Weir A. Henry VIII: The King and His Court

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that would heal ulcers, swollen ankles, and sore legs; an unguent to cool inflammation and stop itching;

and ointments “to make good digestion” or “to dry excoriations and comfort the member.”

It is not

known whether he made up these mixtures himself in a still room, or if he merely supervised the

process.

That autumn, quacks and charlatans hovered on the fringes of the royal household, making a nuisance

of themselves. One, a Spanish friar, claimed he had the power to order the seas and the weather. The

King, dubious, agreed to see him, but sent him on his way with a flea in his ear after an interview

lasting an hour.

Henry placed his reliance on his prayers and his medical staff. Since the fifteenth century, there had

been a strict division between scholarly physicians, who were often in holy orders and dealt in

diagnosis; barber surgeons, who were much lower down the social scale and carried out surgery, pulled

teeth, and let blood; and apothecaries, who made up prescribed remedies.

The King had six physicians, the best that could be found. The chief of them, Dr. Linacre, who was

keen to further research into medical science, founded the Royal College of Physicians in 1518,

becoming its first president, and later gave funds for two lectureships at Oxford and Cambridge. One of

the first members of the Royal College of Physicians was Dr. John Chamber, another of Henry’s

doctors, who had qualified at Padua and been physician to Henry VII; Holbein painted his portrait in

1542, when he was seventy-two. The King’s doctors all wore long furred gowns in the royal livery

colours.

Henry VIII’s Sergeant Surgeon was Thomas Vicary, who in 1540 became first Master of the newly

formed Guild of Barber Surgeons; he is shown kneeling with his fellows in Hans Holbein’s painting

depicting the King granting the Guild its charter. Vicary, who received a life pension of £26.13s.4d

(£8,000), wrote the first English manual on anatomy.

Sometime before 1525, Henry presented him

with an instrument case enamelled with the royal arms.

The King had five apothecaries, and he placed much faith in their remedies, even when they made him

sick.

At various times, he was prescribed “pills of Rasis” to ward off plague, “fomentations for the

piles,” eyebright for eyestrain, gargling mixtures for sore throats, and rhubarb pills, herbal poultices,

and dragees for various other ailments.

Medicines for the King’s use were kept with bandages and

plasters in small coffers in the medical quarters of the palace service complex.

By December there were fewer cases of the sweat, but Henry “kept no solemn Christmas.”

His

provisions were low, and he had no wish to purchase goods that might be contaminated from markets in

England. So he and his companions rode to Southampton, where they waited apprehensively for

Flemish ships, which had been delayed by rough weather, to offload food supplies.

Wolsey,

meanwhile, had kept Christmas at Richmond, well supplied with oranges, which were thought to be

antidotes to the plague.

For much of 1518, the King remained on his travels. He kept in touch with Wolsey by special

messengers, who took letters and messages from one to the other every seven hours.

In January,

Henry returned briefly to Greenwich. While he was there, Wolsey, who was determined to combat the

influence of the minions—whom he suspected with good reason of working against him—and who had

recently thwarted William Coffin’s plans to marry a rich widow, found some unknown pretext for

having Nicholas Carew sent away from court, replacing him with his own protégé, Richard Pace, a

humanist and talented linguist who had studied at Oxford, Padua, Ferrara, and Bologna before serving

as secretary to both Wolsey and Ruthall. However, the Cardinal was disconcerted to hear from Pace,

almost immediately, that Carew was back “by commandment” of the King—“too soon, after mine

opinion.”

Pace remained as the King’s secretary, while discreetly looking after Wolsey’s interests. Henry was

very impressed with him and appointed him at once to “the third seat on the Privy Council.”

In 1519,

Pace, who was a friend of Erasmus and More, succeeded Colet as Dean of St. Paul’s; three years later

his Latin translation of Plutarch’s Moralia was published in Venice and became a best-seller. However,

he had little leisure for study, for Henry kept him busy with correspondence or sent him on diplomatic

missions abroad. Pace was a delightful man with a wonderful wit and intellect who was totally

dedicated to his work. Henry looked on him as “his very self,” and it was said that, if Wolsey’s hopes of

being elected Pope were fulfilled, Pace would be the one to take his place.

From Greenwich, Henry went to Eltham, Farnham, Reading, and Wallingford. In March 1518, he was

at Abingdon with the Suffolks; here he began to relax a little, since “no man cometh to tell him of the

death of any person, as they were wont daily.”

