The Easter of 1518, the French Queen and her husband were ordered to the Court at Abingdon,[ [479] whither Henry had fled from the sweating sickness, out of the region of the daily death-roll. Suffolk wrote to Wolsey[ [480] to know how the French Queen was to be ordered in her coming to the King, "the which shall not fail to be followed." Mary was always delighted to be at Court, and by reason of her[ [481] Henry allowed Suffolk to remain till St George's Day. This was an opportunity for the Duke by protestation to clear himself of the slur cast on him by his reported private dealings with the French, and after he had received the sacrament on Easter Day,[ [482] he went to Sir Richard Pace, Wolsey's secretary with the King, and said he had been accused as untrue to the King's Grace as well in accepting a protection offered him by France, as in putting the French orators, on their being last in England, in comfort of the restitution of Tournay. It was all untrue. Pace listened and reported, but nothing happened, save that Suffolk remained at Court with his wife, and when Henry went to Woodstock Manor, they both went with him. Henry here indulged his passion for music to the extent of having the organs in the parish church repaired and taken to the manor house by two men had down from London for the purpose, and Dionysius Memo charmed the thoughts of the sickness out of his mind. Mary fell ill there and could not be moved, and her husband wrote to Wolsey to apologize for their over-staying their invitation. "The chief cause[ [483] of my writing unto your Grace at this time is to advertise your Grace that the French Queen cannot depart the Court so soon as was appointed, for, Sir, it hath pleased God to visit her with an ague, the which has taken her Grace every third day four times very sharp, but by the grace of God she shall shortly recover. For, Sir, the King's Grace's physicians take marvellous good heed unto her Grace, and also especially his Grace comforts her so like a good and loving sovereign and brother that it takes away a great part of her pain." Before she was able to be moved, Suffolk again urged his cause on Wolsey, telling Pace of the most faithful love and servitude he intended to use towards the Cardinal's Grace during his life, and Wolsey evidently wrote to him a letter of comfort, promising to help him[ [484] "to obtain his purpose to his reasonable desires." In October Mary, now quite recovered from her ague, was again in her element, for a brilliant party of French nobles came over for the signing of the general peace, against which was put the delivery to the French of Tournay, and for the marriage of the Princess Mary to the Dauphin of France. They were a constant pageant to the Londoners, for they changed their silken clothes, "the new fashion garment called a shemew,"[ [485] every day, and rode about the city on mules in companies, a thing no Englishman ever did. But then in Paris, the city of horses and mules, the mud and dirt was such that no man could walk, and the Parisians did not make their river their highway as did the people of London. Mary's old friend Bonnivet was at the head of the embassy, and with him "many young fresh gallants of the Court of France," who were not concerned in the treaty-making, but "danced and passed the time in the Queen's chamber with ladies and gentlewomen." On October 3 the general peace was declared in St Paul's, after Mass celebrated by Wolsey with extraordinary magnificence. The King invited the whole company to dine at the Bishop of London's house, and afterwards they all went to sup with the Cardinal at Durham House[ [486] on the Strand, where was served a supper "the like of which was never given either by Cleopatra or Caligula, the whole banquetting hall being so decorated with huge vases of gold and silver that I [the Venetian Ambassador] fancied myself in the tower of Chosroes, where the monarch caused divine honour to be paid to him." Then Henry and Mary, and Suffolk and Anne Carew, and Bessie Blount and Sir Harry Guildford, with other lords and ladies, appeared as mummers dancing, and "after performing certain dances in their own fashion, they took off their visors: the two leaders were the King and Queen-dowager of France, and all the others were lords and ladies, who seated themselves apart from the tables and were served with countless dishes of confections and delicacies." Then dancing began for those who liked, and play for those who preferred that, "large bowls filled with ducats and dice being placed on the table for such as liked to gamble," and after all the company had departed Henry remained to play high with the Frenchmen. Two days after followed the wedding of the little Princess to the Dauphin at Greenwich, when in front of Katharine and the French Queen, beside the throne, stood the baby who never cried, clad in cloth of gold, with a cap of black velvet on her head adorned with many jewels. She wanted to kiss Bonnivet, for she thought he was the Dauphin when he wedded her for the other baby with a little ring set with a big diamond, juxta digitum puellæ.
