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into Calais, some were driven to Flanders: her ship was with great difficulty brought to Boulogne, and there, at the entrance of the haven, with great jeopardy, the master ran it hard aground.' In less than three months, this unseemly union was dissolved by the death of the French king; the widow lost no time in making a better choice for herself; and the kindness with which Henry received her after her clandestine marriage with the duke of Suffolk, was some reparation for having, in his late disposal of her, regarded nothing but state policy.t

Francis I. wished to recover Tournay, and also to form a close alliance with Henry. He proposed a conditional treaty to Wolsey, that his expected and unborn child, if it proved a son, should be married to Henry's daughter Mary, then only two years old. The hoped contingency took place, the treaty was concluded, and one of the conditions was, that on the day of the marriage Tournay should be given up to France upon A. D. payment of 600,000 crowns of gold. But it was not 1518. necessary to wait for the lapse of time, always so slow to expectant hope. Wolsey obtained a pension from the French king, and it was agreed that Tournay should 1520. be given up before the close of the year. "Then,"

says Hall,
"began the captains and the soldiers to
mourn,—and many a young gentleman, and many a
tall yeoman, wished that they had not spent their time
there." Sir Edward Belknap, acting for the earl of
Worcester, who was commissioned to carry this part of
the treaty into effect, refused to deliver up the city to
the sieur de Chastillon, who was sent to take possession
of it, unless he certified, by an indenture sealed with his

Hall, 570. On the day after her marriage, "all the Englishmen, except a few that were officers with the said queen, were discharged, which was a great sorrow for them; for some had served her long in hope of preferment, and some that had honest homes left them to serve her, and now they were without service, which caused them to take thought, in so much, that some died by the way returning, and some fell mad; but there was no remedy."

+"No brother," says Mr. Turner, "could act more kindly than the king, on an event so trying to his pride, and so interceptive of his future politics."

FIELD OF THE CLOTH OF GOLD.

187

seal of arms, "that it was received as a gift, and not rendered as a right to the king of France." The earl carried this punctilious spirit further, when the French, having sent in the sealed indenture, approached with colours flying: the city, he said, was neither yielded nor won, but delivered for confederation of marriage, and therefore they should not enter with banners displayed. To this also the French angrily but in good policy conformed. The cession was not a popular measure in England. The people had been proud of the conquest, and said, "that the king was evil counselled to give away the city of Tournay, because the maintenance of a garrison there should have nourished and brought up men and younger brothers in feats of war, to the great strength and defence of the realm." When the garrison returned to England, Henry sent for the 66 yeomen of the guard, and, after many good words, granted them four-pence a day without attendance, except they were specially commanded : yet we are told that many a tall yeoman who lacked living, and would not labour after their return, fell to robbing, pilfering, shifting, and other extraordinary means of maintenance, whereas before they were staid upon a certainty of hope, so long as they had allowance from the king.*

The pension assigned by the French king to Wolsey on this occasion was under the colourable pretext of an equivalent for his emoluments as administrator of the diocese of Tournay. The cardinal has been charged with having listened favourably to proposals for the sale also of Calais to the French: the charge rests upon the single assertion of an historian† who, for general fidelity, is in no good repute, and who bore a particular ill will to Wolsey. According to his statement, the other ministers were sounded upon the subject, and Wolsey, when he found them averse to it, found it dangerous to proceed further. The memorable meeting between the kings of England and France, on the Field

*Hall, 596. 598. Holinshed, 635. Turner, Mod. Hist. i. 144.
+ Polydore Virgil. Hume, iv. p. 15.

of the Cloth of Gold*, took place at this time: it was designed to confirm the friendship between the two kings, and, by the generous frankness which was displayed on both sides, seemed at the time not unlikely to have produced that effect. But ill omens were remembered and applied, after the event had afforded application for them. On one of the days there was such a hideous storm of wind and weather, that "many conjectured it did prognosticate trouble and hatred shortly after to follow." A more impressive incident occurred when the interview with the emperor ensued. The English had erected for this occasion a banquettinghouse within the walls of Calais, "after a goodly device." The roof was painted to represent the sky, "with stars, sun, moon, and clouds, and divers other things made above over men's heads; and there were great images of great men of divers strange nations," with escutcheons showing to what country they 'belonged, and scrolls declaring whom they represented. There were also, as it were, many ships under sail,

