Weir A. Henry VIII: The King and His Court

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call himself “the White Rose,” was an exile in France and beyond Henry’s reach.

Suffolk’s former ducal seat, Ewelme Manor in Oxfordshire, had been in royal hands since 1504. It had

been built in the 1430s by William de la Pole, the first Duke, and by 1518 Henry had converted it into a

palace with a King’s Side and a Queen’s Side.

The King visited occasionally, but between 1525 and

1535 it was leased to Charles Brandon.

Henry was not unnecessarily cruel to his Yorkist relatives, and, provided they remained loyal, was often

kind and generous to them. His cousin, Margaret of Clarence, widow of Sir Richard Pole, was “a lady

of virtue and honour”

and an intimate of the Queen. In 1513, Henry created her Countess of Salisbury,

in right of her mother, whose forbears had been earls of Salisbury, and restored her ancestral lands. The

new Countess’s country seat was Warblington Castle, Hampshire,

where she kept the state of a

mediaeval magnate and lived a life based on piety, study, and tradition.

Margaret Pole’s eldest son, Henry, was at the same time raised to the peerage as Lord Montague. Her

daughter Ursula was married to Henry, Lord Stafford, Buckingham’s heir. It was the Countess’s desire

to dedicate her youngest son, the intellectual Reginald Pole, now aged 13, to the Church, and again the

King was bountiful, helping to finance Reginald’s education at the Charterhouse at Sheen and the

Universities of Oxford and Padua. Henry also granted him ecclesiastical benefices so that he could live

in a state appropriate to his rank.

Having put his house in order, Henry left Greenwich for Dover, accompanied by the Queen, who was

to remain as Regent, and an entourage that included the Duke of Buckingham, twenty other peers,

Bishop Foxe, Wolsey, heralds, musicians, trumpeters, Robert Fairfax and the choir of the Chapel Royal,

six hundred archers of the Yeomen of the Guard, all in green and white liveries, and three hundred

Household servants. He also took with him his bed of estate, several suits of armour, and a number of

brightly coloured tents and pavilions. On 30 June, the King and his great army sailed for France.

The Queen returned to Greenwich with a very depleted household. Archbishop Warham was there to

offer wise advice, and she was kept “horribly busy with making standards, banners and badges,” as she

wrote to Wolsey, and with her viceregal duties. In the midst of all this, she did not forget to ensure that

her husband was supplied with clean body linen.

On 24 July, Henry and his ally, the Emperor Maximilian I, laid siege to the town of Thérouanne. On 16

August the French were routed at the Battle of the Spurs—so called because of the haste with which

they retreated—and Thérouanne fell.

Charles Brandon served as Marshal of the King’s Army; as second in command, he led the vanguard

during the fighting, acquitting himself bravely and winning golden opinions. Henry Guildford proved

his worth as the King’s Standard Bearer. The only major casualty of the war was Sir Edward Howard,

who, having sworn to avenge the death of his friend Knyvet, was taken prisoner and stabbed to death

during an attack on the French fleet off Brest, to the great grief of the King and Brandon. William

Fitzwilliam, who distinguished himself as a naval commander, was wounded in that same battle. In

1514, Henry rewarded him by making him Vice Admiral of England.

After his victory at Thérouanne, the King and his courtiers spent three days as the guests of

Maximilian’s daughter, Margaret of Savoy, Regent of the Netherlands, at Lille. The Burgundian

nobility hastened to be presented to Henry, and were delighted to find him “merry, handsome, well-

spoken, popular and intelligent.”

Although he was supposed to be taking his ease, he astonished

everyone present with his energy. He jousted before the Archduchess and her young nephew, Prince

Charles of Castile, in a tiltyard in which barriers of rough planks had been hastily erected. The King ran

many courses against Brandon and the Emperor’s champion, Guillaume de Ghislain, and broke a great

number of lances, to thunderous acclaim. The Milanese ambassador was amazed at his stamina: “He

was fresher after this exertion than before. I do not know how he can stand it.”

The next day, a

tournament was held indoors in a huge room with a black marble floor; the horses wore felt shoes to

prevent them from marking it.

The King also excelled himself at archery. In the evenings, he played on a variety of musical

instruments for the Archduchess; then, as the night wore on, he “danced magnificently in the French

style” with Margaret and her ladies, and at one point got so hot that he was obliged to throw off his

doublet and shoes. The next morning he was up early, “wonderfully merry.”

