Field of the Cloth of Gold

Cardinal Wolsey

Two entities had started to emerge as powers in Western Europe at this time: France, under Francis I, and the Habsburg-dominated Holy Roman Empire, under Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. The Kingdom of England, still a lesser power, was being courted as an ally by the two major powers. The 1518 Treaty of London, a non-aggression pact between major European powers to help resist the Ottoman expansion into southeastern Europe, had just been signed. Henry also held meetings with Charles V a month before the Field of Cloth of Gold in the Netherlands and again afterwards at Calais, Henry's only possession on the Continent.

Both Henry and Francis wished to be seen as Renaissance princes. Renaissance thinking held that a strong ruler could choose peace from a place of strength. The meeting was designed to show how magnificent each court was, and how this could be a basis for mutual respect and peace between states that were traditional enemies. Henry and Francis were also similar figures of similar age and dashing reputations, so there was almost certainly a mutual curiosity.

Everything was arranged to provide equality between the two groups. The meeting place (now indicated by a commemorative plaque on the D231 road, Route de Marquise) was at the very edge of the English territory around Calais. The valley where the first meeting took place was landscaped to provide areas of equal elevation for the two government parties. The whole event was planned and executed by English Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, a charismatic, eloquent master diplomat who as a papal legate had immense power in the name of Pope Leo X at the time of the meeting. Included among the English guests were Thomas More and Anne Boleyn's mother and sister.[3]

An earlier meeting between the kings of England and France presaged this one. From 27 to 30 October 1396, Charles VI of France and Richard II of England had met at Ardres near Calais to treat for peace during the Hundred Years' War. The scale, splendour and pageantry were comparable to the later Field of the Cloth of Gold meeting held on the same site in 1520.[4]

Henry VIII embarking at Dover. Dover Castle is depicted at top left. Royal Collection, Hampton Court.

Each king tried to outshine the other, with dazzling tents and clothes, huge feasts, music, jousting and games. The tents and the costumes displayed so much cloth of gold, an expensive fabric woven with silk and gold thread, that the site of the meeting was named after it.

The most elaborate arrangements were made for the accommodation of the two monarchs and their large retinues; and on Henry's part especially no efforts were spared to make a great impression in Europe with this meeting. Before the castle of Guînes, a temporary palace covering an area of nearly 12,000 square yards (10,000 m²) was erected for the reception of the English king.[5] The palace was in four blocks with a central courtyard; each side was 328 feet (100 m) long. The only solid part was the brick base about 8 feet (2 m) high.[6] Above the brickwork, the 30-foot (10 metre) high walls were made of cloth or canvas on timber frames, painted to look like stone or brick.

One further aspect of King Henry's retinue was the presence of two royal monkeys covered in gold leaf; these were known to have been gifts from the Ottoman Sultan Selim I and brought much laughter and merriment from Francis I as contemporary Cardinal Wolsey recounts, "The French King was overcome with much curiosity playing with those little knaves that did all they could to steal and pester his advisers, yet he willed them to be present at every banquet". The slanting roof was made of oiled cloth painted to give the colour of lead and the illusion of slates. Contemporaries commented especially on the huge expanse of glass, which made visitors feel they were in the open air. Chronicle descriptions make it clear the decorations, carved and painted had martial iconography;

The foregate of the same palace or place with great and mighty masonry by sight was arched, with a Tower on every side of the same portered by great craft, and inbatteled was the gate and Tower, and in the fenesters, and windows, were images resembling men of warre redie to cast great stones: also the same gate or Tower was set with compassed images of ancient Princes, as Hercules, Alexander and other, by entrayled worke, richly limned with gold and Albyn colours, .... also the tower of the Gate as seemed was built by great masonry, ... for the sundrie countenances of every Image that their appeared, some shooting, some casting, some ready to strike, and firing of gonnes, which shewed very honourably.

