by Amy Licence
While Henry and Catherine were establishing themselves in their camp outside Guisnes, Francis I and his wife, Queen Claude, were settling into their royal lodgings in nearby Ardres. The suave, sophisticated Francis, with his eye for fashion and the ladies, was twenty-five to Henry’s twenty-eight. His wife, counterpart of the thirty-five-year-old Catherine, was Claude, daughter of the old king, Louis XII, once the stepdaughter of Mary Tudor and also Francis’ cousin. She was only twenty, very short and suffered from scoliosis, but she had already borne four children, three of whom were still living and two of which were boys. That June, she was heavily pregnant with a fifth, a daughter, who would arrive on 10 August. Among her retinue of ladies was Anne, the younger daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, who was a couple of years younger than the queen and may have acted as her translator. Dark-haired, elegant and well educated, Anne had been abroad since 1513, acquiring a European polish at the court of Margaret of Savoy before coming to France for Mary’s marriage to Louis, after which she had stayed on to serve Claude. If Catherine had seen the Boleyn’s younger daughter as a child, this would have been seven years ago and Anne was now a grown woman. The Field of Cloth of Gold also provided an opportunity for Anne to be reunited with her mother, Elizabeth Boleyn, and sister Mary Carey, who had been married earlier that year to Privy Chamberer William Carey. The queen probably paid little attention to two more of the many attractive young ladies present at the festivities, but the Boleyn girls would prove impossible to avoid in the years to come.
Catherine and Claude were not present at the initial encounters between the two kings, who met and banqueted in a tent between the two camps. Hall gives us a glimpse of Henry as ‘the moost goodliest Prince that ever reigned over the Realm of England’, dressed in cloth of silver of damask, ribbed with cloth of gold, ‘marvellous to behold’ and riding a horse likewise trapped in gold. The queens finally met on 11 June,8 at a field that was decorated with a pageant of two trees. Catherine and Claude saluted each other ‘right honourably’ and took their places on a stage to watch the men engage in a tournament ‘so valiantly that the beholders had great joy’.9 The women sat in a ‘glazed gallery, hung with tapestry and talked about the tourney’ and many in their company were obliged to use the services of translators, as they could not understand each other. More days of entertainments followed, interspersed with talks and banquets, with feats of strength and skill including wrestling, fighting with weapons, archery and darts presided over by the queens, with Claude presenting Henry with his prizes and Catherine doing the same for Francis. On 13 June, a treaty was ratified for the marriage of the dauphin to three-year-old Princess Mary, left behind at Richmond under the care of Margaret Pole. This cannot have been Catherine’s first choice, as she was still hoping for a Spanish match for her daughter.
On 17 June, Henry dined with Queen Claude in chambers hung with blue velvet and gold, where he met the French ladies, ‘the most beautiful that could be’, arrayed in cloth of gold, with everything presented ‘to ease his delight’.10 The French queen, dressed in gold, diamonds, pearls and other gems, rose from her chair of state in greeting, at which Henry kissed her on bended knee. Then she led him by the hand to the banquet where they dined on an indescribable number of dishes before retiring to talk in a room hung with gold tapestries and carpeted with crimson velvet.11 On a second occasion, a week later, Henry visited again for dinner. This time, the ladies ‘dressed themselves to daunce’ and Henry, apparently just to please them, withdrew and ‘secretly’ joined the masked company, clad in pale cloth of gold lined with green taffeta, with visors on their faces that sported beards made of gold wire. Along with them, he ‘took ladies and danced … passing the time right honourably’. Then, at Claude’s insistence, the revellers removed their masks, revealing their identities. A banquet was served, including spices, fruits and jellies, before the party took their leave. Then, ‘in secret places’, they put on their masks again ‘so that they were unknown and so passed through the French court’.12 Among those accompanying Henry were the Duke of Buckingham, the Duke of Suffolk, Sir William Compton and Sir Thomas Boleyn. Anne Boleyn would have been present on that occasion too, for translating, feasting and dancing, although she does not appear to have yet captured the king’s eye. If Henry had been disposed to flirtation with any of the ladies present, the circumstances of the masque and his departure would certainly have been conducive.
