This tournament, in the open space between the ancient Palace and the Abbey, was magnificent in the extreme. Never before had there been seen in England so many silken banners, canopies, and tents of cloth of silver and gold. Queen Katherine of Aragon watched the tilting from a pavilion of crimson damask, embroidered with golden pomegranates, the emblems of her native country. Beside her sat Princess Mary, a pink-and-white beauty, with hair of amazing length shimmering down her back, and held in position by a band of jewels that encircled her graceful head. Behind the princess many great ladies occupied the roomy chairs of state—the Countess of Westmorland and her lovely Nevill daughters, the Lady Paulet, the Lady of Exeter, the Lady de Mowbray, the Duchess of Norfolk, the Lady Elizabeth Boleyn, sister of the Duke of Norfolk and mother of the future Queen Anne, the “old Lady” of Oxford, and the Princess Margaret Plantagenet, that fated Countess of Salisbury who in after years was hacked to death by order of her most affectionate nephew, King Henry VIII, now in the full bloom of early manhood. There was a great nodding of glittering hoods and rustling of silken gowns, and whispering and tittering amongst this bevy of high and mighty dames, unto whom many a gallant knight and lordly sire conveyed his homage and the latest gossip of the day. Over the multi-coloured crowd fell the golden haze of a lovely October afternoon. Farther away from the throng of lords and ladies, the hearty citizens of London pressed against the barriers, whilst rich burghers, and British and foreign merchants, with their wives and daughters, filled the special seats allotted to them, that commanded a finer view of the towers of Westminster than did the richer canopies of the court folk. Itinerant vendors of sweetmeats, apples, nuts and cakes, hawked their wares up and down the free spaces, whilst ballad-mongers sang—or rather shouted—their ditties, just as their descendants do, whenever there is a show of sport or pastime in our own day. Men and maidens cheered lustily as knight after knight, armed cap-à-pie, pranced his steed before the delighted spectators, even as we parade our horses before the race at Epsom, Sandown or Ascot.
The expressed hope was, of course, that the English knights should vanquish the French noble prisoners who had been set at liberty shortly before the tilt, so that they might join in the sport. The champions among them were the Duc de Longueville and the Sire de Clermont. The trumpets sounded, a hush fell upon the noisy gathering, all eyes were turned in one direction, as two stalwart champions entered the lists. They were garbed as hermits, the one in a black satin cloak with a hood, the other in a white one. With all the punctilious observance demanded by established rule and etiquette, these hermits, who rode mighty chargers caparisoned in silver mail, advanced towards the royal pavilion and made obeisance. On a sudden, off fell their cloaks and hoods, to reveal the two handsomest men in Europe, to boot, Henry, King of England, and Charles, Duke of Suffolk, clad from head to foot in silver armour, damascened in gold by Venetian armourers. Long white plumes flowed from the crests of their gilded helmets. Behind the British champions rode two other fine fellows, bearing standards on which figured in golden letters the motto: “Who can hold that will away?” On reading this motto, the fair bent, the one to the other, to discuss its meaning. Did it refer to the young King of Castile and Flanders; or to the fact that Charles Brandon, as it was whispered about, was venturing to raise his eyes so high as to meet those of the Emperor Maximilian’s daughter, Margaret of Austria? It was said, too, that the Lady Mary, the king’s sister, liked not the motto; for even then she had conceived a wild though secret passion for the splendid son of a Suffolk squire.
The English (God and St. George be praised!) won the day; the Duc de Longueville was defeated “right honourably,” and so, too, was the Sire de Clermont. The silken kerchief, the gilded cup and the wreath of laurel were for Charles Brandon; and the princess, the Beauty Queen of the day, presented them to him as he knelt before her. Katherine of Aragon bestowed the second prize, a cup of gold, on her husband, who had vanquished Clermont.