However, Wolsey advised him to restrict the numbers

attending court at Easter, not only because of the plague, but also because he had heard rumours from

abroad that some unnamed noblemen were plotting against the King. Pace wrote to Wolsey to say that

“His Highness doth give unto Your Grace most hearty thanks for your letters touching great

personages, and doth right well perceive thereby, and most lovingly accept, the special regard that Your

Grace hath to the surety of His Grace’s person.”

Taking the Cardinal’s advice, Henry ordered his privy councillors to stay away. His inherent suspicious

streak was aroused, and it may have been at this time that he wrote the undated letter warning the

Cardinal to “make good watch on the Duke of Suffolk, the Duke of Buckingham, my Lord of

Northumberland, my Lord of Derby, my Lord of Wiltshire and on others which you think suspect.” The

letter was intended for “none other but you or I.”

No details of the supposed conspiracy are known,

nor why the King had cause to doubt the loyalty of Suffolk. Northumberland had recently been in

trouble for keeping too many liveried retainers, and Buckingham’s open resentment of being sidelined

by Wolsey was notorious, but the rest seem to have been blameless. Nevertheless, Wolsey remained

vigilant.

Henry was all for returning to London, but Katherine warned him against it.

So, after the St. George’s

Day celebrations, the depleted court moved to Woodstock Palace, eight miles north of Oxford. This

large stone house decorated with heraldic emblems had been a favourite royal residence since the early

twelfth century. Henry VII had spent a great deal of money modernising Woodstock, while Henry VIII,

who was attracted by the excellent hunting in the vicinity, kept it in repair and used it several times as a

progress house. It could accommodate the whole court, and Henry could escape with his riding

household to the greater privacy of Langley or Ewelme, which were not far off.

Soon, however, there were reports of plague nearby, and the King and Queen hastened to Ewelme,

where they were guests of the Suffolks, and thence to Bisham Priory in Berkshire, before moving south

to Greenwich, Richmond, and Esher.

In August, Henry stayed with Buckingham at Penshurst Place, then went on a hunting progress, lodging

with his riding household in the houses of noblemen. When he was reunited with the Queen at

Woodstock, he was delighted to find her pregnant: “the Queen did meet with His Grace at his chamber

door, and showed unto him for his welcome home her belly something great, declaring openly that she

was quick with child.”

With hopes of a male heir revived, and the plague having at last died out, the

King now deemed it safe for the court to reassemble in its entirety in London.

“The Mother of the King’s Son”

In May, 1518, Wolsey had been appointed papal legate and given unprecedented authority over the

Church in England, even surpassing that of the Archbishop of Canterbury, before whom he now took

precedence. From henceforth, two crosses would be borne before him in procession, and it would be

said that he was “the proudest prelate that ever breathed.”

It now seemed as if the Cardinal’s dream of

becoming pope might become reality, yet he would still need the backing of the King of France or the

Emperor. In order to secure such support, he determined to play an international role. Nothing, it was

said, would please him more than “to be called the arbiter of Christendom.”

In 1518, Wolsey, on behalf of Henry VIII, negotiated the “Treaty of Universal and Perpetual Peace”

between England, France, and the Papacy, which by its terms resolved to persuade Maximilian and

Charles of Castile to agree to maintaining a unilateral peace in Europe. To cement the concord with

France, the Princess Mary was to be betrothed to the Dauphin Francis, Francis I’s heir, and Henry and

Francis undertook to meet the following year. Henry took the credit for arranging this ambitious

alliance, even though Wolsey had done most of the negotiating—to the extent that “the King himself

scarcely knew the state of affairs”

— and marked “his” achievement with a series of lavish celebrations

in London, which cost him £9,600 (£2,880,000).

A French embassy, headed by Guillaume Gouffier de Bonnivet, Admiral of France, and comprising

eighty fashionably dressed noblemen and their entourages, arrived in England on 25 September. When

the King received them in audience, the two-year-old Princess Mary was brought in for their

inspection. Catching sight of Dionysio Memmo, she cried, “Priest! Priest!” in an attempt to make him

play for her. The King caught her up in his arms while Memmo obliged, much to her delight.

On 3 October, St. Paul’s Cathedral was filled with a vast concourse of royalty, nobles, and dignitaries

as the King and the ambassadors went up to the high altar, signed the Treaty of London, and swore to

uphold its articles. Wolsey celebrated high mass, the solemnity being “too magnificent for description”

and Richard Pace delivered “a good and sufficiently long oration” in Latin, praising his master, who

was seated before him in a throne upholstered in cloth of gold.

