by David Field
‘And the English bride?’
‘The Princess Margaret. She will be thirteen on her next birthday, which is not long away. She is well developed for a girl of her age, and doubtless would be in a suitable condition for the marriage bed before being allowed to travel north to consummate the peace.’
‘No doubt this is the will of her father, but what mother would allow her virgin daughter to be sacrificed to a man with lusts such as King James is reported to feed?’
‘You are a diplomat, my dear Don Pedro, and an excellent chess player according to my sources. You, above all others, know that on certain occasions it is necessary to lay a pawn in the way of a king. She will become a queen ere long anyway, and it is better that she become a queen whose throne can be united with Spain’s.’
Foxe, and to a lesser extent Deane, were richly praised by a relieved King Henry for having brought about the resulting Treaty of Perpetual Peace, while being silently cursed by Queen Elizabeth, who feared for the health and comfort of her pubescent daughter at the hands of a wild barbarian whose legion of bastards were always on public display in the nursery of Stirling Castle. For Thomas, it was a triumph that would not be forgotten, and would shortly be rewarded.
IV
When Archbishop Dean died in February 1503, Thomas was genuinely mournful of his passing, since he owed him so much in his career thus far. He was now also minus a senior appointment and was therefore more than a little intrigued when Richard Foxe, attending the funeral at Canterbury, introduced him to Sir Richard Nanfan, Deputy Governor of Calais. Nanfan was highly regarded by King Henry due to his involvement in the negotiation of the Treaty of Medina del Campo that had resulted in the tragically doomed marriage of Katherine of Aragon to Prince Arthur. Unfortunately, Arthur had died of the sweating sickness only five months into their marriage, leaving ten-year-old Prince Henry as the heir to the throne.
Calais had suddenly become more important to the English than it had been for years. It was the last foothold for English forces in Continental Europe, and the sole remaining trophy of the years in which, under the now legendary Henry V, England had dominated France in the Hundred Years War. All but Calais had subsequently been lost by the witless Henry VI, but it remained as a secure landing site for English soldiers, should they wish to invade again. It was strategically crucial to English military ambitions in France, and was the most obvious port through which England’s all important wool trade with the Continent could be conducted.
The governance of Calais, and the associated fortress of Guines with its prison at Hammes, all of which lay within the English occupied ‘Pale of Calais’, obviously carried with it a heavy responsibility, a great deal of administration, and the need for constant intelligence activity. Governors were chosen for their undoubted loyalty to the monarch they served, and Henry VII had, since his coronation, pursued a constant policy of employing men of lowly birth, whose loyalty he could purchase by elevating them to positions of authority in which they owed everything to their royal benefactor. Sir Richard Nanfan was no exception, but as he approached his fiftieth year he found the duties increasingly onerous, particularly those relating to intelligence gathering.
He was therefore more than interested when a man so close to the king as Richard Foxe, the Lord Privy Seal, recommended Thomas, as both a budding diplomat and a multilingual scholar, who could, in his spare time, minister to the ageing man’s spiritual needs. Almost immediately after attending — and helping to conduct —Deane’s Requiem Mass, Thomas was introduced to Sir Richard, and shortly thereafter joined his household across the Channel.
For the next two years Thomas familiarised himself with Calais and the border with Flanders, which was then being ruled by the Burgundians from their traditional lands further south. Towns such as Bruges and Ghent were important to the English wool trade, and successive Dukes of Burgundy had featured strongly in European power politics in recent years; they were also, by marriage, aligned with the Holy Roman Empire and could not be ignored by an English monarch with half an eye on defending his economic interests across the sea.
In his capacity as chaplain to the Deputy Governor of Calais, Thomas rapidly assessed every church, castle, religious house and inn in the entire Pale, until he could have found his way around it blindfold, should the need arise. His regular reports to Sir Richard were detailed and perceptive, and large portions of them were passed on to Richard Foxe, who was now King Henry’s principal spy and facilitator. It had been Foxe and his ‘ferrets’, as the King called them, who had lured Perkin Warbeck to his doom, and had later manufactured the excuse to justify his execution. Foxe was the ultimate intelligence machine, and he in turn relied on men like Thomas Wolsey, who owed their preferment to him.