Immediately after the jousts, Mary Tudor learnt, to her exasperation, that her hand was destined, not for the Spanish prince, the future Emperor Charles V, nor for the Suffolk gentleman, but for the decrepit and doomed King of France. She was too much of a Tudor to accept her fate with meekness, and King Henry soon found he had set himself a difficult task to conciliate his sister, and obtain her consent to what was even then considered a monstrous match. She swore she would not marry his French majesty, unless her brother gave her his solemn promise that she should marry whom she listed when she became a widow. The king answered that, by God! she might do as she listed, if only she pleased him this time. He urged that King Louis was prematurely aged, and not likely, so he had been told, to live many months. Besides, he was passing rich, and the princess would have more diamonds, pearls and rubies than she had hairs on her head. Henry even appealed to her patriotism. England needed peace; the prolonged wars between France and England had exhausted both, and it was deemed advisable that the French should be made to understand, by this happy event, that the enmity which had existed so long had ceased at last. It was to be a thorough entente cordiale on both sides. None the less, when they got to know of it, both the English and the French cracked many an indelicate jest over this unnatural alliance. The bride, it will be remembered, was still in her teens, and beautiful: the bridegroom-elect was fifty-three and looked twenty years older, the most disfiguring of his complication of loathsome diseases being, as we have seen, elephantiasis, which had swollen his face and head so enormously that when, on her arrival in France, Mary first beheld her future consort, she drew back, with an unconcealed cry of horror. For some days Mary seemed obdurate, despite Henry’s promise that, on the death of the French king, she might marry whom she listed. But at last she allowed her brother’s persuasive arguments to prevail, so that, dazzled by the prospect of becoming the richest and grandest princess in Europe, she finally, but reluctantly, consented to marry King Louis.
The “treaty of marriage” between Louis XII and Mary Tudor was signed at London by the representatives of both parties on August 7 (1514); and the marriage by proxy, according to the custom of the time, took place in the Grey Friars’ Church at Greenwich, before Henry VIII, Katherine of Aragon, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the Bishops of Winchester and Durham, and others, on August 13. The recently liberated Duc de Longueville represented the French king, whereas the Duke of Orleans gave the bride the ring; afterwards the primate pronounced a brief panegyric of the young queen’s virtues, and those of her august spouse, whom he described as the best and greatest prince in Europe.
The bride left England’s shores on October 2, after a tearful leave-taking of her brother and sister-in-law, King Henry and Queen Katherine. The chronicles of those far-off times, ever delighting in giving the minutest details, inform us that she was “terrible sea-sick” before she arrived at Boulogne, where a pious pageant had been prepared to greet her. Above the drawbridge of the port, suspended in mid-air, was a ship, painted with garlands of the roses of England mingled with the fleur-de-lys of France, and bearing the inscription, Un Dieu, Un Roy, Une Foy, Une Loy: “One God, One King, One Faith, One Law.” In this ship stood a young girl—“dressed like the Virgin Mary,” as the chronicler tells us—together with two winged children, supposed to be angels. The young lady represented Notre Dame de Boulogne, the patroness of the city, and bore the civic gift, destined for the princess, consisting of a silver swan, whose neck opened, to disclose a golden heart weighing sixty écus. So violently raged the storm, that the heavy vessel, instead of riding gracefully into the harbour, stuck on a sandbank, and the future Queen of France, dripping with sea-water, had to be carried ashore by Sir Christopher Gervase. On reaching land, she was met by the Heir Presumptive of her new dominions, François, Duc de Valois, the Dukes of Alençon and Bourbon, and the Counts de Vendôme, de Saint-Pol, and de Guise, supported by the Abbots of Notre Dame and of St. Wulmer, accompanied by their monks wearing copes, and bearing, enclosed in gold and silver shrines, all the relics from their respective churches. In the presence of this goodly company, the ship containing the aforesaid representative of Our Lady of Boulogne was lowered to the ground, and the young lady addressed the princess “en rhétoricque,” otherwise French verse, welcoming her to Boulogne, and presenting her with the city’s gift. Mary then proceeded to the Church of Notre Dame, and after praying there awhile, she was, so says our chronicler, “agreeably occupied in admiring all the rich and royal offerings that formed the principal attraction of the Church.” And gorgeous and wonderful indeed must it have been, before the vandal greed of King Henry’s troops had sacked the shrine. The Treasury contained nearly a hundred gold and silver reliquaries, eighteen great silver images, most of them containing relics, “eleven hearts and a great number of arms and legs, both in gold and silver” (votive offerings), twenty dresses and twelve mantles of very precious stuffs, “for the use of the holy Image.” The altar of the Blessed Virgin was especially magnificent. Seven lamps, four in silver and the rest of gold, burnt incessantly before the Madonna, who held in one hand a golden heart, whilst the other supported a figure of the Infant Jesus, who clasped in His chubby hand a bouquet of “golden flowers,” amongst which was “a carbuncle of a prodigious bigness”; the pillars and columns round this altar were sheathed in “blades of silver”: “in short,” says the chronicler, “everything which was in this chapel could challenge comparison with the richest and most renowned objects that antiquity ever had.” Such was the splendour that enchanted and bewildered our Princess Mary, who after offering to Our Lady of Boulogne a gift consisting of “a great arm of silver, enamelled with the arms of France and England, and weighing eight marcs,” proceeded on her way to Abbeville, near which city she was met, in the forest of Ardres, by King Louis, mounted on a charger and attended by a glittering train of lords and attendants.