Afterwards, the King hosted a dinner for the representatives of his new allies in the Bishop’s Palace,

and in the evening, at York Place, Wolsey gave “a sumptuous supper, the like of which was never

given, either by Cleopatra or Caligula.”

When the feasting was over, Henry and his sister Mary led out

a troupe of twenty-four masked dancers, among them Suffolk, Neville, Bryan, Carew, Guildford, Henry

Norris—a popular newcomer— and the King’s mistress Elizabeth Blount:

this was the last time she is

recorded as appearing in public with Henry, although they were almost certainly having sexual

relations at this time. After the masque, large bowls brimming with gold coins and dice were brought to

the tables so that the company could settle down to some serious gambling. “Then dancing continued

till midnight.”

Two days later, the Princess Mary was formally betrothed to the Dauphin in the Queen’s great chamber

at Greenwich, in the presence of the King and Queen, Cardinal Wolsey, the Pope’s representative

Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio, the ambassadors, and the lords and ladies of the court, who were all,

reported Giustinian, “in such rich array that I never saw the like either here or elsewhere.”

Mary

herself wore a gown of cloth of gold with a black bejewelled hood. Admiral Bonnivet stood proxy for

the future bridegroom, while Wolsey lifted up Mary and placed on her tiny finger a great diamond ring

that was much too large for her. The little girl asked Bonnivet, “Are you the Dauphin of France? If you

are, I want to kiss you!”—which lightened the solemnity of the occasion. The two Cardinals then

blessed her and celebrated mass “with every possible ceremony.”

At the banquet which followed, the

King was served by three dukes—Norfolk, Suffolk, and Buckingham (who privately deplored this

alliance with France)—and the Marquess of Dorset.

The Queen, who was heavily pregnant, retired

early, but the festivities continued until 2 A.M.

On 7 October, there was a celebratory joust at Greenwich followed by a grandiose banquet and a

pageant, in honour of the peace and the betrothal, which featured a lady, a dolphin, and the winged

horse Pegasus who was to convey the glad tidings to Christendom. That evening, the King wore a long

robe of stiff gold brocade lined with ermine; when Admiral Bonnivet admired it, Henry

magnanimously threw it off and told him to keep it.

A day or so later, the King took the visiting envoys hunting at Richmond, after which they rode to

Hampton Court, where Wolsey entertained them at a banquet of breathtaking extravagance. Neither

expense nor labour was spared to ensure that the French would “make a glorious report in their country,

to the King’s honour and that of this realm.”

The Cardinal’s cooks had been at work “day and night”

to prepare the huge number of dishes that were served in surroundings of awesome splendour, and

luxurious accommodation was provided for the guests. The French, it was reported, were overcome,

“rapt into a heavenly paradise.”

When they went home, laden with gifts, they left at Henry’s court

four noble hostages as a pledge for their master’s good intentions.

In Bonnivet’s suite there had been several “fresh young gallants,”

court favourites upon whom

Francis I had recently bestowed the title Gentilhommes de la Chambre—Gentlemen of the Chamber.

During the festivities, they had been paired with the minions favoured by Henry VIII, who served in

the same capacity in the Privy Chamber but had as yet no formal title. Henry, who wished to model his

household according to “the same order and state that the French King’s court is at,”

now hastened to

rectify that, and in September 1518 instituted the formal post of Gentleman of the Privy Chamber.

bestowed it upon the influential young men who served him there, “who enjoyed very great authority in

the kingdom” and were “the very soul of the King.”

Wolsey, who controlled the court’s other power

centre, the Privy Council, could not but be dismayed at the promotion of his rivals, who wielded

influence in a sphere to which his jurisdiction did not extend and who enjoyed the special protection of

the King. He feared “they might oust him from the government,”

and at the first opportunity that

presented itself he would bring them down.

Henry’s hopes of a son ended once more in disappointment. In November 1518, Queen Katherine bore

a daughter, who died before she could be christened. Two months later there was another death, that of

Maximilian, which meant that a new Holy Roman Emperor would have to be elected. Henry VIII was

one of the candidates, and he dispatched Richard Pace to Germany to campaign on his behalf.

In February 1519, the King spent a week as the guest of Sir Nicholas Carew at the latter’s manor of

Beddington Park, near Croydon in Surrey, a visit for which the local community had been preparing for

a year. Carew’s house had an imposing great hall with a splendid hammerbeam roof, on which the one

at Hampton Court was later said to have been modelled.