Foxe himself had risen from the yeoman class, had studied at Oxford, and had been a schoolmaster under holy orders when forced into exile with Henry Tudor in France, ahead of the invasion that had set the young Earl of Richmond on the throne. When Foxe’s increasingly aching bones reminded him that the time had come for him to find a successor to himself as the King’s chief bloodhound, he recognised in Thomas Wolsey a kindred soul, a base-born academic of the highest calibre who could hide the most confidential of matters beneath his ample cassock.
It was now 1506, and Sir Richard Nanfan had succeeded in obtaining a pension via the good offices of Foxe that would allow him to retire to his small estate in Gloucestershire. There was, however, one condition, and this was that he bring his chaplain back with him, and leave him at his Putney house with instructions to await further word from Foxe.
Thomas had barely had time to unpack all his vestments when word came that he was to report to Foxe at Richmond Palace, where he was in attendance upon the King, who had need of those best informed regarding how matters lay outside his immediate kingdom.
Thomas found Foxe in the antechamber of the royal suite, deep in conversation with a heavy-set middle-aged man, richly dressed and with an air of authority. Foxe rose and walked towards Thomas.
‘Thomas, first let me congratulate you on the excellent and regular reports that Sir Richard was able to pass on to me from Calais. I would like you to meet Sir Thomas Lovell, the King’s Chancellor, the Master of his Wards, and a man who knows the King’s desires even before the King does.’
‘You flatter me as ever, Richard,’ Lovell responded with a smile as he nodded to acknowledge Thomas’s obsequious bow. ‘Well, you look the part — now let us hope you can play it to perfection.’
‘What part, my lord?’ Thomas asked.
Lovell looked back at Foxe, who shook his head.
‘I have not yet had time to acquaint him with either the nature of his mission or the new role that he must play in the royal routine.’
Thomas’s heart began to beat faster as he caught the inference of the words.
‘His Majesty has need of a new chaplain, Thomas,’ Foxe explained. ‘It is most likely that you will exhaust yourself with nothing more, in his service, than the designing of mild penances for sins that owe more to the imagination than the commission. However, we — by which of course I mean the King’s Council — have need of your filed tongue back across the Channel. The precise nature of your mission will be explained to you later, and you are here today simply that you may receive the royal approval.’
‘I am to meet the King?’ Thomas mumbled in astonishment.
‘This very hour,’ Foxe assured him. ‘He is at present making a small board through that door, and once his dinner has been removed, we are to be admitted.’
‘But,’ Thomas protested, looking down at his second best soutane, ‘I am hardly dressed as befits one being granted a royal audience, unlike you gentlemen in all your finery.’
Foxe smiled encouragingly. ‘Fear not upon that score, Thomas. His Majesty judges men not by their dress but by their loyalty. He is already well apprised of your loyal service to him in Calais, and on our recommendation wishes you to put to best use your intimate knowledge of
the people of Flanders and those who currently rule them. But for this morning, he simply wishes to become acquainted with the man who will guide his soul through the darker days that he imagines lie ahead of him. You must know that his health is not of the best, that he is plagued with a gout that makes him short of temper, and that this past winter has laid him low with a recurrence of his lifelong chest ailment. He does not expect to live long, and he wishes to achieve as much as he can in order to ensure that the throne passes both safely and richly to young Prince Henry of Wales. With all these things on his mind, His Majesty sees no-one of his Council except we two.’
Foxe looked up sharply as the dividing doors that gave access to the Presence Chamber opened silently, and a gentleman usher appeared in the opening.
‘His Majesty will receive you now, gentlemen.’
Foxe and Lovell strolled in confidently. Thomas hesitated in the doorway, gazing for the first time at the King, a thin-faced, almost haggard man with sparse greying hair lying in thin strands upon his head, who was dabbing at his mouth with a kerchief, and clearly attempting to suppress an irritating cough. He looked past his two Council members and raised a beckoning hand towards Thomas.