Some embarrassment was caused by Henry’s attempts to arrange a marriage between the widowed

Archduchess and Charles Brandon. Brandon certainly entertained hopes in that direction, despite being

contracted to Elizabeth Grey, and at one banquet playfully exchanged rings with Margaret. She treated

the gesture as a joke, even though the King heartily recommended Brandon as a husband. When he

heard, Maximilian was not pleased, and Margaret had to reassure him that the rumours about her so-

called marriage plans were “base lies.” Nevertheless, the gossip persisted, and Henry was later obliged

to write to Margaret to apologise for any annoyance it had caused, and order his envoys to put a stop to

it.

Henry himself indulged in a flirtation with a Flemish lady, Étienne de la Baume, whom he met at Lille.

According to a letter she wrote to him later, they laughed and joked together, he calling her his page,

which has led to speculation that she dressed up as such so as to facilitate trysts with him. He certainly

told her “many pretty things about marriage and other things,” and promised to give her 10,000 crowns

when she found a husband. Soon afterwards, Étienne’s father did arrange a marriage for her, and she

wrote to claim her dowry. There is no record of Henry paying it.

In 1513, a Venetian envoy described

how, “for love of a lady,” the King “clad himself and his court in mourning.”

Since there exists no

reference to any other mistress in 1513, this statement perhaps relates to Henry staging some elaborate

charade, either during his flirtation with Étienne, or on learning that she was to marry.

Taking advantage of the King’s absence, James IV of Scotland, Louis’s ally, crossed the northern

border and invaded England from the north, but was defeated and killed, along with the flower of the

Scots nobility, by an army led by the septuagenarian Earl of Surrey at Flodden Moor on 9 September

1513. The Queen displayed the martial spirit of her mother Isabella the Catholic when she rallied the

English troops with a rousing speech at Buckingham before they proceeded north. After the battle,

when the body of James IV was brought south, Katherine was all for sending it to Henry in France as a

trophy, but “our Englishmen’s hearts would not suffer it,” she told him, so she dispatched to him a

piece of James’s bloodstained coat instead.

Flodden was a far more significant victory than anything Henry would achieve in France, where he was

still playing the conquering hero. On 21 September, he took the town of Tournai, after which he

knighted William Compton, Edward Neville, William Fitzwilliam, and two hundred other men who had

distinguished themselves during the campaign. He then spent three weeks celebrating his victories with

jousts and revels.

Meanwhile, Queen Katherine, who was pregnant again, had gone to Our Lady of Walsingham, as she

had promised the King she would do, to give thanks for the victory at Flodden and to pray for a son.

But the baby was born prematurely and did not survive.

The campaigning season came to an end in the autumn, and on 22 October, the King returned to

England in triumph, although in fact he had achieved very little. In return for a financial outlay of

nearly £1 million (£300 million) he had taken two minor towns of little significance, which some of his

ungrateful subjects referred to as “graceless dogholes.” Furthermore, he need not have gone to war at

all, since Louis XII had made peace with the new Pope, Leo X, before Henry even set out.

Nevertheless, Henry, who had his own political agenda, felt he had acquitted himself well, and he

hoped that, with the help of his allies, Ferdinand and Maximilian, he would conquer France the

following year.

The King made haste to Richmond, where Katherine awaited him; he could not wait to lay at her feet

the keys of the cities he had taken.

Later he commissioned artists, whose names are unknown, to paint

large-scale pictures of his triumphs in France. These are still in the Royal Collection. Executed around

1540–1545, they show Henry’s meeting with Maximilian (with the sieges of Thérouanne and Tournai

in the background) and the Battle of the Spurs.

As was customary in late mediaeval warfare, noble hostages were taken to ensure that their government

kept faith with the terms of the truce. As the rules of chivalry decreed, they were treated as honoured

guests until the time came for them to be allowed to return home. Henry’s chief prisoner was the Duc

de Longueville, who was lodged comfortably in the Tower of London with six servants. The King

became very friendly with him, and often invited him to court. Henry was a remarkably generous

captor, even offering to pay half the Duc’s ransom himself.

Soon after their arrival in England, Queen Katherine entertained the King and his hostages at Havering,

Essex. There was a feast, a masque, and dancing, with Henry distributing gifts “where he liked.”