Around this time, another minion, Sir William Compton, who for several years had been committing

adultery with Buckingham’s sister, Lady Hastings, received the King’s permission to propose marriage

to the Countess of Salisbury. That lady, however, turned him down, and a year or so later he was

prosecuted in an ecclesiastical court for living openly in sin with a married woman.

The King kept St. George’s Day, 1519, at Windsor, “with great solemnity.” Then he went to Richmond,

“and so to Greenwich, and there stayed all of May.”

While he was there, Wolsey seized his opportunity to purge the Privy Chamber of his rivals. He told the

Privy Council that “young minions” such as Sir Nicholas Carew, Francis Bryan, Sir Edward Neville,

Sir John Pechy, Sir Henry Guildford, and Sir Edward Poyntz were behaving in a manner that was not

commensurate with the dignity and honour of the King. They gave him “evil counsel,” encouraged him

to gamble away large sums, were “too homely with him, and played such light touches with him that

they forgot themselves. Which things, although the King, because of his gentle nature, suffered them,

[he] neither rebuked nor reproved them.”

But that was not all. Recently, during a diplomatic mission

to Paris, Neville, and Bryan had publicly disgraced themselves, accompanying King Francis as he rode

incognito through the streets “throwing eggs, stones and other foolish trifles at the people.” Back home,

“they were all French in eating, drinking and apparel, and in French vices and brags”; they sneeringly

compared the English court with the French, poked fun at older courtiers and household officers, and

generally comported themselves in a reprehensible manner.

Norfolk, Worcester, and Boleyn spoke for the rest of the councillors when they demanded that the King

must put a stop to such behaviour, since it reflected badly upon him; Henry must have seen the sense in

this, as he agreed without equivocation to do what they asked. He may have been concerned himself

about the overfamiliarity that he had himself permitted and even encouraged. Worcester, as Lord

Chamberlain, summoned the worst offenders, dismissed them from their posts, and ordered them to

leave court, “laying nothing particular to their charge.” Three, including Carew and Neville, were sent

to Calais to help with its defences; the rest were told to attend to their official duties in their own

counties. “Which dismissal from court sorely grieved the hearts of these young men,” but “their fall

was little mourned among wise men.”

In their place, Wolsey drafted into the Privy Chamber Sir William Kingston, Sir Richard Wingfield, Sir

Richard Jerningham, and Sir Richard Weston, “four sad [serious] and ancient knights”

who were liked

by the King and could be relied upon to do the Cardinal’s bidding. One young man who was allowed to

remain was Henry Norris, once a Page of the Chamber, now—thanks to Henry’s favour—a Gentleman

Waiter. Norris, whose elder brother John was an Usher of the Chamber,

was a trustworthy, thoughtful,

and discreet person who would become one of the King’s closest intimates.

Wolsey, Norfolk, and the other councillors were gratified to hear that, freed from the influence of his

favourites, Henry was resolved to lead a new, more mature, mode of life,

paying less attention to

revelry and pastimes than to state business.

Buckingham might have made common cause with the minions against Wolsey but failed to take the

initiative. The Howards were glad to see the back of the favourites, yet they would have been even

more gratified to see the Cardinal cast down from his high place. Aristocratic resentment against

Wolsey still festered. Norfolk was the patron of the King’s former tutor, John Skelton, who around this

time wrote some particularly scurrilous verses attacking Wolsey, accusing him of being ambitious,

shameless, and vicious, and sneering at his “greasy genealogy.” In one poem, entitled “Colin Clout,” all

the evils in England are imputed to corrupt clergy. Another read:

Why come ye not to court?

To the King’s court, or to Hampton Court?

The King’s court should have the precedence,

But Hampton Court hath the pre-eminence.

Wolsey’s wrath was such that he ordered Skelton’s arrest, but the poet preempted him by seeking

sanctuary at Westminster Abbey.

Skelton had never been afraid to speak his mind. Around 1516–1519 he wrote the morality play

Magnificence, his only dramatic work to survive. In it, a king is heavily censured for immoderate

indulgence in pleasure, and advised to seek a compromise between showy display and parsimony. But

he is seen to fail because he dismisses his wise minister, Measure, and gives too much power to an

extravagant one called Liberty. There was a none-too-subtle message here for Skelton’s former pupil.

Magnificence set the tone for the court drama of the 1520s, in which satire became a popular element.