‘You are highly spoken of, Father Wolsey,’ Henry reassured him. ‘I trust that your penances are as light as your countenance is sleek?’
‘Indeed, Your Majesty,’ Thomas croaked in his first address to his king.
‘Your main value to me will be as an ambassador in those places where a filed tongue and a sharp wit will stand a man in good stead. I will leave those details to Foxe here. In the meantime, be advised that I observe Mass upon my rising every morning, which is usually with the sun. The rest of the day will be your own, but on those days when you are abroad I shall require you to send another priest in your stead.’
‘I shall do my utmost to serve Your Majesty with all my best endeavours, and in perpetual gratitude for the honour that you bestow upon me,’ Thomas assured him.
‘Save your flattery for foreign rulers,’ Henry muttered, before lapsing into a fit of coughing, and waving for Thomas to leave the presence.
Thomas was followed out by Foxe, who drew him to one side.
‘Do not be deceived by the show His Majesty makes of being a weak old man. It suits his purpose to appear so, while arranging for the fortunes of others to be tipped into his pockets. Follow his mood with your own, and you will be well rewarded with public offices. Join me for dinner in my chambers, and the nature and purpose of your first diplomatic progress can be explained more fully.’
By early afternoon Thomas had learned that he was to proceed with all speed to the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian, and there assure him that Henry was eager to ally with him against Louis of France in order to prevent the latter from carrying out his badly-kept secret plan to attack Milan.
Thomas was handed a ring bearing two intertwined jewelled stones crafted into the emblem of the Tudor Rose, which would serve as confirmation of his authority. He was to lose no time in setting off, and raced back to his Putney home. He left instructions for an astonished Thomas Larke that he was to celebrate Mass for the King in his chambers at Richmond Palace at sunrise every day until Thomas’s return, and he ordered one of his grooms to ride hard to Dover, where he was to arrange for fresh horses and a Channel passage boat to be waiting by the following morning.
Emperor Maximilian gazed with some amusement at the dust-streaked figure of the fat priest who knelt before him, and bade Thomas announce his business. Thanking God for the time he had taken to learn German, Thomas addressed Maximilian in his own tongue.
‘My gracious lord, King Henry would be united with you in the suppression of French pretensions to the townships in Italy that King Louis is rumoured to be planning to attack.’
‘I knew nothing of this,’ Maximilian protested.
Thomas saw his opportunity. ‘It is as my master thought,’ he replied, ‘and he also thought it appropriate that the tidings be brought to the most powerful ruler in Europe, to whose army he would gladly commit men of his own, to ensure your success in warding off King Louis’s intended sacking of Milan.’
‘Tell your master that I am greatly in his debt, that he shares such confidences with me, and shows me such support before making use of this knowledge for himself.’
‘May I assure my master that his offer of support has been accepted?’
‘Most gladly,’ Maximilian smiled down at him. ‘You may also give him this gold chain, on which is the likeness of the Emperor Caesar Augustus worked by one of the finest smiths in my native Vienna, as a token of my constancy in this matter. And now, your business concluded, you must rest for the night and enjoy the hospitality of my modest house.’
‘You are most gracious,’ Thomas replied unctuously, ‘but my bodily comfort is as nought compared with the anxiety with which my master awaits joyful confirmation that your causes shall be joined. If you will permit, I shall return to him post haste.’
‘Your King is blessed to have men so well endowed with both superior powers of Statecraft and limitless amounts of energy. Depart with my blessing, Father Wolsey, and God speed your enterprise.’
Scarcely able to believe his good fortune, Thomas hastily rejoined his two grooms, who had the horses waiting, along with a saddle pannier full of meat, bread and wine that they had coaxed from the cook, and as they raced towards the rapidly setting sun, chewing vigorously and exchanging the wine gourd from rider to rider, Thomas said a silent prayer to the God he served as well as his King, both of whom were showering him with good fortune.