To the young and beautiful Mary, who had only just recovered from a violent sea-sickness, this first meeting with her future lord and master must indeed have been painful. As she afterwards admitted, she had never before seen a human being so horribly ugly. It is not therefore to be wondered at that she should have uttered the exclamation of horror above mentioned. King Louis, for his part, was in the best of humours; never merrier. He was very plainly dressed, and was evidently bent on correcting, by his munificence and good temper, whatever unfavourable impression might be created by his unfortunate appearance. Before arriving at the place of meeting, Princess Mary had changed her travelling gown for a weighty robe covered with goldsmith’s work “like unto a suit of armour.” So awkward and stiff was this costume, that when the princess, in accordance with etiquette, attempted to descend from her litter to bend the knee before her royal spouse, she found she was unable to do so, and was in great distress until the deformed king gallantly begged her not to attempt so complicated a manœuvre, and won a grateful smile from his embarrassed bride.
The marriage took place on Monday, October 9 (1514), at Abbeville, in the fine old Church of St. Wolfran, and is one of the most gorgeous functions recorded of those pageant-loving times. Something mysterious must have happened at Abbeville, for, according to the Bishop of Asti, the marriage was consummated by proxy—a weird ceremony in which the Marquis de Rothelin (representing King Louis), fully dressed in a red suit, except for one stocking, hopped into the bride’s bed and touched her with his naked leg; and the “marriage was then declared consummated.” Possibly, considering the rickety state of his health, this was all the married life, in its more intimate form, that, fortunately, Mary Tudor ever knew so long as Louis XII lived. As an earnest of his affection, however, the sickly king presented his spouse with a collection of jewels a few days after the marriage, amongst these being “a ruby almost two inches long and valued at ten thousand marks.”
In the meantime, there had been some unpleasantness between the French monarch and the Earl of Worcester, the English ambassador, about the presence in France of one of the queen’s maids, Mistress Joan Popincourt. The question of her fitness to accompany the princess was first raised before Mary left our shores, to reach its culminating point whilst the new queen was resting at Boulogne, at which time King Louis (then at Abbeville) had an interview with Worcester on the subject. The trouble is said to have originated in the fact that Mistress Popincourt had behaved herself with considerable impropriety,—at least that was the accusation the English envoy laid before his majesty of France; but if we read between the lines of the letters and documents connected with this side-plot, we learn that it was Mistress Popincourt who had first attempted to negotiate the marriage of her mistress with King Louis by means of the Duc de Longueville, whilst that nobleman was still imprisoned in the Tower of London. As the negotiations had succeeded, even through another medium, she considered herself entitled to some recompense for her share in the affair, and probably attempted to blackmail the king; at any rate, for one reason or another, he was so furious with her, that on the occasion in question, he told Worcester never to “name her any more unto me.” “I would she were burnt,” he added; “if King Henry make her to be burnt, he shall do but well and a good deed!” Mary, however, held the recalcitrant Popincourt in the highest esteem. None the less, King Louis decided that she should be there and then sent back to England, but whether with a goodly recompense to soothe her disappointment is not recorded. Maybe she, who had done so much to further the royal match, found herself better off than the other unfortunate attendants on Princess Mary, who, being dismissed after her arrival at Abbeville, were stranded, penniless. Some of these misguided ladies had, says Hall, “been at much expense to wait on her [Princess Mary] to France, and now returned destitute, which many took to heart, insomuch some died by the way returning, and some fell mad.”[23]
