The Field of Cloth of Gold

First published in 1969, The Field of Cloth of Gold is a study of a central event in the history of England and France. In the summer of 1520, Henry VIII and Francis I, with their courts, met in the open fields near Calais for a brief interlude of unparalleled extravagance, an exhibition of all that was most dazzling in courtly amusement. The diplomatic exchanges, which were the official context of the meeting, were lost in a blaze of entertainment and sport. The cloth of gold, in costume, tent, and pavilion, which gave the meeting its name, has excited imagination then and since. Jousts, tournaments, music, masques, and feasting all beguiled the time, while Wolsey strove behind the scenes for some diplomatic ‘coup’.

Perhaps the intention of the meeting was to deceive—to embody and set forth in sumptuous and dramatic guise an Anglo-French understanding which hardly existed. Gathering clouds in Europe already obscured the hopes of peace, and all too soon the tortuous negotiations of England and France were submerged in the greater struggle between Hapsburg and Valois, Reform and Counter-Reform. The 1520 meeting is a last flourish in the history of Christendom undivided. The present work is based on the abundant first-hand evidence of an event which seemed at the time one of the great moments in history. Dr Russell presents the whole story as a commentary on the diplomacy, society, and amusements of the time.