The King’s palace at Havering-atte-Bower had originally been built by Edward the Confessor in the

eleventh century and had remained a favourite residence of English royalty ever since. The bower that

gave it its name had been a garden created by King Edward on a nearby hill affording breathtaking

views of the Thames Valley. Although he undertook no building works here, Henry VIII liked to visit

because the palace, a great, rambling, old-fashioned building, was surrounded by an extensive deer

park. A mile away, within the park, was a smaller, moated house called Pyrgo, which since the time of

Eleanor of Castile (d. 1290) had been part of the jointure of the queens of England; Katherine of

Aragon, Anne Boleyn, and Jane Seymour held it in turn, but it was not assigned to any of Henry’s later

wives. It was, however, to the palace that Katherine invited the French hostages.

During their sojourn in France and the Low Countries, Henry VIII and his courtiers experienced at first

hand the sophisticated culture of the Franco-Flemish Renaissance and were profoundly impressed. The

cessation of hostilities therefore witnessed the beginning of a craze at the English court for all things

French, which would last for most of the rest of the reign. Henry himself set the trend, slavishly

imitating the French King and his court in style, etiquette, fashion, food, art, architecture, tournaments,

and entertainment. The French language, which had recently been banned at the English court, again

became a modish medium of communication for the upper classes. After seventy years, the long

cultural dominance of Burgundy was at last drawing to an end.

“Obstinate Men Who Govern Everything”

At the end of the year, “the King kept a solemn Christmas at Greenwich to cheer his nobles.”

The

Wardrobe issued twelve yards of yellow sarcanet to Sir Henry Guildford and Nicholas Carew, a young

gentleman who was of the King’s “own bringing up,” for a “mummery” in which Brandon and Mistress

Carew also took part.

Nicholas Carew was rising to prominence through his expertise in the lists. The son of the Captain of

Calais, whose forbears had been loyal servants of the Crown, he was a cultivated youth of about

seventeen, “well-mannered and having the French tongue.”

He had been placed in Prince Henry’s

household at the age of six, and shared his education; the King thought very well of him, and often

sought his company. Carew’s wife was Elizabeth, the beautiful daughter of Sir Thomas Bryan, Vice

Chamberlain to the Queen; her sister Margaret was Guildford’s first wife.

Soon after Christmas, Henry went down with “a fever” which proved to be smallpox. “The physicians

were afraid for his life,” but by the beginning of February he had risen from his bed, “fierce against

France.”

He could not wait to return to the field.

The King was still convalescent when he rewarded those who had served him so well during the

campaigns of 1513. At Candlemas, 1514, he created Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk and restored to

Surrey the dukedom of Norfolk. The King’s cousin and Lord Chamberlain, Charles Somerset, Lord

Herbert, was at the same time made Earl of Worcester. He was the bastard son of the last Beaufort

Duke of Somerset, and had acquitted himself with valour in France.

The ceremony of ennoblement took place after high mass on 2 February in the great chamber at

Lambeth Palace, and followed the form laid down in the fourteenth century when Edward III had

advanced his sons to the peerage. Each Duke was invested with a crimson robe and cap of estate, a

coronet and sword, and a gold rod. He now had the right to be styled the “right high and mighty

Prince,” but was usually addressed as “Your Grace.”

The ceremony was watched by the Queen and her

ladies, the Duc de Longueville, and a host of peers who were in London to attend Parliament. The press

of people “was somewhat great, notwithstanding the doors were straitly kept.”

The new peerage creations were not universally popular, especially that of Suffolk. “Many considered

it very surprising,” wrote Polydose Vergil. Buckingham especially was furious at the ennoblement of

Brandon, whom he considered an upstart and “not of a very noble lineage,”

and pointedly stayed away

from the ceremony. It was Buckingham’s rival Wolsey who had advised the King to advance his friend,

possibly with a view to offsetting the new Duke of Norfolk’s influence on the Council.

When Henry granted Brandon the estates formerly held by Edmund de la Pole, Brandon became at a

stroke much wealthier, and therefore more powerful, than most of the landed aristicracy. He seemed,

wrote a Burgundian observer, to be “a second King, . . . one who does and undoes.”

The standard-

bearer’s son took it all in his stride. “No one ever bore so vast a rise with so easy a dignity,” declared a

Venetian, assuring the Senate that Suffolk was now “the chief nobleman of England” and “a liberal and

magnificent lord.”

The older nobility looked askance: they were jealous of Suffolk’s influence and

distrusted his ambition. Erasmus spoke for them all when he wrote scathingly of the former Master of

the Horse, “The King has recently turned that new Duke from a stable boy into a nobleman.”