Wolsey himself commissioned such plays, and was also the butt of several others, although it is

unlikely that these were performed at court while he was in power. Many plays were written on a

classical theme, and in 1519 we have the first record of a Latin play—“a goodly comedy of Plautus”—

being acted before the King.

Soon afterwards, Wolsey staged a performance of Plautus’s Menaechmi

at York Place.

In 1519, the King commissioned Pietro Torrigiano to build him a tomb at Windsor

that would suitably

reflect the magnificence of his person and achievements. It was to be an enormous monument of white

marble and black jasper, a quarter larger than Henry VII’s tomb and crowned with a triumphal arch

bearing a statue of the King on horseback and surrounded by 142 life-size gilt bronze figures.

Torrigiano undertook to complete the work within four years for the sum of £2,000 (£600,000).

It was in 1519 also that Henry invited the celebrated German mathematician and astronomer Nicolaus

Kratzer to enter his service. Kratzer was a brilliant man who was “brimful of wit”

and on good terms

with both Erasmus and Albrecht Dürer. More called him “a great friend of mine,” and when Kratzer

came to England in 1516 to lecture at Oxford, made him a tutor to his children. Kratzer soon came to

the notice of Henry VIII, who appointed him his official Astronomer and Horologer—in which latter

capacity he designed clocks and sundials. Kratzer remained in Henry’s service for the rest of the reign,

although he never quite mastered English, telling the King that thirty years was not sufficient time in

which to learn it.

Henry had awaited with impatience the outcome of the imperial election, which took place on 28 June

1519. He was being lavishly entertained once more by Buckingham at Penshurst Place when Richard

Pace arrived with the news that Charles of Castile had been elected as the Emperor Charles V. Henry,

who was playing tennis with the French hostages, received Pace “lovingly” and took his

disappointment well. When Pace told him how much money Charles had spent bribing the electors, the

King said he was “right glad that he had obtained not the same.” He insisted that Pace take supper with

him, and, Pace recorded, “spake of me many better words than I can deserve.”

Henry’s preoccupation with the imperial election had caused his meeting with Francis I to be postponed

until the following year. In earnest of their good intentions, both monarchs agreed not to shave until

they met, and Henry soon had “a beard which looks like gold.” Queen Katherine, however, so disliked

it that she “daily made him great instance and desired him to put it off for her sake.”

Henry

capitulated, and a diplomatic incident was neatly averted by Francis’s mother, Louise of Savoy, who

declared that the love the Kings bore each other was “not in the beards but in the hearts.”

Katherine clearly still had some influence over Henry, but the six-year age gap was becoming more

obvious. Francis I, who had heard reports from ambassadors, referred to Katherine in 1519 as “old and

deformed,”

while the King, according to Giustinian, was still “much handsomer than any other

sovereign in Christendom, very fair, and his whole frame admirably proportioned. Nature could not

have done more for him.”

Nature had in fact done more for Henry than Katherine had been able to do. Around June 1519,

Elizabeth Blount bore him a son, “a goodly man child of beauty like to the father and mother.”

The

infant was given the name Henry Fitzroy. The birth took place at a house known as Jericho at

Blackmore, near Chipping Ongar, in Essex. The house had been acquired by the King from the

Augustinian Priory of St. Laurence, which had been established at Blackmore about 1160; around

1527, the King granted the priory to Wolsey.

Jericho was a moated house screened by high brick

walls; the moat was connected to the River Can, which was known locally as the River Jordan, hence

the house’s name. Jericho had already acquired a reputation as being one of the King’s secret houses of

pleasure, where he went for trysts with Elizabeth, or to visit her during her pregnancy, and where “the

King’s Highness have his privy chamber and inward lodgings reserved secret, at the pleasure of His

Grace, without repair of any great multitude.”

While he was there, his courtiers euphemistically

referred to him having gone to Jericho.

Once his son was born, however, Henry, who had perhaps felt that his lack of a male heir was a slur

upon his manhood, abandoned all discretion and openly acknowledged him. Wolsey was a godfather at

his christening, and was afterwards made responsible for his care. During his earliest years, the child

seems to have remained with his mother.