They disembarked at Dover and pounded directly through the lanes of Kent and Surrey until they reached Richmond at first light. Thomas demanded admittance to the royal apartments, and was just in time to see Thomas Larke, dressed in his finest soutane, emerge white-faced from the inner chamber and give thanks to God that he would not be required to conduct a third fumbling Mass to a monarch who coughed and shivered at all the inappropriate moments. Thomas was just thanking his personal chaplain for the service he had rendered him, when the King himself appeared in the doorway, a puzzled frown on his face.
‘Wolsey,’ he announced sternly, ‘I did not submit to the furtive mutterings of this boy priest in order that you might spend longer in your bed. When is it your intention to travel on my business to the Emperor?’
‘In truth, Your Majesty,’ Thomas replied proudly, handing Henry the Imperial medallion on its chain, ‘I have already been and returned.’
Henry looked thunderstruck as he took in the implications, then asked, ‘What reply did he give?’
‘That he is more than happy to unite with Your Majesty in the joint enterprise that you propose. Indeed, he was seemingly full of gratitude for your gracious offer.’
‘Thomas, you have served me well. I ask only that you relay this information to Bishop Foxe and my lord Lovell, and then you may take what is no doubt your much needed rest. I shall take supper with you here in my chamber this evening.’
Thomas bowed, and when he looked up the King had retreated back into his chamber, and an usher had closed the door. Puffing out his cheeks in satisfaction, Thomas leaned on the shoulder of his bemused chaplain.
‘Let us home, Lovell, for I am both triumphant and exhausted. I have come to learn that being in the service of a king provokes a fierce thirst. I hope that you have not consumed all the Beaujolais that we brought back upon our retreat from Calais.’
The next day Thomas Wolsey took supper with the three most powerful men in the realm. He sat across from King Henry, who was toying fitfully with a slice of venison pie, while Bishop Foxe sat to Thomas’s right, with Lord Lovell to his left.
‘King Louis is no doubt already soiling his hose at the news that we are threatening to align with Maximilian,’ Foxe observed with a sneer.
‘How soon will he know?’ Henry enquired.
‘By sunset today, Your Majesty,’ Foxe told him. ‘My man at the French court is trusted,
primarily because he is believed by Louis to be his man. The information went by fast horse as soon as Thomas here passed it to me.’
Something still puzzled Thomas. ‘If King Louis has been advised of what he will surely regard as treachery by England, will he not rise against our possessions in Calais?’
Lovell burst out laughing, while Foxe smiled indulgently at Thomas.
‘His first ambition is Milan, is it not? And he is even now being informed that England has just aligned itself with the most powerful monarch in Europe. When one is standing up to one’s neck in the sea, the last thing one needs is an incoming tide.’
Thomas persisted. ‘And if Louis insists on laying siege to Milan, are we prepared to commit men to the side of the Holy Roman Emperor, as I promised him?’
Lovell, who had regained his composure, explained, ‘Louis will not now attack Milan. That was the whole purpose of your visit to the Emperor, Thomas. Louis fears that should he do so, he will bring down two armies upon his head.’
It was Henry’s turn to smile. ‘You see how I am well served by my Council? The mere threat of our joining Burgundy, and Louis will hold his hand. By this means we have bought off the urgent entreaties of Spain that we take up arms against France. Everyone is satisfied, and we have no need to seek the grant of more taxes from Parliament to equip and dispatch our armies.’
‘The Emperor seemed genuinely surprised to learn that Louis was planning to lay siege to Milan,’ Thomas recalled. ‘We were fortunate that we did know.’
‘My man at King Louis’ court again,’ Foxe told him. ‘The same man who will now warn him against it. All that is now required is that you, Thomas, advise the Spanish Ambassador of how Louis was frightened off, and Ferdinand of Aragon will hopefully cease his constant demands that we attack France, which would cost the Treasury dearly.’
‘You can perhaps now perceive, Thomas,’ the King added, ‘why there was no time to be lost in your mission to the Emperor, with which I am most contented. There can be no question of my rewarding you directly, since Foxe here advises me that we have not the money. Nor would it look good were it voiced abroad that I bribed a priest in order to instil fear into the heart of the King of France. But there is another way in which I can put riches in your path. We have need of a Dean of Lincoln — would such a post appeal to you?’