The Field of Cloth of Gold

For Olivia and Katherine

Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of Oliver Baty Cunningham of the Class of 1917, Yale College.

Copyright © 2013 Glenn Richardson

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Richardson, Glenn.

The Field of Cloth of Gold / Glenn Richardson.

    pages cm

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 978-0-300-14886-2 (hardback)

  1. Field of Cloth of Gold, France, 1520. 2. France—Foreign relations—Great Britain. 3. Great Britain—Foreign relations—France. 4. Francis I, King of France, 1494-1547. 5. Henry VIII, King of England, 1491-1547. 6. France—Court and courtiers—History—16th century. 7. Great Britain—Court and courtiers—History—16th century. I. Title.

  DC113.5.R53 2013

  940.2′2—dc23

2013023518

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

List of Illustrations

Map of the Pale of Calais in the Reign of Henry VIII

Preface

Introduction: Why the Field of Cloth of Gold?

1 European War and ‘Universal Peace’

2 Two Stars in One Firmament

3 Equal in Honour

4 Right Chivalrous in Arms

5 Generous to a Fault

6 The Cold Light of Day

Epilogue: A Renaissaince Peace Conference?

Appendices

Note on Names, Currencies, Coins and Measures

Abbreviations

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

1. Artist unknown, Henry VIII, c. 1520. The National Portrait Gallery, London.

2. Jean Clouet, Francis I, 1526. The Louvre, Paris.

3. Artist unknown, Cardinal Wolsey, undated. The National Portrait Gallery, London.

4. Bust of Cardinal Giovanni de'Medici, later Leo X, attributed to Antonio de'Benintendi, c. 1512. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

5. Unknown artitst, The Triumph of Chastity over Love, c. 1507–10. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

6. Embarkation at Dover, English School, c. 1540s, Hampton Court Palace. Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2013.

7. The Field of Cloth of Gold, Hampton English School, c. 1540s, Hampton Court Palace. Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2013.

8. Design for tents, British Library, Cotton Augustus III, 18.

9. Design for tents, British Library, Cotton Augustus III, 19.

10. Meeting of Henry VIII and Francis I, Bas-relief from the Hôtel Bourgtheroulde, Rouen. Musée des Monuments Français/photo Giraudon.

11. Tonlet armour of Henry VIII, English, Greenwich, 1520. Royal Armouries.

12. Francis and Henry after Wrestling. Bridgeman Art Library.

1 Henry VIII in about 1520, at the time of the Field of Cloth of Gold.

2 Francis I by Jean Clouet. The portrait was made at the time of his return from captivity in Spain in 1526. The hopes of peace expressed at the Field could not prevent a war between the king of France and the Holy Roman Emperor.

3 Cardinal Wolsey, the architect of the Universal Peace inaugurated at the Field of Cloth of Gold and the chief organiser of the event.

4 Pope Leo wanted peace throughout Europe in order that its rulers might together check the power of the Ottomans. His plans were hijacked by Wolsey and made to serve the interests of Henry VIII.

5 One of a series of tapestries which may have belonged to Cardinal Wolsey and of the kind that decorated his apartments in the temporary palace at Guînes.

6 A painting from the 1540s that celebrates Henry VIII's naval power. It evokes the scene in Dover harbour as Henry crossed to Calais in 1520, but is not an accurate portrayal of that event.

7 This painting represents a number of different aspects of the Field including Henry's procession to meet Francis I on 7 June 1520, the meeting of the two kings that day and the jousts and the feasting that followed. Note the fountain flowing with wine in the lower right-hand corner.

8 The designs for tents depicted in this large painting are generally accepted to be ones for the Field. They feature gold decorative work on the rich red velvet which covered the canvas structure. The roofs feature ‘king's beasts’ of various kinds.

9 Another set of designs for tents for the Field. These feature the Tudor livery colours of white and green. The roofs are set with stands to hold ‘king's beasts’.

