Game of Queens

by Sarah Gristwood

  Suites of tents – blue and gold, gold and scarlet, topped with heraldic beasts – were linked by curtained passageways to resemble the layout of a palace. Like the rooms of a permanent palace, they were scented with flowers and furnished with tapestry, while the royal chapel was stuffed with holy relics. Katherine’s oratory had in the centre a large shield bearing the arms of England and, possibly provocative under the circumstances, of Spain.

  There were other tents, some three hundred of them, striped in the Tudor colours of green and white, for the kitchens and dormitories and painted or embroidered for the courtiers. Not that accommodation could be provided for everybody; even some ‘knights and ladies’ were forced to sleep outdoors in the hay.

  The French party approached the accommodation problem differently. In Ardres, work was done on the king’s lodging, which was attached, by a gallery of clipped box plants, to a large banqueting pavilion, whose ceiling was made to look like the night sky. But they too brought in master tent-makers to erect fabulous creations in the Field itself, made of stout canvas which was covered in more luxurious fabrics: silk, velvet and damask, in blue, violet and crimson, with the royal livery colours of tawny, white and black. Claude’s pavilion, and Louise of Savoy’s, were dressed in toile d’or and toile d’argent, with fleurs de lis in gold thread strewn on, respectively, violet and crimson satin, alongside the two women’s own heraldic emblems. However, unseasonable weather blew down many of the French tents.

  In between the two camps a nine-hundred-foot tournament ground boasted an artificial tree of honour, decorated with hundreds of silk or satin flowers representing English hawthorn and French raspberry, on which the challengers could hang their emblazoned shields. But women could not play a major part in the chivalric encounters that were the first order of the day.

  The two kings did not compete against each other; or not officially. There was an impromptu bout of wrestling, which saw François throw Henry. (He would seize another such advantage of surprise when, disregarding the protocol that surrounded their normal meetings, he arrived in Henry’s bedroom one morning, insisting that he himself would be the English king’s valet.) Henry’s brother-in-law, Charles Brandon, did not distinguish himself in the joust, having hurt his hand, but Bonnivet was one of the chief organisers of the French side.

  The ladies were to have their ceremonial part in the tourney. The two queens met on 11 June, in a royal pavilion where they could receive the homage of the knights. Queen Claude, dressed in cloth of silver over an underskirt of cloth of gold, rode in her coronation litter, made to match. She was followed by her ladies, in three coaches draped in silver, and the likelihood is that the ladies included Anne Boleyn. Louise of Savoy wore black velvet and was followed by ‘an infinite number of ladies’ in crimson velvet, with sleeves lined in cloth of gold. She was said to have purchased ‘a whole emporium’ of the dazzling stuff.

  Katherine of Aragon too had been buying fabric for months. She, of course, had already had her nephew’s entourage to dazzle, in cloth of gold lined with violet velvet, black ‘tilsent’ sparkling silk, crimson tissue ‘pirled’ with gold and ‘rich cloth of gold tissue’. Even her fifty-five footmen wore white satin and green velvet, with Spanish ‘feathers of arrows’ embroidered on their doublets; her seven henchmen wore orange boots, black velvet cloaks, coats of green and russet velvet and doublets of yellow. It was noted that Katherine wore a headdress in the ‘Spanish fashion’, with her hair hanging down over her shoulder. A point was being made here, silently.

  Clothes wars notwithstanding, the women came into their own away from the tourney. Etiquette decreed that the two kings should be feasted not by each other but by each other’s ladies. Henry and François ate together less formally on a handful of occasions but at the great banquets – on 10, 17 and 24 June – two kings at one board might give rise to awkward questions of precedence, so nothing could be left to chance.

  Surviving reports (from French, Venetian and Mantuan observers) record the two kings leaving their lodgings at the same time, announced by the firing of cannon. They encountered each other briefly on the tournament ground and passed on. François (on the 10th, the first occasion), was received by Katherine of Aragon in her huge chambers to dine from gold plate, under a cloth of state, surrounded by tapestries. Beyond the royal party, a long hall was divided into two, one half for 134 ladies to dine and the other for some two hundred gentlemen.