Suffolk’s power now rivalled that of the other new Duke, Norfolk, who, in recognition of his victory at

Flodden, was granted the right to display the royal arms of Scotland alongside his own, with the

Scottish lion impaled with an arrow, as James IV’s had been. He was also made Earl Marshal of

England for life. Norfolk’s son, another Thomas Howard, now became Earl of Surrey at the age of

forty-one. In 1512, on his father’s resignation, he had succeeded as Lord Treasurer of England, and in

1513 he had commanded the vanguard at Flodden. He had been married first to Anne of York, daughter

of Edward IV, but she and their four infant children were dead by 1513, and Howard had recently

married Buckingham’s fourteen-year-old daughter Elizabeth. Naturally, the blue-blooded Howards had

little love for Suffolk, and were poised to destroy him should the chance arise.

The King did not forget the man who had worked so hard to make the French campaign a success. On 6

February, Wolsey was appointed Bishop of Lincoln; his consecration followed on 26 March. Wolsey

was to further prove his worth when, in March, Henry’s allies, Ferdinand of Aragon and Maximilian,

went behind his back and signed a truce with Louis XII. The King, in truth a political innocent, was

devastated at their desertion, and characteristically sought a scapegoat for this betrayal. Queen

Katherine, the faithless Ferdinand’s daughter, bore the brunt of her husband’s anger, and suddenly

ceased to be be his most trusted adviser; there were even rumours in Rome that year that he intended to

divorce her.

To make matters worse, Henry’s sister Mary was betrothed to the Archduke Charles of Austria, Prince

of Castile, the heir to both Ferdinand and Maximilian. Preparations for the wedding, which was to take

place abroad before 15 May, were already well advanced. The King was fond of his sister and, at

enormous cost, had provided her with a fabulous trousseau of sumptuous clothing, jewellery,

furnishings, and plate.

He had even sent fabric samples to Margaret of Austria, Charles’s aunt, and

asked if Mary’s clothes should be made up in the Burgundian style; the Regent had simply advised that

her dress should be “queenly and honourable.”

Queen Katherine had appointed the Countess of

Oxford as the Princess’s chief lady-in-waiting, and a list of the 101 persons who would make up her

retinue had already been sent for Margaret’s approval.

Mary Tudor was then eighteen, “a nymph from Heaven, a paradise.”

“Nature never formed anything

more beautiful,” declared Erasmus.

Mary was tall and graceful, with the red-gold hair of her race

and a fair complexion achieved without the aid of cosmetics.

She had a charming, lively manner,

excelled at conversation, and loved dancing and music; she sang well and played several instruments.

No prince could have had a more fit mate.

But now there was to be no wedding. Wolsey sought to save the King’s face by advocating an alliance

with France. Wolsey was no imperialist, and regarded successive emperors as his adversaries in his

later quest for the papacy. Throughout the period of his ascendancy, he would remain strongly pro-

French, which was one of the reasons why Queen Katherine so distrusted him.

It took a while to persuade the King to favour this new alliance, but one thing was blindingly clear to

everyone, and that was that Henry had come to rely on Wolsey’s judgement and advice more than

anyone else’s. Wolsey had become the chief councillor, answerable only to the King, and from now on

he would be all-powerful.

Even Suffolk did not enjoy as much influence, so it is not surprising to find that the Duke was jealous.

Hitherto, of the “two obstinate men who govern everything,” he had been the foremost in the King’s

counsels.

Now, although Henry might still be firm friends with him, he had been bested by his more

able rival, and although on the surface the two remained cordial, it would be some time before he could

bring himself to establish an amicable working relationship with Wolsey. Before that happened, he

would have cause to be very grateful indeed to Wolsey.

There was mutual hatred between the Howards and Wolsey. The last years of Norfolk’s life were

overshadowed by a bitter power struggle with his adversary, who never ceased in his attempts to poison

the King’s mind against him; to Henry’s credit, he did not let this undermine the affection and respect

he had for the Duke. In 1529, Wolsey confessed to the then Duke of Norfolk (who was Earl of Surrey

in 1514) that he had been trying to destroy him for the past fourteen years, and had the Howards had

the chance, they would doubtless have done the same to him. Nevertheless, they often found

themselves in agreement with Wolsey’s policies and working in tandem with him, whereas

Buckingham and Shrewsbury were opposed to everything he did on principle.