Elizabeth Blount, who was from henceforth referred to as “the mother of the King’s son,” did not return

to court, nor does she appear to have resumed her affair with the King. Instead, Wolsey arranged for her

to be speedily married off to one of his wards, a well-to-do young gentleman called Gilbert Tailboys,

whose father, Lord Kyme, “an lunatic,”

was in the custody of the Duke of Norfolk. His estates were

being held in trust for his son by the Crown, but lands in Lincolnshire and Somerset were released to

Gilbert on his marriage, while Parliament assigned Elizabeth a handsome dowry. The Cardinal’s

enemies made political capital out of this, accusing him of “encouraging our young gentlemen to

become concubines by the well-marrying of Bessie Blount.”

Tailboys was knighted in 1525 and became the Member of Parliament for Lincoln, as well as its

sheriff;

the marriage produced three children before his death in 1530. Four years later his widow

turned down a marriage proposal from Lord Leonard Grey and wed another royal ward, Edward

Fiennes de Clinton, ninth Baron Clinton,

who was about fourteen years her junior. She bore him three

daughters and died in 1540.

Wolsey’s triumph over the minions was brief. By the autumn of 1519, Henry had overriden his protests

and invited most of the dismissed gentlemen to return to the Privy Chamber, where they served side by

side with the Cardinal’s protégés. Several of them were present when the King and Queen hosted two

banquets at Beaulieu for the French hostages on 3 and 4 September. Thereafter, the favourites remained

firmly entrenched at court.

On 4 February 1520,

the King attended the wedding of Sir Thomas Boleyn’s daughter Mary and

William Carey, aged twenty-four, who was an up-and-coming Gentleman of the Privy Chamber and—

through his grandmother, Eleanor Beaufort—Henry’s distant cousin. Carey came from an established

Devonshire family; his portrait, recently attributed to Hans Holbein, is in a private collection in Ireland.

A portrait of a lady called Mary Boleyn, said erroneously to be by Holbein, is at Hever Castle, but

probably dates from the seventeenth or eighteenth century.

The newly married couple, whose country

seat was Rochford Hall in Essex,

were given a lodging at court near to that of the King and were

shown every favour. Carey was well thought of by Henry, and there was every indication that he would

go far.

The reason for all this was not far to seek. At some stage, perhaps even before her marriage, although

the timing is not clear, Mary Boleyn became the King’s mistress, supplanting Elizabeth Blount in his

affections. Even before then, her reputation was notorious. She had gone to France with Mary Tudor in

1514,

and stayed on at the French court, in the service of Queen Claude, after Mary Tudor left in

1515. “Rarely did any maid or wife leave that court chaste,” observed the Sieur de Brantôme,

and

Mary was certainly free with her favours: among her lovers was Francis I, who, referring to the number

of times he had ridden her, called her “my English mare”;

even twenty years later he was describing

her as “a great whore, the most infamous of all.”

Mary returned to England before 1520. Given her

past, she was lucky to secure such a husband as William Carey, but the King’s interest in her may have

been a deciding factor.

Henry conducted this affair with even more discretion than he had the last, so much so that there is

hardly any contemporary evidence for it. We only know about it because, in 1528, Henry asked the

Pope to give a dispensation for him to marry Anne Boleyn even though he had placed himself within

the forbidden degrees of affinity with her by having sexual intercourse with her sister.

In 1523, the King owned a ship named the Mary Boleyn, but he did not name it after his mistress; in

fact, he had purchased it from her father, along with another vessel called the Anne Boleyn.

The

complaisant Sir Thomas Boleyn’s elevation to the peerage in 1525 may have owed something to his

daughter’s position, which he seems not to have scrupled to exploit, as might the substantial landed

property granted to her husband in 1524 and 1526,

and his appointment as Keeper of Greenwich

Palace in 1526.

In 1524, Mary bore a daughter, Katherine, and on 4 March 1526, a son, Henry, who is said to have

resembled the King in looks; in 1535, John Hale, Vicar of Isleworth, stated that a nun of nearby Syon

Abbey had pointed out to him “young Master Carey” and told him that the boy was the King’s bastard

son.

Henry, however, who had already acknowledged one son and was sensitive about his lack of

heirs, would surely have willingly admitted paternity of Henry Carey had the boy been his.

The affair was probably over before Mary bore her son in 1526, by which time Henry had fallen

fatefully in love with her sister.

“The Eighth Wonder of the World”

The time was now approaching for Henry’s summit meeting with Francis I, for which Wolsey, at the

request of both monarchs, was making all the arrangements. The Cardinal, with the assistance of

Admiral Sir William Fitzwilliam, the Earl of Worcester as Lord Chamberlain, and the Bishop of

Durham as Lord Privy Seal, was overseeing every detail involved in transporting five thousand people

across the English Channel. Calais, England’s last remaining possession in France, was used as a

storehouse and centre of operations. In Paris, England’s ambassador, Thomas Boleyn, was entrusted

with the diplomatic negotiations.

