Game of Queens (27 page)

Matters were reaching a crucial point. At the end of April 1529 Charles's envoys in Rome presented the pope with a formal petition that the case should be tried in Rome, since Katherine of Aragon ‘would never obtain justice' in England. But on 31 May Campeggio's summons to appear at a hearing at Blackfriars went out to the king and queen.

On 14 June Henry and Katherine moved to Greenwich, a few miles downriver, in readiness. But two days later Katherine made what was in effect a pre-emptive protest, recording (in her own lodgings in the presence of two notaries), her appeal to Rome. She knew, Mendoza reported, ‘that instead of calming her husband's irritation against her, she has increased it by her act'. But she felt she had no choice.

The royal couple were summoned to make a first formal appearance at the legatine court at Blackfriars, in person or by proxy, on Friday 18 June. Henry VIII sent proxies but Katherine took everyone by surprise when she made her entrance surrounded by advisors, four bishops, and a swarm of her ladies. ‘Sadly, and with great gravity' she read the appeal to Rome she had recorded two days before. She was told that her appeal against the jurisdiction of this English court would be answered on Monday 21 June.

Katherine of Aragon had not always been a dramatic figure, but when Monday came, this was one scene she knew how to play. Henry himself spoke briefly; then Wolsey, to declare that he and Campeggio would judge the case on its merits, despite all the favours he had received from the king. Then Campeggio, formally rejecting the protest Katherine had lodged, and then the crier: ‘Katherine, Queen of England, come into the court!'

Later writers (during the reign of Katherine's daughter Mary) were fond of figuring Queen Katherine as a Patient Griselda, an endlessly suffering
mater dolorosa
. But there was method in her display of marital meekness. Setting aside the chill formality of the legal process, and rising from her seat, she crossed the floor and knelt at her husband's feet. ‘Sir, I beseech you for all the love that hath been between us, and for the love of God, let me have justice.'

Observers noted that after all her years in the country she still, under this stress, spoke in broken English; but what she said, as Wolsey's former gentleman and biographer George Cavendish recalled, was eloquent:

Take of me some pity and compassion, for I am a poor woman and a stranger born out of your dominion. I have here no assured friends, and much less impartial counsel.

Alas! Sir, wherein have I offended you, or what occasion of displeasure have I deserved? I have been to you a true, humble and obedient wife, ever conformable to your will and pleasure . . . I never grudged in word or countenance, or showed a visage or spark of discontent.

She had born the king ‘divers children, although it hath pleased God to call them out of this world'. Then came the crunch:

When ye had me at the first, I take God to be my judge, I was a true maid without touch of man. And whether it be true or no, I put it to your conscience.

If there be any just cause by the law that ye can allege against me, either of dishonesty or any other impediment to banish and put me from you, I am well content to depart to my great shame and dishonour. And if there be none, then here, I most lowly beseech you, let me remain in my former estate.

She invoked the memory of the old kings – Henry's father and her own – who had made the match. She spoke bitterly of the ‘new inventions' of this new court. She asked Henry's permission to write to Rome to which he, taken by surprise, could do nothing but agree. She rose to her feet, off the knees from which Henry had twice tried to raise her, made a low curtsey and, instead of returning to her seat, marched towards the door.

Once again the crier called to her: ‘Katherine, Queen of England, come into the court' but she did not pause: ‘it is no indifferent court for me, therefore I will not tarry'. Though the trial dragged on, with elderly witnesses describing what (they thought) had or had not happened in Katherine and Arthur's wedding bed all those years ago, the process never recovered.

The common people of England were with Katherine; the women especially. Outside the court, the French ambassador noted, ‘If the matter were to be decided by the women, the king would lose the battle, for they did not fail to encourage the queen at her entrance and departure by their cries.' But Katherine of Aragon was looking elsewhere.

Her appeal was that the case should be heard in Rome. The supporting documents were rushed over to Brussels, where Mendoza sent them on to the Vatican by express messenger. When agreement to Katherine's request was wrung from a reluctant and distraught pope, copies of the papal decision were sent back to Flanders, some for posting there, and others for Margaret of Austria to send on to Katherine.

In one meeting with Wolsey and Campeggio, Katherine warned that the king and his ministers should consider the reputation ‘of her nation and her relatives'. It was a declaration of the importance of Katherine of Aragon's blood legacy; her fortitude was perhaps inherited from her mother Isabella.

‘Remember that whatever great alliance you achieve, you must never out of some foolish pride fail to value highly your own ancestors, those from whom you are descended – to fail in that would be against right and reason', Anne de Beaujeu had said. This summer of 1529 was the one in which women were inclined to stake their claim most assertively.

 

On 5 June, as Katherine of Aragon was readying her case, Margaret of Austria's envoy to England reported that Wolsey had asked him ‘to declare on his word of honour whether he really thought the two Duchesses were in earnest' in their plans for peace. The envoy declared ‘that he could answer for one of them; as to the other, time would tell'. Margaret of Austria's meeting with Louise of Savoy was set for July, in the border town of Cambrai. All Europe was watching. Mendoza wrote to Charles V: ‘some think that the meeting of the two ladies will come to nothing' but in his humble opinion ‘it cannot do harm, even if things do not immediately turn to good'.

As the meeting at Cambrai neared, the flurry of messages on the precise stages of both ladies' journeys resembled the behind-the-scenes work of a modern summit. Louise of Savoy declared her intention of bringing her chancellor, and the women of her chamber, but none of the French nobility. As she said to Margaret of Austria's envoy, ‘You may tell my sister [Margaret] what my plans are, and that I hope we may hear of each other daily. Write also to her boldly that we must necessarily contend and argue, but that I sincerely hope it will be without anger or ill-will.'