In Henry’s absence, Catherine and Mary, Duchess of Suffolk, received Francis in the palace at Ardres ‘with all honour that was according’. On display was a ‘multitude’ of silver and gold plates and vessels, and the finest ingredients had been sourced from local ‘forests, parks, field, salt sea, rivers, moats and ponds’, men being well rewarded for finding great delicacies.13 When the plates were cleared away, masked dancers performed and women acted as mummers.14 A provisional menu survives for the occasion and, although it does not represent the final order of service, it gives a fair idea of the kinds of dishes that were consumed that evening. The first of three courses contained boiled capon, cygnets, carpet of venison, pike, heron and hart, followed by pear pies, custard, cream and fruit. Secondly, kid, capon, sturgeon, peacock, pigeons, quails and baked venison prefaced similar sweet dishes, before a final course introduced storks, pheasants, egrets, chickens, gull, haggis, bream and green apples, followed by oranges, fruit, creamy towers and a cold banquet.15
Estimations in advance for consumption by the king and queen in France had allowed for £420 worth of wheat, £770 of wine, £27 of sweet wine, £560 of beer, £24 for hippocras wine, £624 for 340 pieces of beef, £33 for four hogs, £6 for mutton, £200 for veal, £300 for salt and freshwater fish, £440 for spices, £1,300 for all kinds of poultry, £300 for table linen and cloths, £200 for wax, over £26 for white lights, £300 for pewter vessels, £200 for braising pans, turning spits and other essentials plus £40 for rushes. Twenty cooks were to be hired at a fee of 20d a day, twelve pastillers at the same salary, and twelve brewers and twelve bakers at a daily rate of 8d.16
In comparison, the expenses paid after the event proved a lot more detailed. Among some of the most evocative entries were 20s 10d paid to Thomas Tayllor for cream for the king’s cakes, John Rogers receiving 5s for two hundred pippins (apples), John Busshe being paid 25s for strawberries and junkets and a Mr Dosson receiving 12d for making a lock and key for the spicery door. Antony Carleton carried two loads of the queen’s wardrobe from Guisnes to Calais for a fee of 5s 4d, but these were not all of Catherine’s clothes, as a Jasper Cope was paid 8s for carrying twice the amount from Guisnes to the camp. A further 2s was paid for a casket for wafers and 12s for two pairs of wafer irons; 9s 1d was paid for fourteen sticks of sugar candy, 6s went to a Margery Bennett for fanning and washing hempseed and 14d to Robert Constantin for supplying line and cord to hang the quails’ cages.17
On 23 June, a chapel was erected on the field which had witnessed the tournaments, where Wolsey sang High Mass and issued an indulgence, a pardon for any sins, to all present, including both sets of kings and queens. Part way through, a huge artificial dragon appeared in the sky from the direction of Ardres, four fathoms long and full of fire, which scared many of those assembled. It passed over the chapel ‘as fast as a footman can go’,18 which might give some clue to the method of its operation. While some thought it a comet or a monster, it was part of the festivities, either as some huge firework or balloon, and was recorded for posterity in the corner of the 1545 painting. Following this, Catherine, Claude and Mary, Duchess of Suffolk, dined together before retiring for the night when guns were fired to mark the vigil of St John the Baptist.19
On 24 June, Henry and Francis formally concluded the festivities, with the exchange of gifts: a collar of diamonds for the French king and a bracelet of great price for England. Catherine gave a gift of horses to Claude, who responded with the gift of a cloth of gold litter and mules. It had been a great diplomatic success. As remarked by Martin du Bellai, the spectators believed they had w
itnessed ‘an amity so entire that nothing could ever alter it’.20 However, they were mistaken. Henry and Catherine were already riding back into the arms of Francis’ enemy, the Emperor.
