The Tudors

Henry VIII Despite his victories for the honour of his crown and the defence of the Church, Henry found that he was unable to follow up his success owing to the collapse of the antiFrench alliance in Europe which had made his invasion possible. His chief ally (and father-in-law), King Ferdinand of Aragon, was manoeuvring for peace with France. The death of Queen Anne of France, though, gave Henry the chance for revenge, as he was able to offer his younger sister, Mary, to Louis XII as a far more attractive replacement.

Ably assisted by Wolsey, who showed himself a consummate diplomat as well as a brilliant administrator, Henry certainly won the peace, though the value of his victory was reduced by the fact that the exertions of marriage to a demanding young bride brought the French king to the grave in a matter of weeks. On the whole, things had gone well enough, and Wolsey’s reward came in the form of a stream of ecclesiastical preferments. In 1514 he received in quick succession the bishoprics of Lincoln and Tournai, and then the archbishopric of York. The following year saw him add to this the Lord Chancellorship of England and a cardinal’s hat (at Henry’s request) from Pope Leo X. Wolsey was in the midst of the kaleidoscopic diplomacy of the next few years, alternately angling for war or peace at the lowest cost or the maximum profit for his king. The stunning victory of the new king of France, Francis I, at Marignano in 1515, which gave him control of northern Italy, threw Henry’s victories of 1513 into the shade and made peace the only realistic option. But at least the Treaty of London which Wolsey successfully negotiated in 1518, bringing together almost all the major international players, allowed Henry to pose as the peacemaker of Europe. Gestures like the recruitment of John Colet and Thomas More to his council enhanced this benevolent image, enabling him to present himself as an open-minded king prepared to give serious attention to the views of fashionable and at times critical intellectuals.

Not that peace was Henry’s real intention. He paid lip service to the treaty’s proposal for a European crusade against the Ottoman Turks, who were steadily extending their hold over the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean. And peace between Christian nations was the theme of one of history’s most famous summit meetings, the Field of Cloth of Gold, near Calais, where Henry VIII met Francis I in person in June 1520. Yet beneath the genial gallantry and conspicuous consumption which filled three weeks of that summer so pleasurably, the real political tensions were building up. Henry’s mortification at being cleverly thrown by Francis in a wrestling bout said more about their relationship than all the outward show. Even as he was going through the motions of international peace and harmony at the Field of Cloth of Gold, he was secretly negotiating with the new Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, for a renewal of hostilities. War recommenced for England with a raid from Calais into Normandy during the autumn of 1522, followed by a more substantial but no more successful campaign in Picardy in 1523. By now, the expenses of war were pressing heavily on the English people, and objections to taxation were voiced in the Parliament of 1523. Henry’s ally, Charles V, shouldered the burden of the war in 1524, but his stunning victory at Pavia in February 1525, which reversed the results of Marignano ten years before, aroused Henry’s martial spirit once more. Unfortunately for him, his people had reached the end of their 43