Henry VIII (23 page)

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.”
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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”
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where he could entertain the King and others in princely style.
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.”
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It transpired, however, that Henry had no intention of keeping his side of the bargain.

20

“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.”
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King Louis, who was eager to see his bride, sent to England the French portrait painter, Jehan Perreal, to capture Mary's likeness
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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.”
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“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.”
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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.
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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,
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.”
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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,
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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.”
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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
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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.
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She was “a fair damosel, who in singing, dancing and all goodly pastimes exceeded no other.”
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She was also “thought for her rare ornaments of nature and education to be the beauty and mistress-piece of her time.”
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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.”
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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.
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However, she featured in another disguising in the company of Sir Thomas Boleyn and his young son George.
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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,”
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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.
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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,”
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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.”
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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.”
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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 all and begging the Archbishop to solicit the King's forgiveness. “The Queen would never let me rest till I had granted her to be married,” he explained, “and so, to be plain with you, I have married her heartily, and have lain with her insomuch I fear me lest she be with child.”
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Henry was furious.

When his precipitate marriage became common knowledge at the English court, there were many who were outraged at Suffolk's presumption. The Privy Council, led by the Howards, urged the King to have him executed or imprisoned
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since he had committed treason by marrying a princess of the blood without royal consent. Thanks to Wolsey's intervention, and Henry's genuine affection for both Mary and Suffolk, it was agreed that they should pay him a large fine of £24,000 (£7,200,000) in instalments by way of compensation. Mary also agreed to surrender to Henry all the plate and jewels she had been given before and during her marriage, and Suffolk relinquished to his master the wardship of Elizabeth Grey, Viscountess Lisle.
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Greatly mollified, the King graciously consented to receive the erring pair back into favour, but there were many who felt that Suffolk had got off too lightly.

In March, Francis I demanded of Mary the return of the Mirror of Naples, which was the hereditary property of the queens of France, but she confessed that she had sent it to her brother as a peace offering. When Henry refused to give it back, a diplomatic row ensued. Francis tried offering him 30,000 crowns for it, but to no avail. After that, there is no further mention of the Mirror of Naples in the records. There has been speculation that Henry had it recut or renamed, but descriptions of his attire in Venetian sources suggest that he wore it quite openly.

In April 1515, there arrived in England the new Venetian ambassador Sebastian Giustinian and his suite, whose members have left some of the most famous descriptions of the young Henry VIII and his court. The King wanted to impress the Senate, so on St. George's Day he sent dignitaries to escort the envoy and his train in a barge fashioned like the Venetian bucentaur to Richmond, where the court was assembled. Giustinian and his colleague Piero Pasqualigo both left accounts of the occasion: “Though it was before mass, they made us breakfast, for fear we should faint; after which, we were conducted to the presence through sundry chambers all hung with most beautiful tapestry, passing down the ranks of the bodyguard.

“We were ushered into a stately hall. At one extremity was His Majesty, standing under a canopy of gold embroidered at Florence, the most costly thing I ever witnessed. He was leaning against his gilt throne, on which was a large gold brocade cushion, where lay the long gold sword of state.” The King was resplendent in his Garter robes: “He wore a cap of crimson velvet in the French fashion; his doublet was in the Swiss fashion, striped alternately with white and crimson satin, and his hose were scarlet, and all slashed from the knee upwards. Very close around his neck he had a fine collar, from which there hung a round cut diamond, the size of the largest walnut I ever saw, and a very large round pearl [the Mirror of Naples?]. His mantle was of purple velvet lined with white satin, with a train more than four yards in length. Over this mantle was a very handsome gold collar with a pendant St. George entirely of diamonds. On his left shoulder was the Garter, and on his right shoulder was a hood with a border entirely of crimson velvet. Beneath the mantle he had a pouch of cloth of gold which covered a dagger, and his fingers were one mass of jewelled rings.”