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*There is an ancient picture in Windsor Castle of Henry's embarkation for this interview in the Great Harry. She (for Charnock makes the Great Harry of the feminine gender) has four masts, with two round tops on each, except the shortest mizen. Her sails and pendants are of cloth of gold damasked. The royal standard of England is flying on each of the four quarters of the forecastle, and the staff of each standard is surrounded by a fleur-de-lis. Pendants are flying on the mast heads, and at each quarter of the deck is a standard of St. George's Cross. Her quarters and sides, as also the tops, are fortified and decorated with heater shields, or targets, charged differently with the Cross of St. George azure, a fleur-de-lis or; party per pale argent and vert a union rose, and party per pale argent and vert a portcullis or, alternately and repeatedly. The king is standing on the main deck, richly dressed in a garment of cloth of gold, edged with ermine, the sleeves crimson, and the jacket and breeches the same; his round bonnet is covered with a white feather, laid on the upper side of the brim. On the front of the forecastle are depicted, party per pale argent and vert, within a circle of the Garter, the arms of France and England quarterly crowned, the supporters a lion and a dragon. The same arms are repeated on the stern. On each side of the rudder is a port hole with a brass cannon, and on the side of the main deck are two port holes with cannon, and the same number under the forecastle." - Charnock, i. 42.

"In such manner as, I think," says Holinshed, "was never seen, with sixteen principals made of great masts, betwixt every mast four and twenty foot, and all the outsides closed with boards and canvass. Over it, and within round about the sides, were made three scaffolds or lofts, one above another, for men and women to stand upon. And in the midst of the said banquetting house was set up a great pillar of timber, made of eight great masts, bound together with iron bands, for to hold them together, for it was an hundred and four and thirty foot of length, and cost six pounds thirteen shillings and four-pence to set it upright.".

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and wind-mills going," and platforms erected round about the great central pillar for the musicians, and "for pageants to be played when the king of England and the emperor should be at their banquet. But in the morning of the same day the wind began to rise, and at night blew off the canvass, and all the elements, with the stars, sun, moon, and clouds; and the wind blew out above 1000 torches and other lights of wax, that were prepared to give light to the banquet; and all the kings' seats that were made with great riches, besides all other things, were all dashed and lost.”* If the eyes of Henry VIII. and his ambitious favourite had been opened, they might have seen typified in such an edifice, and such a catastrophe, the instability and the issue of their own projects.

-

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When Wolsey had alienated the king from his French A. D. connection, and was secretly negotiating an alliance with 1521. the emperor, it was part of Henry's plans that they should jointly provide for the destruction of the French navy, a great and high enterprise," the king thought this, " if it might suddenly be made against the French king, and thus by wisdom and good policy be brought to pass;" but he did not intend that it should proceed otherwise than by their common assent; and the emperor was not likely to employ any part of his forces in attempting an object in which his own interests were so much less concerned than those of his ally. Before any open breach had appeared between England and France, the French captured a Spanish vessel, with English property on board, in the mouth of the Thames; presumptuous attemptate in his stream, which it was said the king took very displeasantly, and could in no wise be contented therewith, unless satisfaction were made to his honour to all parties, he being the more moved because the French had before, in like manner, misordered themselves in his ports. The French would

Holinshed, 654. 656.

66

a

+ State Papers, published under the authority of his majesty's commis sioners, i. 23, 24,

A. D.

at that time willingly have avoided a war with England; they promised full restitution, with damages and interest; but when such restitution had been awarded, after long suit in the French courts, and sentence given in favour of the demandants by due course of law, the English ministers complained that the parties were ordered to quit France on pain of their lives, with this sentence alone and no money." They complained also that French men-of-war, as well as pirates, spoiled the king's subjects of their goods at sea, and cruelly handled them, and put them in danger of their lives.* It was then neither war nor peace with France, - —a state of things as favourable for the freebooter as it was injurious to the peaceable merchant. Six ships, therefore, under Christopher Coo, an expert seaman, were sent to protect the king's subjects against French, Scotch, and other rovers. A Scottish sea-rover, who seems to have been no unworthy successor of sir Andrew Barton, was captured, after a long fight, by John Arundel, an esquire of Cornwall, and presented to the king, and detained a long time prisoner in the Tower. A squadron of five ships was sent to Scotland, and entered the Forth, meaning to attack the vessels that lay in the havens there. The Scotch ran them aground; the English followed in boats, landed, burnt the vessels, and carried off some prisoners, whom they brought to London,

Charles V. was, at this time, about to remove from 1522. his dominions in the Low Countries to Spain; he proposed to make England in his way, and keep Easter there; and therefore applied to Henry to put his navy in readiness for the defence of the narrow seas, and the security of his passage from Calais to Dover, according to the treaty; and also to send convenient ships for the transport of himself and his train. The notice was very short one reason which made it inconvenient was "the unreadiness of the navy, not being victualled with fish meet for Lent," which, it was said, "could not be

*Holinshed, 675-677. Hall, 629, 630.
+ State Papers, 36. 42. 56. 59. 61.

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