The Court was now gayer than ever, for Henry seemed to do nothing but amuse with pageants and hunts the French hostages exacted for the keeping of the peace, and Mary took her part in all. She passed the winter months of 1519-20 at Court or at her husband's house in Southwark, and now the talk was all of the meeting of the English and the French kings. Henry had set his mind on it, had sworn he would wear his beard till they met, and Katharine, usually a silent spectator of political doings, had set hers on a meeting with her nephew Charles of Spain, now the Emperor Charles V. She found she could not prevent the interview with Francis, but she did persuade her husband, and possibly Mary here joined her importunities to hers, to shave his beard. The news was carried to Louise de Savoie, who had to console herself with the reflection that "the love of the kings was not in their beards but in their hearts." A good understanding with Francis meant to Mary an assured income, and on the question of the interview she may have been at variance with her sister-in-law. The Court moved to Croydon to Sir Nicholas Carew's place, in February, and Mary went with them, but here she was taken ill of her "old disease," and would not let her husband from her side, as he writes to Wolsey on March 16, 1520.
"Please it, your lordship,[ [487] so it is that I have knowledge of your pleasure by my servant Lacy that I should ascertain your lordship of the number of such persons, as well men as women, as should give their attendance upon the French Queen at her giving her attendance upon the King's Grace in his coming to Calais. And also the number of the horses that should be requisite for the said French Queen and for her said servants. My lord, accordingly I have so avised you in the bill here enclosed the number as well of the said persons as of their horses. Wherefore the said French Queen and I doth most heartily desire your lordship to take the pain to order the same as you shall think shall stand most with the King's pleasure and her honour, and her Grace will be contented to follow the same. And, my lord, whereas I of a certain space have not given mine attendance upon your lordship in the King's Council according to my duty, I beseech your lordship to pardon me thereof. The cause why hath been that the said French Queen hath had, and yet hath, divers physicians with her for her old disease in her side, and as yet can not be perfectly restored to her health. And albeit I have been two times at London only to the intent to have waited on your lordship, yet her Grace at both times hath so sent for me that I might not otherwise do but return home betimes. Nevertheless her Grace is now in such good avancement that upon Tuesday or Wednesday next coming I intend, by God's grace, to wait upon your lordship. From Croydon, by your assured Charlys Suffoke."
This recurrence of the "old disease" may have been brought on by the birth of her third child, Eleanor, but there is no record of the date of this event. The doctors were successful, or else the prospect of excitement and gay doings worked a cure, for there is no doubt she was restored to her usual frail health when the meeting between the two kings was in near preparation. Mary "made great cost on the apparel" of her ladies and gentlewomen, and doubtless her own gowns were as magnificent as befitted the sister of Henry. But first Katharine was to have her desire, and Mary was to see the man whose name she had borne in her girlhood for six years. On his way back from Spain to be crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle, Charles V. had arranged to meet Henry before the latter crossed the Channel in May, but north-easterly winds kept him at Corunna for three weeks, and he could only snatch a hurried four days' visit to his aunt and uncle at Canterbury, where the English Court was on its way to Calais. There is a legend to the effect that Mary's beauty on this occasion so affected Charles that he was cast into melancholy at the thought of having lost her as his wife, but it is doubtful, to say the least, that he was moved by anything deeper than natural curiosity to see the woman who had jilted him in his youth. No doubt Mary emulated her brother's attitude when he was told that he had no chance of the imperial crown, for which he had been Charles' rival, and said now, as he did then, that she was better as she was. This pale-faced, silent, sombre young man, busy about the realities of government, was far less to her taste than her rubicund, good-natured husband, her lord and servant, over whom she could queen it in Tudor fashion when the occasion served. The maker of the legend knew more of the hearts of princesses than of emperors, and Mary, true to her upbringing, wore, no doubt, the pretty gowns she had had made for the meeting with the French Court, and would have been gratified had she seen the faintest desire in the eyes of her former suitor. It may have been there, but it found no accredited chronicler.
