace from France opened by Louis d'Orleans, duc de Longueville, then in England, a prisoner of the 1513 campaign.
The only direct evidence we have of Henry's attitude to peace with France in 1514 is contained in a letter which he sent to Wolsey describing the audience he gave to Louis d'Orleans. This interview may justly be described as the most important that Henry ever gave to a representative of the French king because it was an important precedent for the 1518 treaty of London, and thus the Field of Cloth of Gold. The desire for recognition by his fellow princes had driven him to attack France in the first place and now peace with France would have to achieve the same thing. Henry demanded that Louis should publicly acknowledge his claim to the French crown by paying him a yearly 'tribute' of 100,000 crowns. He had also to acknowledge Henry's military success, its costs and his subsequent magnanimity in stopping the war.
All this was agreed under the treaty of London signed in August 1514. The treaty of peace and alliance was secured by Louis XII's marriage to Henry's younger sister, Mary. Louis still had no son with whom to secure the succession and so the prospect of marriage to a young English princess already renowned for her beauty doubly delighted him. The peace settlement of 1514 and the grand embassy which escorted Mary to France in October that year became the models for future contacts between the courts of England and France. It became a dialogue about making peace between two quasi-feudal elites, conducted in the language of international brotherhood and chivalry, but whose theme was intense competition between French and English courtiers, focused on the persons of the two sovereigns. This competitive spirit directly anticipates that of the Field of Cloth of Gold. As one Venetian observer reported:
In truth the pomp of the English was as grand and costly as words can express; and the princes and nobles of France, and the ladies likewise vied with them for the whole French court sparkles with jewels, gold and brocade.
The French nobleman charged with meeting this impressive English embassy and marshalling the grandeur of the French court in response was none other than the future king, Francis, Duke of Brittany. He spent huge sums on his personal adornment for receptions to meet Mary and escorted the English princess to her wedding to Louis XII at Abbeville on 9 October 1514. He attended her at her coronation at Saint-Denis and at her formal entry to Paris as Queen of France. Francis also hosted the tournament held there in Mary's honour. Louis showed scant gratitude for these efforts, saying of Francis more than once, 'this big boy will ruin everything'. The marriage might indeed have proved disastrous to Francis's hopes of the crown. Instead, within just a few months, it was Henry's hopes of dominating the French king in this alliance that were ruined when the news reached England that Louis was dead.
Like Henry, Francis had been educated and cared for as a young boy by strong women. Francis's mother, Louise de Savoie, had taught him to read and write his own language (which he always admired), together with Italian and some Spanish. He was also very close to his older sister Marguerite and the three of them were said by contemporaries to form a kind of 'trinity'. As an adult he was certainly regarded as well read and capable of intelligent discourse. He appreciated the talents of humanist scholars and became an assiduous collector of Greek and Latin manuscript and printed texts.
At the age of fourteen, Francis had moved to the royal court where his apparent good looks and ease of manner secured admirers. He was praised in Castiglione's Book of the Courtier as the embodiment of French nobility and the hope for its future. Magnifico Giuliano says of him:
... for it is not long since I, being at court, saw this prince, and it seemed to me that besides his handsome looks, there was such an air of greatness about him, accompanied, however, with a certain gracious humanity, that the kingdom of France on its own must always seem limited for him. And subsequently from many gentlemen, both French and Italian, I heard a great deal in praise of his noble courtesy, his magnanimity, his valour and his generous spirit; and among other things was told that he greatly loved and esteemed learning and respected all men of letters and that he condemned the French themselves for being so hostile to this profession, especially as they have in their midst as magnificent a university as Paris, where people flock from all over the world.
In 1512 Francis had formally commanded the French army sent to meet the English invasion in the south-west and he was charged with the recovery of Navarre. Being young, however, Francis was escorted by the actual commander, Odet de Foix, seigneur de Lautrec with whom he gained his first military experience. Though the campaign ended in failure, a medal was struck bearing his effigy with the words Maximus Franciscus Frangorum Dux 1512. In 1513 Francis was once again in the field against the English, in defence of Thérouanne and his banner was one of those captured at the Battle of the Spurs although he did not himself participate in it.
In May 1514, Francis had married Louis XII's daughter, Claude de France, and was thereafter openly acknowledged as Louis's heir presumptive with the courtesy title of 'Dauphin'. It was in the course of hosting Mary Tudor that the young French duke first properly came to the attention of Henry VIII and his advisors. He did so in such glowing terms as to lay the foundations in Henry's mind for a lifelong rivalry with Francis. As the duke of Norfolk wrote of him to Wolsey in November 1514:
Here is nothing done but the said duke is made privy and doer thereof by the French king's commandment ... My lord, I assure you this prince can speak well and wisely.
Francis was of an equivalent height and physical strength to Henry. Hall's Chronicle describes him at the Field of Cloth of Gold as being: 'a goodly Prince, stately of countenance, merry of cheer, brown coloured, great eyes, high nosed, big lipped, fair breasted and shoulders, small [i.e. thin] legs, and long feet'.
Francis's accession at the age of 20 on the morning of 1 January 1515 was greeted by the nobility of France with exactly the same kind of jubilation that five years earlier had greeted Henry's accession in England. Francis was crowned at Reims on 25 January 1515 and acclaimed by the ecclesiastical and lay peers of the realm. He made his formal entry to Paris as sovereign on 15 February. Blessed with a relatively stable and prosperous kingdom, the new sovereign was determined from the outset to rule as well as to reign. Prominently presented on his entry to Paris was Francis's personal badge, the salamander amidst flames, and his motto, Nutrisco et extinguo. According to Ovid, the salamander could live in fire and also extinguish it. This device and motto had a double meaning: 'I am nourished by flames and I extinguish them' and 'I nourish good and extinguish evil'. The symbol was designed to show that the new king was of a passionate nature, that he would sustain his friends and his kingdom, that he could endure adversity and would overcome his enemies. More widely, the propaganda favoured by the new regime emphasised, on the one hand, legitimacy and political stability at home, manifested in orderly government; and, on the other, youthful vigour focused on the king, expressed through chivalrous display and channelled outwards towards the goal of a reinvigorated political nation.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Field of Cloth of Gold by Glenn Richardson. Copyright © 2013 Glenn Richardson. Excerpted by permission of Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Map of the Pale of Calais in the Reign of Henry VIII viii
Preface ix
Introduction: Why the Field of Cloth of Gold? 1
1 European War and 'Universal Peace' 13
2 Two Stars in One Firmament 38
3 Equal in Honour 73
4 Right Chivalrous in Arms 107
5 Generous to a Fault 141
6 The Cold Light of Day 178
Epilogue: A Renaissaince Peace Conference? 199
Appendices 210
Note on Names, Currencies, Coins and Measures 224
Abbreviations 226
Notes 230
Bibliography 252
Index 267