Buckingham loathed Wolsey, and was probably his greatest enemy. He certainly led the noble

opposition to the lowborn arriviste who had usurped the aristocrat’s traditional role of chief adviser to

the King. On one memorable occasion, when the Duke had the privilege of holding a basin for the King

to wash his hands in before dinner, he was shocked when Wolsey had the temerity to dip his fingers in

the same water, and deliberately spilt some over Wolsey’s shoes, which resulted in a very public row.

Buckingham had not the sense to perceive that it was his own hauteur, aloofness, and sheer lack of

ability that had prevented him from achieving the preeminence he felt ought to be his, nor the tact to

hide his bitterness at being excluded from the royal counsels. Like most of his caste, he hated the

French, England’s traditional enemies, and could never bring himself to approve of Wolsey’s foreign

policy.

While Wolsey negotiated an honourable peace, Henry began building the first of his recreational

complexes, at Greenwich. This consisted of two high octagonal brick towers with pinnacles at either

end of a gallery overlooking a new tiltyard that measured 650 feet by 250 feet; from now on, a greater

number of spectators could enjoy a better view of the jousts, and when not in use as a grandstand, the

gallery would be utilised as a store for jousting equipment.

Greenwich seems to have been a favourite

venue for tournaments: at least ten were held here in the decade before 1520. The tiltyard complex can

be seen clearly in drawings of the palace made by Anthony van Wyngaerde around 1555–1558.

The new tiltyard may have been completed in time for the tournament held in May 1514, when the

King and Suffolk appeared in the lists disguised as hermits, Henry in a white velvet habit with a cloak

of leather and cloth of silver, Suffolk in black. Before the jousts began, both threw off their disguises

and tossed them to the Queen and her ladies as largesse. Now Henry was in black and Suffolk in white

as they thundered down the field. In total, 114 lances were broken.

On 19 May, there arrived for the King from Rome a sword and cap of maintenance, consecrated by

Pope Leo X. The Pontiff had also been offended by the duplicity of Ferdinand and Maximilian, and

wanted to reassure Henry of his friendship and retain his goodwill as an ally.

The papal ambassador, Dom Leonardo Spinelli, was received in London with great pomp by “sundry

lords with some 400 horses.” Crowds thronged the streets, eager to see the Pope’s gifts. The cap was

carried aloft on the tip of the gilded sword; it was of purple satin, a foot high, with an embroidered brim

and pendant tails of ermine.

Two days later, Henry, who had been staying in the Bishop’s Palace by St. Paul’s, donned robes of

purple satin chequered with gold flowers, “a jewelled collar worth a well full of gold,” a cap of purple

velvet with two jewelled rosettes, and a doublet of gold brocade, then rode on a beautiful black palfrey

in procession to the cathedral, surrounded by his courtiers. At the door he dismounted and walked to

the high altar, where the papal envoy waited with the sword and cap. As the King knelt, two noblemen

girded him with the sword and placed the cap on his head. It was too big, and covered his face

completely, but he presumably adjusted it before making “an entire circuit of the interior of the

church.” After the procession, “high mass commenced with great pomp and with vocal and

instrumental music.” The King left the cathedral at 1 P.M., followed by the ambassadors and courtiers

walking two by two back to the Bishop’s Palace. A Venetian estimated that thirty thousand spectators

had come to watch.

The King had for some time been building up England’s navy, of which he is with justification

regarded as one of the chief founders. Henry adored ships and was fascinated by the technology of

naval warfare. He had inherited only a few vessels from his father, but was determined make his navy a

power to be reckoned with on the high seas. By the end of his reign, he had built forty-six warships and

thirteen smaller galleys, purchased twenty-six other ships, and captured thirteen more.

At the time,

this was the greatest navy in the world: although equal in size to those of other countries, it was far

better organised and disciplined.

Henry was also interested in navigation. Among other scientific aids, he owned a rare tidal almanack of

Europe and a perpetual lunar calendar.

He knew more about French tidal waters than the experts did,

and his Lord Admirals learned to trust his encyclopaedic knowledge of naval matters.

On 13 June 1514, Henry launched his greatest ship yet, the Henry Grace à Dieu, which came to be

known as the “Great Harry.” The King and Queen, accompanied by the Princess Mary, various

ambassadors, and the whole court,

went in their state barges by water from Greenwich to Erith, where

the great warship lay; eyewitnesses claimed this was the greatest pageant yet seen on the River Thames.

