h i s t o r y dav i d g e l b e r

What a Beard-Off

The Field of Cloth of Gold

By Glenn Richardson (Yale University Press 275pp £35)

For one unavoidable reason, the plains of northern France will lie heavy in the public mind this year. In 1914, English and French soldiers repudiated ancient enmities and took to the field together. This union of arms – on territory where each nation had drained so much of the other’s blood – was not, as Glenn Richardson recalls in The Field of Cloth of Gold, unique. A little under four hundred years before, the nobilities of France and England, led by their monarchs, Francis I and Henry VIII, met on a stretch of farmland between the towns of Guînes and Ardres to proclaim everlasting concord between their nations.

For two and a half weeks in June 1520, some 12,000 English and French courtiers lodged, jousted and junketed together in a carnival of splendour. A temporary city of tents, pavilions and a hastily constructed palace was planted on the site, which lay inside England’s last surviving French enclave. Golden fountains spouted perpetual claret and tables bowed beneath masses of pork, venison, pheasant, peacock and even dolphin. In the months preceding the meeting, whole industries were absorbed with sewing costumes, setting jewels and forging armour for the occasion. Bishop John Fisher observed that ‘never was seen in England such excess of apparelment before’. The glittering display of finery lent the summit the name by which it has since been known: the Field of Cloth of Gold.

Since Francis had ascended the French throne in 1515, his relationship with Henry had been characterised by competitive curiosity. Both monarchs devoured information about the other. It was said that when Henry jousted at his palace at Greenwich, his first concern was that the French ambassador would make a fair report of his prowess. The two kings were similar in age, education and appearance. They shared a passion for the chase and a love of courtly revels. Above all, both monarchs thirsted after honour and renown. This appetite could not be sated at home,

but only on the international stage – in full glare of their only true peers, their fellow sovereigns. As Richardson observes, foreign policy in an age of personal monarchy was motivated not, as in later times, by strategic considerations, but by the pursuit of fame and reputation.

To most observers, war – the traditional pursuit of kings – seemed the likely consequence. The two nations had unfinished business. Henry, in the tradition of his Plantagenet forebears, styled himself king of France and spoke about renewing the Hundred Years War. Francis craved the return of Tournai and other territories Henry had seized from his predecessor, Louis XII, in 1513. But the international tide had, for a brief moment, turned against war. In London, Paris, Brussels and Rome, humanists were in the ascendant, exalting the glories of peace. In the Mediterranean and the Balkans, the forces of the Ottoman sultan seemed poised to engulf Christendom, without regard for frontiers or alliances.

The meeting between Francis and Henry was two years in the making. The driving force was Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII’s chief minister, and Richardson follows the complex diplomacy that preceded the event with sure-footed command. In 1518, Wolsey engineered an entente between England and France, subsequently joined by other European states, which resolved outstanding differences. Outwardly, the Field of Cloth of Gold was intended to solemnise Anglo-French friendship by allowing the two kings to make a personal demonstration of affection. In 1519, Francis declared that he would come to meet Henry accompanied only by his ‘page and his lackey’ if it meant guaranteeing peace. Henry responded by vowing not to shave his beard until they had met.

But, as Richardson persuasively argues, peace was only a means to an end. He unpicks the apparent paradox of a peace treaty celebrated with war games by documenting the suspicions that persisted on both sides, despite the extravagant declarations of friendship. The whole conference was conducted in a ‘spirit of ostentatious rivalry’. Henry and Francis hoped to awe each other with displays of military might. Their first meeting, on 7 June, resembled a battle charge, the two kings running at each other on horseback, only veering off course at the last moment to dismount and embrace.

Henry had most to gain from the meeting, which accounts for the energy with which Wolsey pursued it. As the monarch of the smaller and poorer of the two countries, it was enough for him to appear the ostensible equal of the French king. To this end, Wolsey engaged in prolonged negotiations to ensure precise parity between the two parties. Francis I’s agenda was subtler. He had already proved his mettle on the battlefield with the capture of Milan in 1515. Despite Henry’s bluster, he had little to fear from English aggression. But a hostile England might prove a nuisance were he to resume his wars in Italy. Francis’s greater self-confidence was expressed through demonstrations of magnanimity and calculated acts of whimsy. He agreed to do Henry the honour of crossing into English territory to meet him, and on the second Sunday of the festival appeared in Henry’s chamber uninvited and declared himself his prisoner.

Glenn Richardson is rare among scholars of Tudor England in approaching the subject from an international perspective. The story of Henry VIII’s reign can sometimes seem stale, but Richardson’s confident use of French archives and grasp of the diplomatic hinterland freshens the tale. There are occasional longueurs: the extended descriptions of materials, retinues and foodstuffs might be useful to convey the opulence of the occasion, but they obstruct the narrative. Nonetheless, Richardson’s interpretation of the improbable marriage of humanist grandiloquence and military posturing is convincing. He argues that the event marked the climax of Renaissance personal diplomacy, without making grand claims for its long-term political significance. It ’s just as well he doesn’t, for within two years France and England were at war again. To order this book for £35, see the Literary Review Bookshop on page 10

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