10 This bas-relief shows the moment when Francis I and Henry VIII first encountered each other on horseback on the evening of 7 June 1520, closely watched by the leading members of their entourages and attendants.

11 This armour was adapted by the Greenwich armouries from the original set intended for use at the Field after Francis I insisted on the use of the tonlet, the protective skirt, and a reinforced visor. Note the two-handed heavy tournament sword that Henry favoured in the foot combats.

12 This humorous depiction of the episode of the wrestling match between Francis and Henry VIII is very much at Henry's expense. The match is mentioned by one French commentator but English sources are, perhaps unsurprisingly, silent on the subject.

Preface

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.

Introduction

Why the Field of Cloth of Gold?

IN THE EARLY evening light of 7 June 1520, in a narrow field in northern France, two richly dressed horsemen spurred their mounts and set off towards each other. As they gathered speed, both men raised their right hands as if about to draw their swords to attack. Instead, each reached for his feathered hat and doffed it as their cantering horses closed rapidly together. Amidst the cheers of a crowd of onlookers, they saluted each other, then dismounted and embraced like brothers – for that is what their meeting that evening proclaimed them to be.

The men were two of the greatest kings of the European Renaissance, the 25-year-old King Francis I of France and King Henry VIII of England then aged 29. They met for just over a fortnight between the towns of Guînes and Ardres in what is now the Pas-de-Calais in northern France. Together, they hosted a tournament held to celebrate peace between England and France, which was, itself, part of a wider Universal Peace among all Christian princes that had been agreed in London in October 1518. The event which this meeting inaugurated soon assumed mythic status in the annals of English and French history. It is known as the Field of Cloth of Gold. This book explains why the meeting took place, how it was organised, who its participants were and why it is important in the history of Anglo-French relations and in the broader history of Renaissance Europe.

Written against the background of nineteenth-century conceptions of diplomacy, the prevailing view of the Field of Cloth of Gold is that it was a colossal waste of time and money. This is largely because Francis and Henry swore to be at peace in 1518, met as allies in 1520 and yet were at war by 1522. The event has been characterised as an entertaining instance of curious, theatrical medievalism of little ultimate significance. Nineteenth-century writers and artists exploited its dramatic and comic potential.¹ Writing in the aftermath of two world wars, twentieth-century commentators have generally viewed the Field with deep scepticism, even disappointment, as it failed to bring about a genuine peace. They regarded it as explicable, if at all, only as a deceptive cover for ‘real’ plans for war on each side.²

This book offers a very different view. It argues that in 1520 war was the very thing that both sides hoped to avoid – and to profit immensely by doing so. It also shows why those hopes were to be disappointed. The Field of Cloth of Gold was, first and foremost, a tournament held to inaugurate peace and alliance between France and England, two ancient enemies. That being so, the event gave physical expression, as it were, to genuine hopes of peace between many other ‘ancient enemies’ among European rulers at a moment of crisis and profound change across the Continent.

Our knowledge of the Field of Cloth of Gold comes mainly from the voluminous diplomatic correspondence about it and from administrative records drawn up by French and English court officials. The first narratives of the Field appeared in France in the early autumn of 1520. Most were comparatively brief, but celebratory and optimistic. They presented the Field as exceptional and were avidly read in Western Europe and beyond.³ It is comparatively rare to find a major sixteenth-century event about which so much information survives. The Field of Cloth of Gold therefore provides important, and hitherto largely untapped, sources for the history of sixteenth-century material culture. It reveals much about subjects as varied as food preparation and banqueting, building techniques, tapestries and furnishings, horses, armour, transport and shipping. It also shows how royal courts worked and the effect of monarchy upon the lives of the gentry and working people of England and France. It offers striking insights into the mentality of the period, especially about ideas of masculinity and kingship and shows us how peace-making actually worked in an age of ‘personal monarchy’.