On 10 July, after resting at Calais, Catherine and Henry took a fraction of their entourage to Gravelines, on the French coast, just to the east, over the border into Flanders. There Charles greeted them, with ‘such semblant of love’,21 along with his aunt Margaret of Savoy, whom Catherine had not seen since her childhood. Returning with the English king and queen to Calais, Charles and Margaret were lodged at the Hall of the Staple, in anticipation of the completion of an eighty-foot banqueting house built using the masts of ships. Strong winds prevented it from being completed, though, so the banquets and masques were relocated into the Exchequer and the Staple. An agreement was reached that both powers were ‘to have the same enemies and the same friends’ and neither would enter a treaty without the knowledge and consent of the other.22 On 14 July, Catherine bade farewell to her family before boarding ship and setting sail again for England. It would be the final golden hurrah of her reign.
26
Mother of the Princess, 1520–22
Adieu my daughter Mary, bright of hue,
God make you virtuous, wise and fortunate.1
To Catherine’s great delight, Princess Mary was developing into an intelligent and accomplished child. Returning from the Field of Cloth of Gold, she was told by Margaret Pole of the girl’s beautiful playing on the virginals to impress a group of French visitors at Richmond Palace. The guests were amply entertained with four gallons of hippocras, wafers and fruit, at a cost of 35s 3d, and departed full of praise for the little princess. The queen was closely involved in her daughter’s upbringing, even though she had been given her own household under the careful eye of Catherine’s trusted friend. On her return to England she would have examined the accounts for September 1520, where recent payments had been made to individuals for contributing to Mary’s larder, for bringing quails and rabbits, chickens and a pig, puddings and bread, strawberries and cherries. It also reveals that Mary’s establishment contained six gentlemen and nine valets, six grooms of the chamber and twelve grooms of the household, as well as the ladies charged with her daily care.2
At an early stage of the developing alliance with France, a betrothal had been finalised between Princess Mary and the dauphin Francis, third child and eldest son of Francis I. On 5 October 1518, a formal ceremony had taken place in the queen’s closet at Greenwich, with the Admiral of France standing in as proxy for the seven-month-old bridegroom. Little Mary had offered to kiss him, mistaking him for her future husband. The Field of Cloth of Gold had had cemented this alliance and established a closer connection between the two mothers. Mindful of the future path laid out for her daughter, Catherine wrote to Queen Claude of France some time in 1521, in response to her ‘good and affectionate letters’. She had been ‘very greatly consoled’ to hear the ‘good news, health, estate and prosperity in [which is my] very dear and most beloved good son, and yours, the dauphin’. She expressed the ‘good love, friendship and fraternal intelligence and alliance which is now between the two kings our husbands and their kingdoms, which I hold inseparable and pray God that it may continue’.3
Catherine had worked diligently to promote the French marriage for Mary when it had suited Henry’s international objectives, but privately she had always hoped for an alliance with Spain, or someone connected with her Spanish past who was more sympathetic to the old alliance. She would have been delighted, then, in January 1521, when the match with France was broken in favour of Mary’s betrothal to Emperor Charles. As Henry explained to Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall, then on a diplomatic visit to attend the Diet at Worms, ‘our daughter will be of age before the French king’s, and will be a more advantageous match than the other, by possibility of succession’. In opening Imperial negotiations, Henry was mindful of his daughter’s worth: ‘It is to be considered that she is now our sole heir, and may succeed to the crown; so that we ought rather to receive from the Emperor as large a sum as we should give with her if she were not our heir.’ However, the king was still hopeful that Catherine would conceive again, two years and two months after her last delivery. Henry specified that ‘if we have a male heir hereafter’, he was willing to give Mary as great a dowry as he had to his sister.4
On Valentine’s Day 1521, the five-year-old was given a brooch of gold and jewels bearing her fiancé’s name, which was noted by the Imperial ambassadors and reported back to Charles, along with Mary’s ‘beauty and charms’.5 She also performed a dance, twirling ‘so prettily that no woman in the world could do better … then she played two or three songs on the spinet’ with the ‘grace and skill … and self-command’ that ‘a woman of twenty might wish for’.6 The considerable age gap of sixteen years meant that they would be unable to wed for at least eight years, so Catherine set out equipping her daughter with the skills she would need for her future life as Holy Roman Empress, ensuring that she learned to dance and sing as well as the more scholarly pursuits she had followed in her own childhood. When Mary was seven, Catherine brought the Spanish Humanist scholar Juan Luis Vives to England, to act as tutor to the princess and commissioned him to write The Education of a Christian Woman, a groundbreaking book about female learning. She would also give her approval to his other book, The Institute of a Christian Marriage.