  Each of perhaps three courses consisted of fifty dishes, sweet and savoury together, topped off by a ‘subtlety’, an elaborate and often allegorical creation in marzipan or spun sugar. Account books record that in the course of their visit the English camp consumed almost thirty thousand fish – in which list was included a dolphin – more than six thousand birds and almost a hundred thousand eggs. After the meal there was dancing in the main hall, led by the king’s sister, Mary Tudor, partnering a French nobleman, after which François – who like Henry was an impassioned dancer – had a masquing dance performed ‘in the Italian manner’.1 Henry, for his part, was being entertained by the French in a hall decked with pink brocade, with twenty-four trumpeters playing as he waded his way through a solid four hours of eating before the dancing.

  On the second occasion, the 17th, Louise of Savoy came to join her son François, while his sister Marguerite partnered Henry VIII. Both kings slipped out of the hall to don their costumes for the masque; François and his companions donning long gowns with plumes and hoods to dance ‘in the Ferrarese fashion’. Henry had brought three companies of masquers with him: fake beards and gowns described as being in the Milanese style for himself and his fellows, black velvet doctors’ costumes for another group of noblemen, and yet another group boasting purses and girdles of sealskin to dress as visitors from ‘Ruseland or farre Estland’. Henry loved to dress up (at home, no one was supposed to admit they recognised him) and by the sound of it, François did, too. For the third and last banquet both royal parties wore masquing costumes from the beginning. Nine worthies headed the English party – soldierly heroes from Alexander to King Arthur – led by Hercules with a club covered in green damask and a lion’s pelt made from cloth of gold.

  The whole long international encounter was as choreographed as a masque. When the two queens met at an open-air mass in the tiltyard, they each tried to insist that the other have the first chance to kiss the Gospel but wound up embracing each other instead. Contemporaries recorded the precise ceremonial; how ‘the English King dined with the French Queen and the Duchess of Alençon at Ardres . . . kneeling with one knee on the ground, his bonnet in his hand, he first kissed the Queen, then Madame [Louise of Savoy], then the Duchess of Alençon [Marguerite of Navarre]’.

  Even the gifts exchanged were carefully recorded: the English queen gave the French one several hobbies and palfreys, with their appurtenances, presenting also a saddle and harness to Louise of Savoy. Claude gave Katherine of Aragon a litter of cloth of gold (‘as well as mules and pages’). Louise of Savoy gave Wolsey a valuable jewelled crucifix, while he gave her a small cross of precious stones, with a piece of the True Cross inside it.

  But behind the scenes, serious business was going on. At Guisnes, even before the kings began their joust, Wolsey visited the French camp and arranged that he and Louise of Savoy should settle matters between England, France and Scotland. One of the victors of these festivities was indeed Wolsey, honoured as the pope’s own representative (in which capacity he could treat even François as an equal), talking to everybody. Marguerite of Navarre had begun to address him as ‘father’, while he described her as his daughter or god-daughter: ‘filleule d’alliance’. Margaret of Austria would write to Wolsey as to her dear son.

  The two groups parted on 24 June and the next day the English made their way back to Calais. Here Henry VIII waited, until 10 July. François, too, stayed in the vicinity. For in that summer of 1520, the Field of Cloth of Gold was followed – as had been arranged in May – by another meeting. Henry and Katherine
of Aragon went on to the coastal town of Gravelines, on the border with the Netherlands, and there met Charles V and Margaret of Austria, who accompanied them back to Calais for a few days of more restrained festivities. François made it known he was just a day’s ride away and would come over to join in the debates without ceremony if asked. He wasn’t, but several of his gentlemen made use of their English friends to gatecrash the parties.