The King was dressed in a vest and breeches of cloth of gold with scarlet hose, while around his neck

hung a whistle on a gold chain, the insignia of the supreme commander of the navy.

The Henry Grace à Dieu was a very large vessel with “five decks and seven tops.”

She had “no equal

in bulk” and had “an incredible array”

of more than two hundred bronze and iron cannon.

When the

King and court had boarded the splendid vessel, she was blessed with “many masses, including high

mass sung for the benediction.”

Then Henry conducted everyone on a guided tour of the ship.

would always retain a special affection for the “Great Harry,” and when she was in dock at Rye some

years later, he went to view her and dined on board.

Wolsey’s negotiations with France reached a successful conclusion in the summer. On 30 July, at the

royal manor of Wanstead, Essex, the Princess Mary formally renounced her betrothal to Charles of

Castile. A week later, the peace with France was proclaimed, and it was announced that Mary was to

marry King Louis himself.

Henry showed his gratitude to Wolsey by immediately nominating him Archbishop of York, the

previous incumbent, Cardinal Christopher Bainbridge, having just died in Rome. A month later, Wolsey

was also made Bishop of Tournai. It seemed the King could not do enough for him. He now wrote to

the Vatican, urging Pope Leo to appoint him a cardinal, “since his merits are such that the King can do

nothing of the least importance without him, and esteems him among his dearest friends.”

Wolsey did not set foot in his northern diocese for many years, nor was he immediately consecrated. He

was more interested in the trappings of power and status. His promotion brought him York Place at

Westminster, which had been the London residence of the archbishops of York since the thirteenth

century. Wolsey immediately had it surveyed, then set about extending it in the grand manner, creating

“a very fine palace”

where he could entertain the King and others in princely style.

In 1514–1515,

he spent £1,250 (£375,000) on improvements.

Visitors were overawed by the splendour of York Place. Now faced with red brick and built on a

courtyard plan, it had a great hall and chapel, a watching chamber, a presence chamber, a dining

chamber, a gallery, an armoury, and a cloister. Beneath the watching chamber was a wine cellar, which

still survives.

Giustinian described how he “traversed eight rooms before reaching [Wolsey’s]

audience chamber. They were all hung with tapestry which was changed once a week. Wherever

Wolsey was, he always had a sideboard of plate worth 25,000 ducats.”

The palace was a monument to

exquisite taste, and boasted brightly jewelled chapel plate; sets of rich tapestries and hangings;

paintings of the saints, the Emperor Trajan, “Dame Pleasaunce,” and the Duc de Berry; fine furniture of

estate; jewellery; and a bedstead of alabaster bearing Wolsey’s arms and gilded flowers.

There was

also a delightful garden for the Archbishop’s personal use.

With the peace about to be concluded, Henry was satisfied and Wolsey triumphant, but the royal bride

was not at all happy. She had no wish to marry the ailing King Louis, who at fifty-two was thirty-four

years her senior, because she was almost certainly in love with Charles Brandon. The letters that passed

between Mary, Suffolk, and Wolsey in 1515 reveal not only that the King was aware of his sister’s

feelings, but that she had only “consented to his request, and for the peace of Christendom, to marry

Louis of France, though he was very aged and sickly, on condition that if she survived him, she should

marry whom she liked.”

It transpired, however, that Henry had no intention of keeping his side of the

bargain.

“Cloth of Frieze Be Not Too Bold”

On Sunday, 13 August 1514, the whole court gathered at Greenwich in the great banqueting hall, which

had been hung with cloth of gold embroidered with the royal arms of England and France, to see Mary

Tudor married by proxy to Louis XII. The King and the Queen (who was visibly pregnant and wore

silver satin with a gold Venetian cap) arrived three hours late with the bride, who looked very beautiful

in a purple-and-gold-chequered gown, which matched the robes of the French King’s representative,

the Duc de Longueville. The couple exchanged vows, rings, and a kiss before Archbishop Warham, and

after the nuptial mass had been celebrated, there was a banquet followed by two hours of dancing, led

by the King and Buckingham. When these two set aside their long gowns and danced in their doublets,

many older gentlemen present followed suit, apart from Andrea Badoer, the Venetian ambassador, who

was conscious of his advancing years.

In the evening, the company proceeded into a chamber where a great bed had been prepared. The new

Queen of France lay upon it in a nightgown described as “magnificent deshabille,” with one leg bared

to the thigh, while the Duc de Longueville, having removed his red hose, lay beside her and touched

her naked leg with his own. Warham then declared the marriage symbolically consummated, at which

“the King of England made great rejoicing.”