Margaret of Austria had been warned not to go to Cambrai, for fear King François would take her prisoner but she said that ‘if any of her councillors or courtiers were afraid, they might go home'. Told that she should at least take a strong escort, she replied that ‘if she brought one single armed man in her suite, people might imagine she was going on a warlike enterprise, and not on a work of peace . . .'

Machiavelli had advised that war was of supreme importance for a ruler, but this was of course irrelevant or even damaging advice for women who could not lead their own armies into battle. But he also stressed the importance of presentation; and there they were surely even ahead of him.

20

The Ladies' Peace

Cambrai, England, July–December 1529

Women – Castiglione had written in
The Book of the Courtier
– ‘have often corrected many of men's errors'. This was the unspoken thought behind the interchange of letters between Margaret of Austria and Louise of Savoy, and this was the spirit in which they set out towards Cambrai. On Monday 5 July, Margaret of Austria was the first to arrive, carried in a magnificent litter and surrounded by twenty-four black-clad mounted archers, to take up her residence in St Aubert's Abbey. Two hours later Louise of Savoy arrived, accompanied by her daughter, Marguerite. A Venetian envoy sent back a report: Louise arrived ‘in great state being clad in black velvet, with four ladies' litters, and with her daughter the Queen of Navarre, and ladies on horseback. The Lord Chancellor preceded her and ambassadors followed . . .'

Louise of Savoy had, in the event, brought across France some leading members of her son's council and indeed her son the king, although he stayed some little distance away and spent the days hunting. Perhaps she didn't feel quite as confident in her own experience of diplomacy as did Margaret of Austria (whose nephew Charles was many miles away).

Louise had also her priests and her painter, her choristers, and the keepers of her furs and her silver. A chronicle describes the ‘triumphant' sight of the train of clergymen and ladies: ‘it stretched from our House for half the road to St Pol and after them came hackneys and mules, very well appointed'. The town, struggling to feed and lodge all these people, had laid down rules for these huge and splendid retinues: no carrying of arms and serving men required to observe a curfew.

Louise and Marguerite were taken immediately to Margaret of Austria, with whom they spent two hours, before taking up residence in the Hotel St Pol opposite. It must have been an emotional moment for Margaret and Louise, meeting after so many years. Marguerite of Navarre's official role was to act as hostage for the imperial side, to guarantee the safety of Margaret of Austria. It is unclear whether she played any more active part. By now her interests were no longer necessarily identical with those of her brother and mother's France. She had also responsibilities to her husband, whose prime goal was the restitution of that part of Navarre which Spain had annexed.

The discussions took three weeks, and took their toll on both sides. Louise of Savoy was seemingly the fragile one, retiring each night in pain from the gout that had long plagued her, but when the Venetian envoy went to visit Margaret of Austria he found her, too, ‘in bed, dressed, having a slight pain in her leg'. Margaret began by making lots of demands; she was operating from the position of strength given her by her nephew's recent victories.

All Europe was watching, nervously. England, Venice and Florence were afraid France would make a peace with Charles that would leave them in the cold. King François was edgy, writing to his mother on 17 July that since the emperor valued his friendship so low, Louise should remind him that he could be just as strong an enemy. He was desperate to get away to where his soldiers were assembled for the war he still believed was coming but he dared not leave without Louise's assent.

On 24 July peace was declared, prematurely. Margaret of Austria caused a hitch with a last-minute demand for certain border towns, Louise of Savoy and her daughter ordered their bags packed, and the papal nuncio had to intervene. Margaret offered concessions, relinquished some of her demands and engaged personally to arrange the return of François's sons, the French princes, still held hostage in Spain. In the closing days of July, a treaty was ratified at last.

On 1 August the three ladies – Margaret of Austria, Louise of Savoy and Marguerite of Navarre – went to Vespers in the abbey, receiving the congratulations of the men on both sides and, as the contemporary chronicle records, ‘taking each other's hands, a beautiful thing to see'. On the 5th, the peace was celebrated with a huge public Mass in Cambrai Cathedral and a sermon on the text of ‘Blessed are the peacemakers'. The Treaty of Cambrai would become better known as the
Paix des Dames
, the Ladies' Peace.

The terms were definitely favourable to the emperor's party; ‘so advantageous to the Emperor', reported an ambassador gleefully, ‘that some deception is suspected'. So advantageous, indeed, that François was reported less than happy with what his mother had done; although in the last resort, as always, he had vouchsafed to ‘place myself in your hands, to do what you think best'.

Charles V agreed not to press his claims to Burgundy, accepting a hefty ransom in its place, while François's sons, still hostage, would be released from their Spanish captivity on the payment of a further sum. François gave up his suzerainty over Flanders and Artois and his Italian claims. To cement the deal, it was agreed that the marriage of François to Charles's sister Eleanor, promised after Pavia, should soon be solemnised. The role of England as the emperor's long-term ally had not featured in the negotiations. Wolsey, who had been invited to attend and longed to go, was kept in England by a Henry VIII intent on the Blackfriars hearing. But at the last minute it was included in the deal.

The choir sang a
Te Deum
, alms were thrown to the crowd, and wine flowed from the conduits. On 9 August King François came to join the party, and the emperor Charles sent Margaret of Austria his congratulations, as well he might.

 

Meanwhile in England, on 23 July, the cardinals Campeggio and Wolsey were to have given their verdict. But instead, Campeggio formally referred the case to Rome. It was a triumph for Katherine, of a sort, but it proved to be a very hollow victory. On 11 September both cardinals formally relinquished their authority in the case. A month later came something that would once, in Wolsey's recent heyday, have seemed unthinkable. The great minister was arrested; the Venetians reporting that ‘he has at length found fortune irate and hostile beyond measure . . . ruin, which may be said to exceed his late fame and elevation'.