  Margaret of Austria, in her brief Spanish marriage, had lived at close quarters with Katherine of Aragon. Now, the two reaffirmed their girlhood bonds over a supper. Charles V showed his particular mettle: while Henry had been competitively on edge with François, and left far from sure he had got the best of the encounter, Charles offered him a modest air and a welcome flattery, stressing Henry’s importance in keeping Europe’s balance. While Wolsey was in pursuit of that ‘universal peace’ so long aspired to – a church-sponsored Anglo/Imperial/French alliance against the infidel Turks who were menacing Europe’s eastern borders – Charles wanted an alliance with England against France.

  He didn’t get it, or not immediately, but for all that, the Gravelines meeting, like the Field, might be considered to have gone well. Perhaps it was a triumph for Wolsey’s subtlety. He managed to seem to promise everything to everybody without technically breaking his word to anybody, for to the best of our knowledge (no exact record of the discussion survives) nothing agreed at Gravelines contradicted the Anglo/French agreement for a marriage between François’s son the dauphin and Henry’s daughter Mary.

  The mood at the French court, as everyone returned home, was positive, at least where François was concerned, with an allegorical book singling out the ‘wise knowledge and divine way of achieving of Our Lady Concord’: Louise of Savoy. Louise herself had put a good face on things. The Venetian ambassador reported her telling foreign envoys that the French king and the English king had parted with tears in their eyes; that they planned to build a chapel to Our Lady of Friendship, and a palace where they could meet every year.

  But while spending the summer in the lovely settings of Blois and Amboise Louise must have been more conscious than her son of the cost of the recent venture – may have been all too aware that the real winner of the summer had yet to be decided. François I or Charles V? In the end (just as had happened with the contest to become Holy Roman Emperor) it would not be the French party.

  14

  Repercussions

  The Netherlands, France, 1520–1521

  One of the winners, again, was Margaret of Austria. In the autumn of 1520, she and her nephew Charles travelled from Gravelines to Maastricht, where he reappointed her his regent in the Netherlands. On 18 September he signed over to her, for life, the town and territory of Mechelen, with two hundred thousand gold florins. Together, aunt and nephew moved on to Charles’s German territories, where on 23 October, at Aix-la-Chapelle, he was crowned into the office to which he had been elected the previous year, that of ‘King of the Romans’ and Holy Roman Emperor-Elect.1 The German princes swore fealty, Charles V promised to uphold the rights of the Empire, and those of the church, and was girt with Charlemagne’s sword, while Charlemagne’s crown was placed on his head.

  Margaret of Austria had a prominent place in the cathedral, as well she deserved. She had even stripped her home at Mechelen of its tapestries and silver plate to make a good show at the coronation festivities. Fleuranges wrote a description to Louise of Savoy.

  In France, meanwhile, all the ‘trinity’ were at a loss. In the winter of 1520–21 François had three accidents: a fall from a horse, a prank that ended in a fire, and a mock battle that got out of hand. Although none caused him any lasting injury, the last shave was close and made Louise palpitate over how easily she might have been wholly lost; ‘femme perdu’.

  That was even before he went back to the Italian wars. Power in Italy was still a huge bone of contention between France and the Empire, particularly the disputed territories of Milan and Naples. Largely hemmed in by Charles’ territories to the south, east and north, François was alarmed by the way Charles’s new imperial title gave him also an Italian foothold.

  In the spring of 1521 France made several incursions into foreign territory; French aggression was followed by Imperial retaliation and it was clear that England, abandoning its position of neutrality, would be forced into the conflict. In August 1521, Cardinal Wolsey crossed the Channel to Calais to act as a mediator between Charles and François. The French sent wine; Margaret of Austria (knowing his distaste for riding) sent a red velvet litter, lined with green satin, against which his cardinal’s robes would stand out clearly. More importantly but less tangibly, both sides had long been raising their voice to get him the papacy. But any talk of peace was unavailing. Instead, the cardinal moved on to Bruges for another round of diplomatic discussions with the emperor.