— Grafton's Chronicle, or Chronicle at Large 1569[6][7]

The building was decorated in the most sumptuous fashion and furnished with a profusion of golden ornaments.[5] Red wine flowed from the two fountains outside. The chapel was served by 35 priests. Composer Jean Mouton was most likely in charge of the musical production by Francis I; the French royal chapel had one of the finest choirs in Europe, and contemporary accounts indicated that they "delighted their hearers."[8] The wooden ceiling for one of the tents may later have been installed in the New Chapel at Ightham Mote where, with its colours faded, one with appropriate features can still be seen.[9] Musical production on the English side was probably led by composer William Cornysh the Younger, master of the Royal Chapel for Henry VIII.[10]

Some idea of the size of Henry's following may be gathered from the fact that in one month 2200 sheep and other viands in a similar proportion were consumed. In the fields beyond the castle, 2800 tents were erected for less distinguished visitors.[5]

Journeying from Calais, Henry reached his headquarters at Guînes on Monday, 4 June 1520, and Francis took up his residence at Ardres. After Cardinal Wolsey, with a splendid train, had visited the French king, the two monarchs met at the Val d'Or, a spot midway between the two places, on Thursday, 7 June Corpus Christi.[5]

The following days were taken up with tournaments, in which both kings took part.[5] There were banquets in which the kings entertained each other's queens. The many other entertainments included archery displays and wrestling between Breton and Cornish wrestlers.

Wrestling at the Field of the Cloth of Gold (tapestry, c. 1520). Francis I is shown top right, above an actual cloth of gold.

Wolsey said Mass and the two sovereigns separated on Sunday, 24 June, the feast-day of St John the Baptist. The painting depicts a dragon flying overhead and this could be interpreted to mean that the Mass itself was interrupted by a mysterious event thought to be a dragon flying over the congregation. The superstitious would have viewed this as a great portent, but it was probably a firework accidentally or deliberately set off . Alternatively the dragon in the painting could be interpreted as symbolic, perhaps representing a highly romanticized Salamander (the symbol of Francis) or a portent of doom, signifying that for all its glamour, the summit was to prove largely fruitless. The sermon was read by Richard Pace, an intimate friend of Erasmus. Wolsey gave a general indulgence for all present.

Catherine of Aragon was noted to attend some events, including a joust, wearing costume in Spanish fashion. Her Spanish hair style, with a plait of hair encased in jewelled tranzado coif would have appeared very different to English and French women. This clothing choice at the Field of the Cloth of Gold emphasized her affinity with Spain and advocacy for Spanish policy. In England her clothes were not always made in this Spanish fashion.[11]

This meeting made a great impression on contemporaries, but its political results were very minor.[5] While the carefully established rules of the tournament stated that the two kings would not compete against each other, Henry surprisingly challenged Francis in a wrestling match, but it turned sour for Henry when he quickly lost.[12]

Relations between the two countries worsened soon after the event when Cardinal Wolsey arranged an alliance with Charles V, who declared war on France later that year commencing the Italian War of 1521–26.

A record of the list of participants survives in at least two places: in the Rutland Papers[3] and in the Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of King Henry VIII,[13] catalogued as Letters indented specifying, in accordance with the treaty of 12 March 1519, the number and rank of the lords, ladies and gentlemen to attend the King and Queen at the interview with Francis I. The latter source lists the following:

• G. P. R. James, the British novelist, dramatized the meeting in his second novel, Darnley: or, The Field of the Cloth of Gold (1830).
• The Showtime Series The Tudors dramatized the meeting in its first season (2007).
• The plot of Magnus Mills' 2015 novel entitled The Field of the Cloth of Gold, echoes elements of the meeting.
• The hit open-air historical night show Kynren features a scene based on the Field of the Cloth of Gold.
• The Starz Series The Spanish Princess includes a fictionalized version of the meeting in its second season (2020.) Charles V of Spain is erroneously shown attending the summit at the invitation of his aunt, Catherine of Aragon, as she wants to convince Henry VIII to betroth six-year-old Princess Mary to the twenty-year-old Charles rather than the two-year-old son of Francis I of France.
• In Marcel Proust's work, Swann's Way, he references the "Field of the Cloth of Gold" during a scene when the narrator meets Gilberte: "She [Gilberte] was in fact summoning me to cross the snowy lawn to her camp, to 'take the field,' which the sun, by casting over it a rosy gleam, the metallic lustre of old and worn brocades, had turned into a Field of the Cloth of Gold." Remembrance of Things Past, vol. 1, Swann's Way, Marcel Proust, p. 433, First Vintage Books edition, 1982.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Field of Cloth of Gold.

• Field of the Cloth of Gold on In Our Time at the BBC
• Nichols, John Gough, ed., The Chronicle of Calais, Camden Society (1846), 19–29, 77–90 documents and eyewitness accounts

• Detailed description of the image from Alecto Historical Editions – Publications Group

50°51′8.28″N 1°55′22.44″E