On June 1 the whole Court crossed the Channel, and four days afterwards rode from Calais to the camp at Guisnes, where the sun glittered on golden tents and roofs. There the King and Queen and Mary were lodged in the house built for them in the courtyard of the castle of Guisnes, under the roof painted and gilded by John Brown, King's painter, afterwards Alderman of London. Since the beginning of April Sir Nicholas Vaux and others had been busy restoring the castle to its former strength, and with the help of many artists, particularly of John Raslett, Clement Urmeston, and the said John Brown, had erected this palace of pleasure. "Mr Maynn,[ [488] who dwelleth with the Bishop of Exeter, and Maister Barklye, the Black Monke and poet," were "to devise histoires and convenient raisons to florisshe the buildings and banquet house with all," and the Duke of Suffolk[ [489] was asked to lend divers of the King's arms and beasts cast in moulds, and batons of Urmeston's making for the greater ease and furtherance of the business. The time for the erecting of the house was short and the workmen laboured at high pressure, but on June 5 it stood complete, a golden casket for the best in England. The windows glittered in golden mullions, the walls were hung with golden tapestry and green and white silk, the ceilings were studded "with the King's roses"[ [490] (of which he had been so nearly disappointed by the late arrival of the artists), large and stately, set in a ground of fine gold, and between the windows were gilt bosses. The chapel,[ [491] for the service of which the rich vestments given by Henry VII. to Westminster were borrowed, had a ceiling of blue and silver, but all other ornaments and furnishings were of cloth of gold or of gold metal. Jewels blazed everywhere, in vestments, vessels, hangings; neither was the red and white rose absent here. In the courtyard, claret, hypocras, and water flowed all day from a statue of Bacchus, and silver cups were lying by to drink from; but outside, between the gate and the courtyard, was a quiet, green bowery maze like "the garden of Morganna la Fée of the days of the knights errant."[ [492] The Earl of Dorset had been sent over to superintend the building of the lists and the stands, galleries they were called, after Wolsey's "plat," but the churchman had to give way here to the jouster, and some of Wolsey's arrangements were declared to be dangerous, and were altered accordingly. The tree of honour, on which were to be hung the shields of the kings as challengers, was a hawthorn twined with a raspberry, and was made in England by nimble English fingers. Margaret Davy and her girls made 3000 hawthorn flowers and buds of silk, and the "framboser" had 1800 flowers and 2400 red satin fruits. "The body of this royal albypene or whitethorn was 22 feet long, wrapped in cloth of gold: the thirteen principal frambosers were also wrapped in fine green cloth of gold: also the roots wrapped after a kind in cloth of gold."[ [493] Before this wonderful production Francis and Henry had the usual amicable dispute of precedence, and it ended in Henry's insisting on the French King's shield being hung on the right side, while his was hung at the same height on the left.
Before the jousts began on Monday, June 11, there were visits of ceremony, and on Sunday the 10th the two kings exchanged visits to each other's wives, and Francis was received in the most gracious manner possible by Katharine and Mary, while Claude was pleased and soothed by Henry's gentle manners. Francis was delighted with the glistening show at Guisnes, just as Henry at Ardres was pleased with Queen, ladies (in passing whom "il allait tout à son aise pour les voir à son plaisir)," dinner, everything, in short, down to the velvet carpet in the high room. Monday began the lists, and the queens, all three, met in the glazed galleries reserved for them and talked comfortably out of the roaring wind, while below their husbands did marvels, in spite of the blast, which would hardly let a lance be couched. Many of the ladies had no French and many no English, and those who knew both languages had to interpret for the others. On the following Sunday, Queen Mary dined with Queen Claude, who was in miserable health, while Henry, who had ridden over with her, dressed as Hercules, invited the Admiral of France and other noblemen to share his table in the French camp. After dinner there was the usual dancing and disguising, and it is marvellous what pleasure the Tudor Court got out of "dressing up." Now Henry dressed up as a lanzknecht, and, masked, he swaggered