King Louis, who was eager to see his bride, sent to England the French portrait painter, Jehan Perreal,

to capture Mary’s likeness

and help prepare her trousseau. Naturally, the trousseau provided for her

marriage to Charles of Castile was not thought suitable, and the King once again opened his coffers to

ensure that his sister went to France “well and sumptuously attired.”

“Merchants of every nation went

to the court; the Queen of France desired to see them all, and gave her hand to each of them.”

Between

them, they made up thirty gowns for her. In addition, Henry supplied her lavishly with jewels and

furnishings.

Mary was also to take with her to France a large entourage. Two of her youngest maids of honour were

Mary and Anne, the daughters of Sir Thomas Boleyn. The Mother of the Maids was Lady Guildford,

Sir Henry’s mother and Mary’s former governess. Most of these English attendants would be sent home

by King Louis, even “Mother Guildford,” much to Mary’s distress.

Louis approved every name on Mary’s list of attendants save one, that of Jane Popincourt, the French

lady who had served Elizabeth of York, Mary Tudor, and Katherine of Aragon. She was close to Mary

and, together with the Duc de Longueville and the Princess’s former tutor, John Palsgrave,

was

helping her to practise conversation in French. The English ambassador in Paris, however, warned his

master that Jane was leading an “evil life” as the mistress of the married de Longueville, at which

Louis declared: “As you love me, speak of her no more. I would she were burned!” Then, claiming that

his only concern was for the moral welfare of his wife, he struck Jane’s name off the list.

Mary was

quite upset.

She may have been somewhat mollified when she received Louis’s chief bridal gift, the Mirror of

Naples, a diamond as large as “a full-sized finger” with a huge pear-shaped pendant pearl, which

arrived in London before September, when Mary wore it for her final public appearance in London.

Henry VIII had it valued at 60,000 crowns (£4,500,000).

During August, while Mary was preparing to go to France, the King set out on his summer progress.

His route took him to Newbury; Guildford; Farnham Castle, where he was the guest of Bishop Foxe;

Oatlands near Weybridge, where his host was Bartholemew Reed, whose deer park would become a

favourite royal hunting ground; and Croydon, where he lodged in the palace of the Archbishop of

Canterbury.

Mary Tudor then joined her brother and his court and proceeded to Dover via Otford, where they were

entertained by Archbishop Warham, and Canterbury. The royal cavalcade was one of the longest and

most richly attired ever seen. The King and Mary rode side by side, followed by the Queen in a litter

and a vast concourse of nobles and knights, accompanied by their wives and wearing cloth of gold and

gold chains.

On 2 October, “at the waterside” at Dover, Mary reminded Henry of their pact. He embraced and kissed

her, then gave her his blessing, saying, “I betoken you to God and the fortunes of the sea, and the

government of the King your husband.”

Escorted by Norfolk, Mary embarked for France with a fleet

of fourteen ships. She was married to Louis on 9 October at Abbeville and crowned at St. Denis on 5

November. The French King was very taken with her; after their wedding night, he boasted that “he

had performed marvels.”

The Duc de Longueville returned to France with Mary, bearing gifts worth £2,000 (£600,000) and the

gown Henry had worn at the proxy wedding. Several historians have suggested that Jane Popincourt,

left languishing at the English court, became Henry’s mistress, but there is no evidence for this. The

£100 that Henry gave her when she did eventually return to France in May 1516,

after Louis’s death,

was almost certainly a reward for her years of good service to his mother, sister, and wife, and it is

known that Jane resumed her relationship with de Longueville when they were reunited. Moreover, by

October 1514 Henry had probably embarked upon an affair with another lady.

Typically, he was taking advantage of the Queen’s pregnancy, which seemed to be progressing well: on

4 October, the King issued a warrant to the Great Wardrobe for a cradle upholstered in scarlet, linen,

and curtains “for the use of our nursery, God willing.”

That same month, Suffolk, then in France,

added a postscript to a letter to Henry, asking him to remind “Mistress Blount and Mistress Carew” to

reply to him when he wrote to them or sent them love tokens. This implies that the King and Suffolk

were on terms of familiarity with both ladies. Indeed, they may well have shared their favours.