For it to reveal its true meaning, the Field of Cloth of Gold has to be seen against the background of nearly two centuries in which most European states, large and small, monarchical, princely and republican, had experienced prolonged periods of foreign or civil warfare. England and France had fought the Hundred Years War between 1337 and 1453. No sooner had that conflict ground to an unresolved halt than the internecine strife of the Wars of the Roses began in England and lasted, off and on, until the middle years of the reign of Henry VII, the first Tudor king. A generation of similar dynastic conflict in Iberia was only ended by the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile and their joint conquest of Granada by 1492. Meanwhile, the kings of France, having got rid of the English, had also to face down aristocratic challenges to their authority in the ‘War of the Public Weal’ in 1465 and ‘La Guerre Folle’ in 1485. They then turned their military might against the Italian states in pursuit of various dynastic claims to the duchy of Milan and the kingdom of Naples. Into these ‘Italian wars’ as they became known, the papacy and the king of Aragon were routinely and destructively drawn, to the despair of commentators like Machiavelli. As if all this were not enough from Christendom's collective point of view, in 1453 Constantinople fell to Mehmed II, called the Conqueror, Sultan of the Ottoman Turks.

For most late-medieval rulers, war was, first and foremost, a way of asserting personal power and military prowess in order to became famous. Few of the wars fought during these years were motivated by purely strategic considerations. Conflicts between monarchs pursuing dynastic territorial claims were often referred to as wars of ‘magnificence, honour and profit’, reflecting their very personal nature. As nobles and as crowned heads of state, kings were expected to fight in defence of their national patrimony and to do so successfully, sharing the profits of conquered lands with their leading supporters. Modern sensibilities shy away from rejoicing at most military victories and warfare in general, but in the early sixteenth century the defeat of an enemy in a decisive battle fought in an apparently ‘just’ (or at least reasonably justifiable) cause with a minimum of casualties and civilian trauma was the raison d'être of kings.

Yet this was not quite the whole story. There were a number of constraints upon the ambitions of rulers. Leaders had, at the very least, to be seen to respect Christian injunctions against lawless violence. War in any age is also astoundingly expensive. No sensible monarch would, without good prospects of success, jeopardise the lives and livelihoods of his subjects in a reckless war. Keeping the peace when there was no reason for war was as important as being a warrior. The resolution of the paradox between the duty to practise war and that to maintain peace lay in the ‘just war’ doctrine and in the code of chivalry. Chivalry defined a set of ideals and aspirational behaviours that regulated the expression of violence and hostility among those entitled to bear arms.⁴

Against the background of apparent danger from without, the ancient ideal of peace within Christendom brought about by rulers acting in concert began to be articulated anew. Somewhat ironically, the accession, within a few short years of each other, of three young and well-educated monarchs further stimulated these hopes. The great biblical humanist, Erasmus of Rotterdam, longed for an end to endemic European warfare. His plea for rulers to show leadership through peace rather than war was expressed in three of his most famous works. His Institutio principis christiani (The Education of a Christian Prince) was published in 1516. It argued that the true glory of princes lay in the peaceful stewardship of their lands rather than in expensive and destructive wars. More explicit condemnations of war followed in 1517: Dulce bellum inexpertis (War is sweet to those who know nothing of it) and Querela pacis (The complaint of peace). For Erasmus, war was profoundly sinful unless undertaken in the last resort to punish or restrain evil-doing. Sir Thomas More took a similar line in his book Utopia, which also appeared in 1516. In treatises directed towards Francis I, Guillaume Budé, France's leading biblical humanist, had emphasised the importance of peace and good government as proof of great monarchy. These publications were read in ecclesiastical, courtly and academic circles and the hopes they expressed were widely shared. The rhetoric of peace as a noble Christian virtue worthy of the greatest princes came into its own in 1518. In the late summer of that year, news of plans to create and maintain international peace and co-operation began to reach European courts and capitals.

