The festival where Henry VIII and Francis I made their peace

This week marked 500 years since the beginning of the two-week festival of jousting, feasting and general splendour that came to be known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Henry VIII, accompanied by a retinue of more than 5,000, had set out across the Channel from Dover for the small town of Guînes. There he was to meet Francis I, king of France since 1515, 25 years old to Henry’s 29, and seen by Henry as a rival. On this occasion, however, Henry came to make peace, not war, at a meeting organised by Thomas Wolsey — Lord Chancellor and the rising power in England.

The ostensible goal was to cement the goodwill so painstakingly established two years before in the Treaty of London. This too had been Wolsey’s brainchild. Its aim was peace amid the turbulence of early 16th century Europe: Habsburg, Valois and Tudor — along with more than 20 other lesser European powers — agreed to a pact of mutual defence, whereby aggression from any one of the signatories would be met by the others’ united opposition.