Note (back) — Chapter IV

In conveying the news to Wolsey, Tunstall begged him to urge Henry "to refrain from his first passions" and "to draw his foot out of the affair as gently as if he perceived it not, giving good words for good words which they yet give us, thinking our heads to be so gross that we perceive not their abuses".[235] Their persistent advances to Charles had, he thought, done them more harm than good; let the King shut his purse in time, and he would soon have Charles and the Emperor again at his feet.[236] Tunstall was ably seconded by Dr. William Knight, who thought it would be foolish for England to attempt to undo the Treaty of Noyon; it contained within itself the seeds of its own dissolution. Charles would not wait to marry Francis's daughter, and then the breach would come.[237] Henry and Wolsey had the good sense to act on this sound advice. Maximilian, Francis and Charles formed at Cambrai a fresh league for the partition of Italy,[238] but they were soon at enmity and too much involved with their own affairs to think of the conquest of others. Disaffection was rife in Spain, where a party wished Ferdinand, Charles's brother, to be King.[239] If Charles was to retain his Spanish kingdoms, he must visit them at once. He could not go unless England provided the means. His request for a loan was graciously accorded and his ambassadors were treated with magnificent courtesy.[240] "One day," says Chieregati,[241] the papal envoy in England, "the King sent for these ambassadors, and kept them to dine with him privately in his chamber with the Queen, a very unusual proceeding. After dinner he took to singing and playing on every musical instrument, and exhibited a part of his very excellent endowments. At length he commenced dancing," and, continues another narrator, "doing marvellous things, both in dancing and jumping, proving himself, as he is in truth, indefatigable." On another day there was "a most stately joust." Henry was magnificently attired in "cloth of silver with a raised pile, and wrought throughout with emblematic letters". When he had made the usual display in the lists, the Duke of Suffolk entered from the other end, with well-nigh equal array and pomp. He was accompanied by fourteen other jousters. "The King wanted to joust with all of them; but this was forbidden by the council, which, moreover, decided that each jouster was to run six courses and no more, so that the entertainment might be ended on that day.... The competitor assigned to the King was the Duke of Suffolk; and they bore themselves so bravely that the spectators fancied themselves witnessing a joust between Hector and Achilles." "They tilted," says Sagudino, "eight courses, both shivering their lances at every time, to the great applause of the spectators." Chieregati continues: "On arriving in the lists the King presented himself before the Queen and the ladies, making a thousand jumps in the air, and after tiring one horse, he entered the tent and mounted another... doing this constantly, and reappearing in the lists until the end of the jousts". Dinner was then served, amid a scene of unparalleled splendour, and Chieregati avers that the "guests remained at table for seven hours by the clock". The display of costume on the King's part was equally varied and gorgeous. On one occasion he wore "stiff brocade in the Hungarian fashion," on another, he "was dressed in white damask in the Turkish fashion, the above-mentioned robe all embroidered with roses, made of rubies and diamonds"; on a third, he "wore royal robes down to the ground, of gold brocade lined with ermine"; while "all the rest of the Court glittered with jewels and gold and silver, the pomp being unprecedented".