The two men responsible for this attempt to create a European-wide peace were not secular rulers, but princes of the Church. They were Pope Leo X and Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. Giovanni de' Medici, the scion of the great Florentine house, became pope in 1513. He was alarmed at the Ottoman conquest of Persia, Syria and Egypt and the potential threat to Hungary. During a meeting with Francis I at Bologna in 1515, Leo asked him to attack Sultan Selim I, but received an equivocal reply. In November 1517, Leo first called for a campaign against the enemies of Christendom, just as Urban II had done at Clermont in 1095. This military campaign was to be led by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian and the king of France. England, Spain and Portugal were to supply ships for an attempt to reconquer Constantinople. For this to happen, however, the rulers of Europe had to be at peace with each other. On 6 March 1518, therefore, the pope published a plan for a Europe-wide five-year truce. He would arbitrate on all existing disputes between rulers and thus bring about a basis for co-operation. Papal legates were dispatched to proclaim the truce to the rulers of England, France and Spain and to Emperor Maximilian.⁵

Thomas Wolsey had first entered royal service in England under Henry VII and was made almoner to Henry VIII in 1509. His appetite for hard work, command of detail and his personal charm enabled him to become, within three years, the dominant force in Henry's council. By 1514, Wolsey was Lord Chancellor of England and Archbishop of York. He was made a cardinal by Leo X in 1515 and incorporated the pope's personal badge of the red lion in his own coat of arms. His intelligent insight and his high dignity in the Church gave Wolsey an international perspective and an awareness of interests beyond those of England and its king. Supported strongly by Henry, in 1518 Wolsey insisted that Leo make him a papal legate a latere (literally one sent from the pope's side) of equal status with Leo's appointed legate to England, Cardinal Campeggio. Wolsey then rather hijacked the papal plans brought by his Italian colleague. He made London, not Rome, the centre of attention. Instead of the planned five-year truce between princes that Leo envisaged, Wolsey wanted to create a multilateral treaty which would be the basis of a permanent European peace. Under this plan, all participants would commit themselves not to attack any other signatory to the treaty. Disputes likely to provoke war were to be referred to Henry, not Pope Leo, for arbitration and if no resolution could be arrived at, the rest of the signatories would attack the aggressor and prosecute war against him until peace had been restored and reparation made.

Incredible as it may seem to modern eyes, Wolsey's ambitious scheme was widely and rapidly accepted. By October 1518, all the major European sovereignties and a host of minor ones had committed themselves to the treaty of London, also known as the treaty of Universal Peace. The linchpin of the international league was a set of subsidiary treaties of peace and alliance between England and France, also formally sworn to in October 1518. The Anglo-French alliance was secured by the marriage of the Dauphin François to Henry's heir, Princess Mary. One of the terms of the treaty was that the two kings were to meet personally to affirm their alliance and their commitment to the Universal Peace. That is why the Field of Cloth of Gold was held and why Cardinal Wolsey was deeply involved in planning and organising every aspect of the event.

Given the important roles that Wolsey envisaged for Henry and Francis as chief maintainers of Christian peace, the way they related to each other as allies was to be the example to all the other adherents to the Universal Peace. Never before had a display of amicable Franco-English relations had such important implications for the rest of Europe. Never before had a meeting been required to be quite as spectacular, as impressive and compelling to the minds of fellow princes, as that in 1520. There were, nevertheless, several important precedents in medieval Anglo-French history that were drawn upon in preparing the Field of Cloth of Gold.

