Henry said to the head of the embassy, the Anglophile lord of Bergen, that he had felt ‘some unpleasantness’ at the delay – but no matter; the cloud passed.45
The festivities for Mary’s proxy wedding would rival those of Catherine and Prince Arthur’s marriage seven years previously. Over the past months Henry had overseen the preparations with his characteristic eye for detail. He vetted the furnishings for the guests and for his daughter’s lodgings, writing minute corrections to the hierarchy of interior decor, from a bedchamber saturated in cloth-of-gold and crimson velvet and adorned with Mary’s badges, to a fourth chamber more simply hung with ‘good and fine’ arras. No detail was missed: even Phip, Henry’s favourite fool, had a new gown, ordered by his head of the wardrobe of robes William Smith.46 Mary herself had sat, still and collected, for Pietro Torrigiano, who modelled a portrait bust of her: the likeness of ‘Madam Marie d’Angleterre’ was carefully packed and shipped across the Channel to her betrothed, Charles of Castile. It impressed Henry so much that he also ordered a model of himself.47
The entertainments, too, would rival those overseen by William Cornish at Westminster in November 1501.48 In London, the pageant designer Harry Wentworth set to work with a team of craftsmen, leasing a large townhouse in the shadow of the crane at Vintry wharf, and given the run of ‘certain houses’ in the bishop of Hereford’s nearby palace complex. The gates swung open daily to admit deliverymen with wagonloads of timber, canvas, linen, pullies and cogs; carpenters and joiners, scene painters, tailors and embroiderers, and the ‘grinders of colours’ who mixed up the vivid pinks, greens and reds of brasilwood, verdigris and
That November, as the wedding plans neared completion, at the house of the unfortunate London haberdasher Thomas Sunnyff, there was a knock at the door. Ushered in was a messenger from Dudley’s sidekick John Camby, telling Sunnyff to come and ‘speak with Master Dudley in all haste’. Sunnyff was perplexed: he had only just got back from Dudley’s house, ‘even now, from his place’, maybe to pay an instalment on his fine. The haberdasher was told to go, not to Candlewick Street, but to a pub in nearby Fish Street, the Boar’s Head – later immortalized as Falstaff and Prince Hal’s hostelry of choice. When he got there, there was no Dudley, but a reception committee: Camby, the lieutenant of the Tower and a number of armed retainers. Sunnyff was taken off to the Tower ‘by the arm with one of his servants as Camby had commanded’, and locked up.50
A little before midday on Sunday 17 December, in front of a press of courtiers in Richmond’s presence chamber, Princess Mary was betrothed to Charles of Castile through his proxy, the lord of Bergen.51 The fourteen-year-old Mary clasped Bergen’s hand, her grey eyes fixed on those of the ambassador, and recited the long matrimonial speech from memory, ‘perfectly and distinctly in the French tongue’, without any hesitation, pause or ‘bashing of countenance’. Then, after marriage contracts had been signed and exchanged, Bergen kissed her ‘reverently’, placing a gold ring on her wedding finger. The ensuing entertainments, the feasting, dancing and jousting, all went off spectacularly, including Wentworth’s entertainments – though he had a narrow escape, a horseman having to ride ‘in haste’ back to London to fetch a costume that somebody had forgotten to pack. Richard Pynson, now the king’s printer, had published a souvenir account of the occasion. The actors and dancers, it noted, performed in clothes and on stages ‘made and appareilled in the best and richest manner’.
The pioneer of a new Tudor–Habsburg alliance, one made in the best Habsburg traditions – making weddings not war, as its motto proclaimed:
Throughout the fortnight-long entertainments, Prince Henry and his on-off bride-to-be were the wallflowers, their long-mooted marriage no nearer to a resolution. Mary had bypassed them both, and their participation must have been tinged with envy. For Catherine, her friend’s wedding was another nail in the coffin of her own prospects. Fuensalida had in his inimitable way ordered her not to attend the festivities at all, given that Ferdinand had withheld his consent to the match; she ignored him. The prince, meanwhile, knew that his younger sister was the focus of spectacular ceremonies that, thanks to his father’s diplomatic machinations, he had never enjoyed.
Away in the city of Cambrai, representatives of Maximilian – emperor, as he could now style himself – and Louis XII of France met under papal mediation, to resolve their longstanding quarrel over the province of Guelders. An independent bishopric embedded in Habsburg territory, and close to France’s north-eastern border, Cambrai was a constant focus for diplomatic intrigue.53 Now, Henry’s ambassador Sir Edward Wingfield travelled there with secret instructions to forward another proposed marriage alliance: this time for the prince’s marriage to Louis’s daughter, Margaret of Angouleme. Through such a match, Henry hoped, he could tear Louis away from his alliance with Aragon, and leave Ferdinand exposed and isolated. Catherine would be left high and dry as well.
But when Wingfield arrived in Cambrai, he learned the real purpose of the summit. Involving not only Maximilian, Louis and the pope, but Ferdinand too, it was to conclude the Holy League against Venice, whose land territories were to be partitioned among the treaty’s signatories. Julius had succeeded in his grand coalition – and Ferdinand, joining it, had outflanked Henry’s attempts to sideline him. Undeterred, Henry kept playing the game, confident in the hand he held. Not only did he refuse to join the league of Cambrai, he tried to break it up. Sending warning to Venice, telling the Signoria what the summit had in fact been all about, he offered to broker a separate pact between the republic and Maximilian. He continued, too, to make Maximilian loans: ?10,000, on the security of a ‘jewel called the rich fleur-de-lys’. After all, Maximilian was now part of the family.54
Back in London from his period of self-imposed study leave in the Netherlands, Thomas More flicked through a copy of an account, in Latin, of Mary’s betrothal – an expanded companion edition that Pynson had published for the international market, authored by Pietro Carmeliano. More shook his head in disbelief. Trying to compare Henry VII and the mythical hero Aeneas, Carmeliano had echoed a line from Virgil’s
Luckily for Henry’s Latin secretary, there were few at court qualified to spot his sloppy scholarship; fewer still cared as much as More and his friends. Carmeliano, after all, had rather more important business on Henry’s behalf. At the Spanish court at Valladolid, moreover, his poem had its desired effect. Henry’s ambassador there, John Stile, wrote to Henry how he had presented a copy to Ferdinand, then stepped back and watched the reaction: ‘your grace may be right well ensured that it is much more displeasure to the king [Ferdinand] and all his affinity than comfort for to hear of the said noble marriage.’
Away to the east, bonfires were lit throughout London, flames licking the night sky hungrily, ‘with other demonstrations and signs of joy and gladness’. But behind the junketing, the mood in the city was grim. In the Tower and gaols across the city, Sunnyff and his fellow-prisoners marked time. At the Old Barge, Thomas More and his friends waited expectantly; so too, around the prince, did Mountjoy and Compton. At court, the likes of Buckingham, Northumberland and Kent brooded. And those at the centre of power, who had risen with the regime and profited from it, wondered how they were going to secure the dynasty, to preserve the king’s legacy, and themselves.56
14
The Art of Dying