It was agreed that the meeting would take place six miles from Calais in a place called the Val d’Or

(Golden Vale) in the open countryside between the English-held town of Guisnes, where Henry would

be based, and the French town of Ardres, where Francis would stay. Guisnes Castle was, however,

deemed too small for the requisite display of magnificence; therefore it was decided that a temporary

palace connected by a private gallery to the castle should be erected in the meeting place itself. An

army of six thousand labourers and craftsmen was immediately set to work to get the palace and other

facilities ready in time.

Built in less than three months, the “palace of illusions” was one of the lost treasures of Henry’s reign;

an Italian observer thought that even Leonardo da Vinci could not have improved upon it.

Designed on

a 328-foot-square quadrangular plan with a gatehouse and battlements, it was built of timber on stone

and brick foundations, and was covered with canvas painted to look like brickwork or masonry. The

most impressive room was a dining hall with a ceiling of green silk studded with gold roses and a floor

covering of patterned taffeta. There was a King’s Side, a Queen’s Side, a suite for Wolsey, and one for

Mary Tudor, who was to play a prominent role as Queen Dowager of France; all had spacious

chambers decorated with gilt cornices and furnished with gorgeous tapestries, hangings of cloth of gold

(silver or green and white), Turkey carpets, chairs and beds of estate, and buffets laden with plate. The

windows were glazed with diamond-shaped panes crafted by Galyon Hone, and the chimneys were of

stone. There was an exquisite chapel, “painted blue and gold”

and hung with cloth of gold and green

velvet; on the altar was a great gold crucifix, along with ten candlesticks and large gold statues of the

Twelve Apostles, and many holy relics. Inside and out, the palace was skilfully decorated with Tudor

roses, antique work, and heraldic devices painted by artists such as the King’s Serjeant-Painter John

Browne, More’s brother-in-law; John Rastell; Clement Armstrong, “a famous designer of pageants”;

and Vincenzo Volpe. The pitched canvas roof was painted to look like slates, and many of the ceilings

were gilded. The Scots poet and monk Alexander Barclay, author of the satirical The Ship of Fools, was

commissioned to write mottoes and verses to be added to the decorative scheme. The palace had offices

for the White Sticks, as well as its own service complex.

The gateway was surmounted by a scallop-shell pediment, the royal arms, two large Tudor roses, and a

golden statue of Cupid. On the lawn in front of the palace, beside a gilded pillar topped with a statue of

the god of wine, Bacchus, there was a fountain “of ancient Roman work” from which flowed white

wine, Malmsey wine, and claret, which would be free to all comers, day and night.

Carved in the

stonework was the invitation in archaic French, “Faicte bonne chere quy vouldra,” and chained to the

fountain were silver drinking cups.

The most important courtiers were to be accommodated in Guisnes Castle; the rest were supposed to

occupy 2,800 gaily coloured tents set up at nearby Balinghem. But there were not enough billets for

everyone: some ladies and gentlemen paid local famers to put them up, while others had no choice but

to “lie in hay and straw.”

In the Val d’Or, Richard Gibson, Master of the King’s Halls, Tents, and Pavilions, erected magnificent

marquees for entertainments and banquets; three, for which the designs survive in the British Museum,

were coloured green and white, blue and gold, and red and gold, and all were adorned with the King’s

badges, beasts and mottoes.

Henry himself had his own dining tent, of cloth of gold, which housed his

privy kitchen. The whole camp was laid out according to the King’s wishes.

Enormous quantities of livestock and foodstuffs were purchased, including 2,200 sheep, 1,300

chickens, 800 calves, 340 “beeves,” 26 dozen heron, 13 swans, 17 bucks, 9,000 plaice, 7,000 whiting,

700 conger eels, 4 bushels of mustard, mountains of sugar for the subtleties that were to be made to

impress the French, and gallons of cream for the King’s cakes.

The food bill alone came to £8,839

(£2,651,700), of which £440 (£132,000) was spent on spices, while wine and beer cost £7409

(£2,222,700).

A vast round brick bread oven was set up in the Val d’Or, next to cooking tents housing

huge cauldrons, with serving tables outside. Some subsidiary kitchens, such as the Wafery and Pastry,

were established in nearby houses. Extra kitchen staff were hired—among them twelve pastry cooks,

twelve brewers, and twelve bakers. Numerous pots, pans, and spits were supplied by London cooks at a

cost of £377 (£113,100).