Evidently King Louis was determined not to have too many Englishwomen in attendance upon his wife, or, as he put it, “to spy upon his actions,” for fresh difficulties arose, even after the Popincourt incident was closed, and he and the princess had been united in matrimony. According to arrangement, certain of the queen’s ladies were to return to England forthwith, but King Louis and his English monitor, the Duke of Norfolk, settled the matter by ordering that all Mary’s train of young English gentlewomen and maidens, with the exception of the Lady Anne Boleyn[24] and of three others, were to return home. This was bad enough, but Mary was still more distressed to find that her confidential attendant and nurse, Mother Guildford, was very unceremoniously packed off with the rest. “Moder” or “Mowder” Guildford, as the queen was pleased to call her, was the wife of Sir William Guildford, controller of the royal household, who eventually stood godfather to that unfortunate Guildford Dudley who became the husband of Lady Jane Grey. If we may believe King Louis, he had certainly some justification for wishing Lady Guildford out of his sight, since she exasperated him to such an extent that he told Worcester that “rather than have such a woman about my wife, I would liever be without a wife.... Also, “he continued, “I am a sickly body, and not at all times that I would be merry with my wife like I to have any strange woman with her, but one that I am well acquainted with, afore whom I durst be merry.” The king went on to pathetically relate the story of his own and his wife’s sufferings under Lady Guildford’s iron rule. “For as soon as she came on land,” says he, “and also when I was married, Lady Guildford began to take upon her not only to rule the queen, but also that she should not come to me, but she should remain with her, nor that no lady or lord should speak with the queen but she [Lady Guildford] hear it. Withal she began to set a murmur and banding among the ladies of the French court.” The “Moder” Guildford episode induced Mary to write several letters home, one to Henry VIII and another to Wolsey, complaining of the treatment she had received with respect to the dismissal of her attendants. In these she speaks in no measured terms of the Duke of Norfolk, who, as we have seen, had the matter in hand: “I would to God,” she exclaims in the letter to Henry VIII, “that my Lord of York [Wolsey] had come with me instead of Norfolk, for then I am sure I should not have been left as I am now!” In fact, she cast the whole blame of the incident on the shoulders of the Duke of Norfolk, whom she ever afterwards disliked for his share in it. Nevertheless, “Mowder” Guildford was sent back to England, to the great distress and grief of her royal mistress, who was preparing to have a violent scene on the subject with her rickety husband, when the latter came into her chamber, accompanied by two attendants bearing a tray so heaped with rubies, diamonds and pearls, that the cloud of anger instantly passed from the queen’s brow, and her sunny smiles beamed afresh, when she heard the politic and courteous monarch say, “I have deprived you of one treasure, let me now present you with another.” And then he placed a collar of immense pearls round her neck, and taking a heap of jewels in his big hands, dropped them into her lap. “I will have no Guildfords, Popincourts, or other jades to mar my cheer or to stand betwixt me and my wife,” he continued laughingly; “but I intend to be paid for my jewels, and each kiss my wife gives me shall cost me a gem.” On this the covetous Mary kissed him several times, to the number of eight, which he counted, and punctually repaid by giving her eight enamelled buttons surrounded by large pearls. By this amorous playfulness, the astute Louis succeeded in making his queen so contented with her lot, that she presently told Worcester that “finding she was now able to do as she liked in all things,” she thought she was better without Lady Guildford, and would decline to have her back again in France. Mary not only forgave King Louis his share in the business, but personally nursed him through an attack of gout, which beset him at Abbeville, and delayed the royal departure from that town until October 31, when the quaint cavalcade resumed its journey towards St. Denis.