FIELD-MOUSE, the popular designation of such mouse-like British rodents as are not true or “house” mice. The term thus includes the long-tailed field mouse, Mus (Micromys) sylvaticus, easily recognized by its white belly, and sometimes called the wood-mouse; and the two species of short-tailed field-mice, Microtus agrestis and Evotomys glareolus, together with their representatives in Skomer island and the Orkneys (see [Mouse] and [Vole]).
FIELD OF THE CLOTH OF GOLD, the French Camp du drap d’or, the name given to the place between Guînes and Ardres where Henry VIII. of England met Francis I. of France in June 1520. 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 by this meeting. Before the castle of Guînes a temporary palace, covering an area of nearly 12,000 sq. yds., was erected for the reception of the English king. It was decorated in the most sumptuous fashion, and like the chapel, served by thirty-five priests, was furnished with a profusion of golden ornaments. 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, tents to the number of 2800 were erected for less distinguished visitors, and the whole scene was one of the greatest animation. Ladies gorgeously clad, and knights, showing by their dress and bearing their anxiety to revive the glories and the follies of the age of chivalry, jostled mountebanks, mendicants and vendors of all kinds.
Journeying from Calais Henry reached his headquarters at Guînes on the 4th of 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 Doré, a spot midway between the two places, on the 7th. The following days were taken up with tournaments, in which both kings took part, banquets and other entertainments, and after Wolsey had said mass the two sovereigns separated on the 24th. This meeting made a great impression on contemporaries, but its political results were very small.
The Ordonnance for the Field is printed by J.S. Brewer in the Calendar of State Papers, Henry VIII. vol. iii. (1867). See also J.S. Brewer, Reign of Henry VIII. (1884).
FIELDS, JAMES THOMAS (1817-1881), American publisher and author, was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on the 31st of December 1817. At the age of seventeen he went to Boston as clerk in a bookseller’s shop. Afterwards he wrote for the newspapers, and in 1835 he read an anniversary poem entitled “Commerce” before the Boston Mercantile Library Association. In 1839 he became junior partner in the publishing and bookselling firm known after 1846 as Ticknor & Fields, and after 1868 as Fields, Osgood & Company. He was the publisher of the foremost contemporary American writers, with whom he was on terms of close personal friendship, and he was the American publisher of some of the best-known British writers of his time, some of whom, also, he knew intimately. The first collected edition of De Quincey’s works (20 vols., 1850-1855) was published by his firm. As a publisher he was characterized by a somewhat rare combination of keen business acumen and sound, discriminating literary taste, and as a man he was known for his geniality and charm of manner. In 1862-1870, as the successor of James Russell Lowell, he edited the Atlantic Monthly. In 1871 Fields retired from business and from his editorial duties, and devoted himself to lecturing and to writing. Of his books the chief were the collection of sketches and essays entitled Underbrush (1877) and the chapters of reminiscence composing Yesterdays with Authors (1871), in which he recorded his personal friendship with Wordsworth, Thackeray, Dickens, Hawthorne and others. He died in Boston on the 24th of April 1881.
His second wife, Annie Adams Fields (b. 1834), whom he married in 1854, published Under the Olive (1880), a book of verses; James T. Fields: Biographical Notes and Personal Sketches (1882); Authors and Friends (1896); The Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe (1897); and Orpheus (1900).