In 1254, King Henry III of England had crossed the Narrow Sea to meet his French counterpart, Louis IX, who was anxious to secure peace with England. He came to meet Henry at Chartres after Henry had visited the shrine of St Edmund Rich at the Cistercian abbey at Pontigny. From Chartres the two kings rode to Paris where Henry III gave a huge banquet in the Hall of the Old Temple. The chronicler Matthew Paris affirmed that it was one of the grandest ever held and one by which ‘the honour of the king of England and, in fact, all the English, was much increased and exalted’.⁶ In November 1259 Louis IX once more received Henry in Paris. After some last-minute wrangles, a treaty of peace was proclaimed at the royal palace in early December. Insofar as the 1259 treaty of Paris was designed to end Anglo-French conflict and secure French financial support for the king of England, it somewhat anticipates the 1518 treaty of London. The hospitality provided during its signing in Paris also anticipates that offered in 1520.⁷

Even closer in spirit to the Field of Cloth of Gold, and in virtually the same location in a large encampment made especially for the occasion, was the meeting on 27 October 1396 between Richard II and Charles VI. They met to confirm an Anglo-French peace agreed in March the same year which it was hoped would bring an end to over half a century of Anglo-French conflict precipitated by the failure of the 1259 treaty of Paris. It was secured by Richard's marriage to the six-year-old Princess Isabelle of France. He came to Ardres to meet his bride. Just as Henry and Francis would do in 1520, Richard and Charles advanced over an equal distance to greet each other before their assembled courts. They shook hands, kissed, and presents were exchanged. The meeting was characterised by the same strict reciprocity and protocol as that of 1520. There were no paramilitary games at the 1396 meeting, but the banquets and masques held were as lavish as any at the Field. Prompted by his love of personal display, in which Henry would prove to be more than his equal, Richard appeared in steadily more splendid outfits of velvet and presented yet more expensive gifts to Charles and his entourage. He spent nearly £15,000 on the event, almost as much, in relative terms, as Henry would spend in 1520. As Nigel Saul has observed of Richard, he ‘was determined to make a vivid and lasting impression on those present. Massive spending on gifts and fine clothing ensured that he did so.’⁸ Exactly the same thing was true of the two kings who met in the same place over a century later.

As these meetings demonstrate, peace could be a perfectly acceptable alternative to war for most rulers, provided that it, too, had a chivalric and ennobling quality about it. Whether at war or at peace, monarchs had always to respond to the demands of the ‘magnificence, honour and profit’ mentality. For this model of ‘chivalric’ peace to work, one thing was essential. Each king had to feel that his status had at least been protected, and may even have been enhanced by it. Despite the idealistic and somewhat abstract rhetoric with which it was enacted, peace-making between princes was never done for its own sake. It had always to result in peace ‘with honour’ or advantage. A successful peace treaty made room for each participant to assert his own status and power in activities other than war between them. In 1518, for example, Francis got back the city of Tournai lost to the English in war in 1513. For his part, Henry secured increased annual payments from Francis that he regarded as ‘tribute’ for ‘his’ kingdom of France. Thus, each monarch gained something from the other that strengthened his status among his fellow princes and the nobles of his own realm. In making peace with the king of France, Henry always strove to appear the magnanimous friend, bestowing peace upon his fellow sovereign. Francis responded in kind, as the great lord and even the patron of his English counterpart. Thus assured of his own status, each monarch could take part in a joint enterprise whereby they, together, displayed their power to the rest of the world.

In 1520, there was between Henry and Francis a deeply felt ambivalence, ambivalence in the true sense of countervailing strengths. Each man felt a mix of positive and negative feelings towards the other. He admired his rival but did not easily trust him. Each man could welcome the other as friend and ally while still resenting his potential as an enemy. At the Field of Cloth of Gold, this ambivalence expressed itself in a spirit of demonstrative masculinity, articulated through the chivalric code. At the heart of that code of male bonding and service to the honour of God and women was, paradoxically, aggressive competition between elite men for each other's approval.⁹ Displays of friendship and peace made between the two kings were, therefore, as much warnings against aggression as apparent invitations to co-operation.

Relatively rarely in the history of Western European monarchy have there been two sovereigns better able to use their own bodies, adorned and unadorned, as a means to express their personal power. The 1520 tournament acted as a metaphor for the agreement of peace and alliance between them. Thundering down the lists in full armour, displaying spectacularly colourful heraldic devices, Henry and Francis presented a compelling spectacle to the