There is no doubt that Elizabeth Blount became Henry’s mistress at some stage, because she later bore

him a child which he acknowledged. She was one of the eleven children

of Sir John Blount of Kinlet

Hall, Shropshire, by Katherine Peshall, whose father had fought for Henry VII at Bosworth. Lord

Mountjoy was a kinsman, and it may have been he who secured Elizabeth—or Bessie, as she was

known—a post as maid of honour to the Queen in 1513, when the girl was fifteen at most.

She was “a

fair damosel, who in singing, dancing and all goodly pastimes exceeded no other.”

She was also

“thought for her rare ornaments of nature and education to be the beauty and mistress-piece of her

time.”

Elizabeth Blount featured prominently in a Christmas pageant at Greenwich. She, Elizabeth Carew,

Lady Margaret Guildford, and Lady Fellinger, the wife of the Spanish ambassador, all dressed up as

ladies of Savoy in blue velvet gowns, gold caps, and masks, and were rescued from danger by four

gallant “Portuguese” knights, played by the King, Suffolk, Nicholas Carew, and the Spanish envoy. The

Queen was so delighted with their “strange apparel” that, before they all removed their masks, she

invited them to dance again before her in her bedchamber. The King partnered Elizabeth Blount, and

there was much laughter when the identities of the dancers were revealed. Katherine thanked the King

for “her goodly pastime, and kissed him.”

It is not known whether Henry and Elizabeth were lovers at

this time, but if they were, they were certainly being very discreet about it.

Some writers have suggested that they were not discreet enough, and that the Queen was growing

suspicious, because on Twelfth Night, 1515, when the same pageant was staged once again, by popular

demand, Elizabeth Blount did not appear: her place was taken by Jane Popincourt.

However, she

featured in another disguising in the company of Sir Thomas Boleyn and his young son George.

We will never know whether anxiety over her husband’s amours contributed to the loss of the Queen’s

fourth child, which was “a prince who lived not long after,”

who was born at Greenwich in February

1515. Although a silver font was loaned by Christchurch Priory, Canterbury, for the christening, the

infant’s name is not recorded.

Soon after Christmas, news reached England of the death of Louis XII of France and the accession of

his cousin, the Count of Angoulême, who became Francis I. Henry’s nose was put somewhat out of

joint by the knowledge that the new French King was three years younger than he and looked set to

rival him in magnificence and martial valour. France had already achieved cultural ascendancy in

northern Europe, and her new monarch was to establish a court that would rapidly outdazzle those of

England, Spain, and the Empire. There was rivalry on a personal level as well: everything Francis did,

Henry jealously copied. He could not bear to be outshone in any way, and took comfort from the fact

that most people agreed that he was “a great deal handsomer than the King of France,”

who had a

dark, saturnine complexion and the long Valois nose. Henry was also considerably more virtuous, for

Francis was a notorious lecher whose court was a hotbed of sexual intrigue. But when the new King of

France won a brilliant victory over the Swiss at Marignano in September 1515, Henry could not

contain his jealousy. At first he declared he did not believe it, but when Francis’s envoy gave him two

letters in his master’s own hand, he had to. As he read them, “it seemed tears would flow from his eyes,

so red were they with the pain he suffered on hearing of the King’s success.”

For all his jealousy, however, Henry was to enjoy a genuine rapport with Francis. The two were much

alike, “not only in personage, but also in wisdom, delighting both in hunting, in hawking, in building,

in apparel, and in jewels.”

Given Francis’s reputation with women, Henry was concerned for his sister, who, following the custom

of widowed queens of France, had donned white mourning and retired into seclusion at the Hôtel de

Cluny until such time as it was certain that she was not pregnant by her late husband. There were

rumours that the new King was thinking of divorcing his pregnant wife, Louis’s daughter Claude, and

marrying Mary instead, but Mary seems to have believed he had designs on her virtue. This is unlikely,

given who she was and the fact that, some years later, he inscribed a drawing of her, “More dirty than

queenly.”

What Francis did try to bring about was a marriage between Mary and the Duke of Savoy, but Henry

felt that Mary could make a more advantageous match elsewhere, and in late January sent Suffolk to

France to bring her home. Knowing how matters stood between Suffolk and Mary, Henry made the

Duke promise that he would not propose marriage to her. But Henry had not counted on Mary using

every trick in the book to get Suffolk to the altar, with the result that the couple were married in secret

on 3 March. Once the union had been consummated, Suffolk panicked, and wrote to Wolsey confessing