As well as provisions, many other items had to be shipped abroad, including tapestries, furnishings, and

everything needful for tournaments: fifteen hundred spears from the Tower arsenal, one thousand

Milanese swords, and a great number of high-strung horses. The armourers’ steel mill at Greenwich

was moved in its entirety to Guisnes, where it was set up alongside four forges for the repair of armour

and weapons.

The French, jealously observing the English preparations from Ardres, had no wish to be outdone, but

were not prepared to outlay as much money as their rivals. There was no prefabricated palace for the

King of France; instead, the French court would be housed near Ardres in a little town of four hundred

tents of cloth of gold and silver—the “Camp du drap d’or.”

The Cardinal made it his job to resolve the numerous disputes that arose and laid down the rules

governing matters of precedence and etiquette. It was agreed that, in order to preserve the honour of

both nations, neither King would take part in any joust or combat against the other. The terrain itself

had been flattened so as not to give either side any advantage.

Queen Katherine, naturally, was unhappy when Henry regrew his beard in Francis’s honour, but more

so about this new alliance with France, Spain’s traditional enemy. She had worked behind the scenes

for a rapprochement with her nephew, the new Emperor Charles V,

who had agreed to visit England

on his way home to Spain after his coronation in Aachen, before Henry left for France.

The King was to take with him to Guisnes a large retinue of 3,997 persons—including 114 peers and

princes of the Church, among them Wolsey, Warham, Buckingham, Suffolk, and Dorset, as well as his

Secretary, Richard Pace; 12 chaplains; the staff of the Chapel Royal, among them Robert Fairfax and

William Cornish; all his Kings of Arms, heralds, and pursuivants; 200 guards, 70 Grooms of the

Chamber; and 266 household officers, each with his own servants. Queen Katherine’s retinue of 1,175

was headed by the Earl of Derby and included the Bishop of Rochester, the Duchess of Buckingham, 6

countesses, 12 baronesses, and all their servants. Mary Boleyn was one of the Queen’s female

attendants.

Wolsey had his own train of 50 gentlemen, 12 chaplains, and 237 servants, more than were

allowed Buckingham or Warham. In total, 5,172 persons and 2,865 horses were to go to France.

In May 1520, leaving Norfolk and Bishop Foxe (who had briefly come out of retirement) in charge of

the government of England, and the Princess Mary keeping royal state at Richmond, where she

entertained some Venetian envoys by playing on the virginals, the King and his vast entourage left

Greenwich and proceeded through Kent towards Dover, where they would embark for France. They

stayed first at Warham’s palaces at Charing and Otford, then, on 22 May, at Leeds Castle, before

arriving in Canterbury three days later in readiness for the visit of the Emperor. Henry lodged in

Archbishop Warham’s palace, which had been specially refurbished for the occasion.

On 26 May, the Emperor’s ships docked at Dover to a thunderous salute from the English fleet waiting

in the Straits of Dover. Charles walked ashore beneath a canopy of cloth of gold emblazoned with his

badge, the black eagle, and was met by Wolsey, who conducted him to Dover Castle for the night.

Informed of his arrival, King Henry arrived in haste the next morning, which was Whitsunday, and

greeted Charles as he came downstairs.

Then Henry escorted his nephew to Canterbury, where the

citizens, who hated the French, gave him a warm welcome.

After the pomp and ceremony of high mass in Canterbury Cathedral, the King and the Emperor knelt in

prayer at the shrine of Thomas Becket and were shown the saint’s hair shirt, his broken skull, the sword

that had pierced it, and other holy relics, which they devoutly kissed. Afterwards, on the marble

staircase of the palace, the Emperor was presented to the Queen, who was robed in ermine-lined cloth

of gold with ropes of beautiful pearls around her neck, and who wept with joy at the sight of her

nephew.

Dinner was a private affair, attended only by the King, the Queen, the Emperor, and Mary

Tudor, Duchess of Suffolk. The Duke of Suffolk had the honour of presenting the basin, Buckingham

that of removing it. Later that day, Germaine of Foix, Dowager Queen of Aragon, King Ferdinand’s

beautiful young widow, arrived in Canterbury with a train of sixty ladies. At a banquet that evening, the

three queens sat with the King and the Emperor at the high table, and there was much merriment. The