into Claude's presence as pleased as a child. There were musical rivalries too between the courts, but in this England easily bore the palm, for Henry's Court was notorious for its melody, and the Duke of Alençon could not give the King greater pleasure than to promise to send him his servant who played on the clavichord. On Saturday, the 23rd, the two kings, "all clinquant, all in gold," closed the lists, and in a semi-open chapel in the camp they and their Queens attended Mass, and such was their politeness that "when God was shown at the said Mass, which was with great honour, reverence and devotion," and the pax presented, neither would kiss it first. It remained unkissed, for the Queens, too, had the same difficulty, which they solved after many curtseys by kissing each other instead. Then came a dinner, and the sexes were divided—the Kings dined in one gallery, the Queens in their own. "Kings and Queens," remarks the chronicler, "always dined at home before coming to the banquets, and only conversed while admiring the service and the meats. The legates, cardinals and prelates dined in another room and drank and ate sans fiction." The next day the Kings met in the lists and reluctantly said good-bye, exchanging many presents, as did their Queens and nobles. A church, they decided, must be built on this auspicious spot, to be called "La chapelle de Nôtre Dame de la Paix," and the chronicler adds a doubtful prayer, "Dieu par sa Grace permette la paix être durable, Amen."[ [494]
Then followed the meeting with Charles V. and the Lady Margaret of Savoy, and Mary saw for the first time the woman whose fortune had so often touched hers, for Margaret might have been her step-mother or her aunt, and had been in love with her husband. Suffolk seems to have lost his love for France by now, and, indeed, though French fashions were the order in the Court, and Henry went to the interview with the Emperor in a doublet and cloak given to him by Francis, the King's retinue were more at their ease in the Court of the King of Spain than they had been at Ardres. If servants' talk is any indication of their masters' opinions, then Suffolk must have been hot against the French alliance, for his servants could "not hold their tongues from speaking against France."[ [495] If this be so, Suffolk was now definitely in opposition to Wolsey. The trial and death of the Duke of Buckingham, undoubtedly Wolsey's work, for wanting to make himself King, shocked the whole Court and increased this bitterness against the Cardinal, long felt by the older nobles. Buckingham had merely said what they all felt, that the King was surrounded by boys and that no place was given to men who had experience in counsel. But then Wolsey had a policy, and hated time wasted in opposition, and boys did not oppose. Henry was still a far cry from his final attitude when he tried, condemned and executed all in a breath, but even now the wrath of the King meant death. All chose rather dishonour, and Buckingham's peers to a man, and the Duke of Norfolk with bitter tears, condemned him on puerile evidence for a crime which in their hearts they had all committed. Buckingham was no favourite, a quick-tempered man with a bitter tongue, and Mary would be loyal to her family, and without doubt took her brother's view, and approved heartily Suffolk's "I say that he is guilty," for she was indignant at this attempt to wrest the crown from her family, and no other aspect of the case would be presented to her. Neither she nor her husband disdained to profit in the grants[ [496] from the Duke's estates, which followed his execution and their confiscation.