In May 1522, Mary had a chance to meet her fiancé. Charles visited England again with a large retinue, on his way to Spain. He arrived at Dover on the afternoon of 27 May and Henry, who had been awaiting him at Canterbury, went to greet him and conduct him to London via Sittingbourne, Rochester and Gravesend. From there, on 2 June, they took a barge to Greenwich, arriving at around 6 p.m.7 At the entrance to the great hall, Charles was reunited with Catherine and Princess Mary, expressing ‘great joy’ to see the pair of them. He was then lodged in Henry’s apartments, which were so richly hung that the visitors marvelled at them. Jousting, feasting and masques followed, in which a disguised Henry was among those who ‘toke ladies and daunsed’.8 A letter arriving at court on 5 June from the French ambassador recorded England’s deteriorating relationship with France, followed by the declaration that Francis was now Henry’s ‘mortal enemy’.
On 6 June, the party left Greenwich and headed towards London but, just outside the city, they encountered a rich tent made of cloth of gold, where Sir Thomas More made an ‘eloquent oration’ on the love between the two princes ‘and what a comfort it was to their subjects to see them in such amity’.9 A series of nine pageants followed, full of historical, mythical and allegorical symbolism for the alliance, before they arrived at Richmond Palace, then on to Wolsey’s palace of Hampton Court and then to Windsor, where they passed nine days, between 11 and 20 June. Catherine would have been a participant in the hunting and disguising, even perhaps watching Henry and Charles play tennis, but the council chamber doors were closed upon her while the two men discussed business, which would result in the Treaty of Windsor. However, the queen would have been delighted at its outcome, as it committed Charles to marry Mary within eight years and stipulated that, once she had reached her twelfth birthday, in 1528, the Emperor, who would then be twenty-eight, would send a proxy to London for the first formal wedding ceremony. Wolsey sealed the deal with his authority as a papal legate by adding the condition that if either man broke it, they would automatically be excommunicated.
On 21 June, Charles began his journey to Southampton, via Alresford, Winchester and another of Wolsey’s properties, Bishop’s Waltham. He had probably already said farewell to Catherine and Mary but Henry had accompanied him to the palace, where they parted on 3 July. Charles sailed from Southampton four days later, having spent six weeks in England. Catherine had now been in England for twenty years, thirteen of which she had spent as Henry’s wife, and just before Christmas 1521 she had celebrated her thirty-sixth birthday. Her husband was still sharing her bed, in the hope that she would conceive ag
ain but, with each passing month, this appeared less likely. While Catherine could rest assured that all had been done to guarantee her daughter Mary’s future marital happiness, her own was now beginning to look less certain.
PART FOUR
Mary Boleyn
27
Kindness, 1520–22
Mankynd is bed schal be undyr the castle
And ther schal the sowle lye under the bed til
He schal ryse and pley.1
On the night of 4 March 1522, Wolsey led the Imperial ambassadors into the great hall of York Place, the cardinal’s London residence.2 It was Shrove Tuesday and they had enjoyed several days of jousting and feasting, during which Henry’s horse had worn a courser embroidered with the legend ‘she hath wounded my heart’. Now, after dinner, a pageant had been prepared for them – an elaborate castle, painted green and decorated with leaves, where banners hung from three towers, decorated with a thinly veiled declaration of love. The first banner bore the image of three hearts torn in half, the second showed a lady’s hand gripping a man’s heart and the third showed another female hand ‘turning’ a man’s heart. Taking her place to watch the performance begin, what must Catherine have made of these coded messages?