  Ever pro-English, Margaret of Austria, ‘la bonne Angloise’, rushed to join them, supplementing the substantial presents of money made to the English suite with more domestic courtesies, including a daily breakfast delivery of fresh rolls, sugar and wine. She sent Wolsey candles to light his bedroom, while his musicians played at her parties; the upshot was that England entered a covert alliance with Charles V. The alliance between Charles and Henry was to be cemented at a future date by his marriage to Henry’s daughter Mary, disregarding the previous match made between Mary and the French dauphin. Margaret of Austria was one of the two signatories on the emperor’s behalf. She indeed had thrashed out the details with Wolsey. And in the summer of 1521, as Charles prepared for war with France, it was his aunt Margaret whose speech to the Netherlands’ governing body raised him men and money.

  The war that was to dominate the next four years would be cripplingly expensive for both sides. But in France, there was simply no money. A visiting Englishman, William Fitzwilliam, wrote of how ‘the King borrows of any man that hath any and if any man refuse to lend he shall be so punished that all other shall take ensample from him . . . They eat up all they have, to their shirts.’ In this crisis, both François and Louise of Savoy would turn to expedients that divided them from powerful nobles, and even, briefly, from each other.

  It was all tied to the ageing Anne de Beaujeu. Despite all the noble girls to whom she had been mentor and surrogate mother, Anne had born just one surviving child, a daughter, Suzanne (the addressee of Anne’s Enseignements), who had herself died at the end of April 1521. This left her husband Charles, the great Duc de Bourbon, a childless widower. Suzanne had been his kinswoman as well as wife; her claim to the Bourbon inheritance had been united with his. But now the question was what of the Bourbon lands he or his children by any second marriage could still inherit, for Charles de Bourbon came from the younger branch of the Bourbon family, Suzanne having been the last representative of the senior. Now Charles’s claim might be challenged, since both Louise of Savoy and François I also had Bourbon blood in their veins, through Louise’s mother, while the king could reasonably claim that the terms under which the lands had been granted saw them revert to the crown on the failure of the male line.

  It was perhaps in an attempt to cut through this Gordian knot that Louise of Savoy took an extraordinary step. She, who had always fought so hard against remarriage, sent an envoy to Bourbon suggesting she should marry him. That way, since she was past childbearing age, the lands should still ultimately revert to her son’s crown.

  The proposal is recorded only in a seventeenth-century continuation of the chronicle originally written by Bourbon’s secretary, so one cannot know for sure whether Bourbon really called her ‘the worst woman in the realm, the dread of all nations’. He would not marry her ‘for the whole of Christendom’, he added; Louise, when she heard, vowing that his words should cost him dear. King Henry, in England, made a personal story out of it, telling Charles V’s ambassador: ‘There has been much discontent between the King Francis and the said Bourbon, since he has refused to marry Madame the Regent, who loves him very much.’ More
surely, Bourbon was discontented, feeling he was not given his right place in the realm.

  Trouble at home was matched by disaster abroad, in the ongoing Italian wars. Six years earlier, the Battle of Marignano had given France control of Milan but in November 1521 the French lost the city again. To add another turn of the screw (reported one contemporary, Jean du Bellay), when the defeated general responsible for Milan’s loss came to explain himself to the king, he protested furiously that the problem had been lack of money, which had lost him his mercenaries. François roared that he had sent the money; the treasurer Semblançay answered that he had got the money ready to send but that it had been taken by Louise of Savoy, who claimed it in payment of a debt. It blew over of course but not before son confronted mother in a scene unparalleled in their history.

  In the Netherlands by contrast, Margaret of Austria was prepared to pawn her jewels to fund her nephew as, in the spring of 1522, he prepared to set out again towards his Spanish territories. There, the ‘Revolt of the Comuneros’ had seen Castilian rebels rise against Charles, a man they saw as a foreigner, and attempt to make his incarcerated mother Juana, nominally still co-ruler with Charles, once more the active head of state. Margaret’s hand is all over her nephew’s policy of the first years of the 1520s and her loyalty was not without its reward: Charles had informed the States General that in his absence they would be governed by his aunt ‘who for so long has shown by her praiseworthy, memorable services and great experience, that she well knows how to honourably acquit herself of the said government and administration’. Charles also settled the question of Margaret’s claim to her father Maximilian’s estates, which she surrendered in return for two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, payable in ten yearly instalments.*