The peace between England and France was of short duration, and by 1523 Henry was keenly interested in fishing for a crown in the waters of France troubled by the Bourbon rebellion. One reason for war given in the Parliament of 1523[ [497] was the injury done to the King's sister, the Queen-dowager of France, in withholding her dower. Mary was parted from Suffolk, who was made Earl Marshal and sent to command the English army in France, which, in conjunction with the Burgundians, was to march on Paris. Suffolk, by refusing to follow Henry's senseless plan of besieging Boulogne, and "by winning the passage of the Somme and unresisted entry into the bowels of France,"[ [498] encouraged the King to think there was likelihood of his obtaining his ancient right. But there was the usual difficulty of joint arms, and the Burgundians, unpaid by Margaret, refused to go beyond the Somme, "limoners"[ [499] (transport horses) were unobtainable in the winter, and there were no provisions, so that the army "dissolved and skaled," and Suffolk came to Calais in December with small thanks.[ [500] He was kept waiting there a long time with his captains "till their friends had sued to the King for their return," for Wolsey and the King had both wrung the uttermost penny from the country and the King's treasury to win the crown of France, and bitter was Henry's disappointment. "But at the last all things were taken in good part, and they well received and in great love, favor and familiaritie with the Kyng."[ [501]
The life of Queen Mary when not at Court or at her husband's house in Southwark was spent chiefly in Suffolk and Norfolk, for when provisions at Westhorpe, their chief seat, gave out, she toured through the counties from house to house and from abbey to abbey, in imitation of the royal custom. Pic-nics and hunting parties were her diversions, and she evidently delighted in the kindly and courteous treatment she always received from the monks.[ [502] Her household was a large one; in 1527 it consisted of two knights and one esquire, forty men, and seven gentlewomen,[ [503] and this naturally did not include domestic servants. She had her chamberlain, her vice-chamberlain, treasurer, steward, and comptroller, while her husband had his officers and his council, and ruled county affairs. Mary was beloved by the country-folk and adored by her servants, in whose welfare she took the keenest interest, as is attested by the numerous letters written by her to Wolsey and others in their favour. She was not without domestic troubles, for her husband's former wife, Dame Margaret Mortimer,[ [504] who owned Somerton in Suffolk, had had to appeal to the Duke for protection against her daughter Anne, whose second husband, Robert Browne, wanted to get hold of Lady Mortimer's possessions. The affair, which in some scenes was melodramatic enough, possibly led to questions about the validity of Mary's own marriage and the legitimacy of her children. This was in 1524, and next year the King openly acknowledged his illegitimate son by Mistress Bessie Blount, and made him premier Duke in the kingdom, with the title of Duke of Richmond. At the same time he created Lord Henry Brandon, Mary's son, Earl of Lincoln.[ [505] Then came the "King's secret matter," to which her husband was privy, in the summer of 1527,[ [506] and of which she was probably not ignorant. This was Henry's tardy consciousness of guilt at having married his brother's wife, which increased in intensity as his love and desire for Anne Boleyn grew stronger. What large issues were to hang on the fact that Anne was not as easy as the other ladies at Court. Had she but been a Bessie Blount! Mary was alarmed at this upsetment of all social status, and sent to Rome for a bull from Clement VII. to attest the legitimacy of her children's birth. It was exhibited before the Bishop of Norwich by Humphrey Wingfield, the Duke's cousin, on August 20, 1529.[ [507] Scruples of conscience being fashionable, it rests on these the facts of the annulling of Suffolk's marriage with Lady Mortimer and his resumption of Anne Browne. Money matters, too, were a constant worry all her life long. Apart from the fact that payment to Mary might flow in peace and was dammed in war, the officials who farmed her dower lands in Saintonge and elsewhere did not pay over the proceeds as had been arranged, and she was continually hampered by lack of money, while her representatives in France during the wars were imprisoned and put to ransom.[ [508] When the general peace was signed with France in 1518 Wolsey did not forget Mary's interests; in fact, he was not allowed to do so, for Dr Denton, the French Queen's almoner, daily waited on him to represent her interests. Once before they had been omitted "for lack of her book,"[ [509] and Denton was there to see that this did not happen again. Wolsey gave him all heed in the matter, and the dot was set forth by the English ambassadors in Paris. In 1525 the capture of Francis at Pavia left France without a king, and gave the English a chance to open profitable negotiations with Louise de Savoie,[ [510] the Regent. The restitution of Mary's dowry, with payment of arrears, was made a necessary article in the truce. Wolsey even went the length of demanding the gold plate and jewels, but Louise was indignant, and repeated what had been so often said, that Mary had been married according to the customs of France, by which movables were the common property of man and wife, and descend to the survivor, but only on payment of debts, and Mary had repudiated her responsibility for these. Also "the miroir," the most excellent jewel in Christendom, had been sent to England, and the English might well be satisfied with this. However, Louise gave a satisfactory promise that Mary's dowry should be paid at Calais twice yearly in May and November, and that arrears should be paid up at the rate of £5000 per annum. There was a good deal of haggling about who should farm the dower lands; the French Court wanted to appoint the officers, but Mary demanded the right to do this, and it was conceded. She wrote to Wolsey on the matter, and, if words mean anything, the letter shows the kindly terms on which she was with the Cardinal.