SPELTHORNE HUNDRED 



HAMPTON 



Wolsey, who 'passed for an old man broken 

 with the cares of state' before his fall, and 

 died when he was only fifty-five, seems to have 

 failed in health from an early date. In 1517 he 

 suffered from the ' sweating sickness,' and was still 

 ill at Hampton Court in December of that year. 

 It was stated that his life had been in danger, and 

 so great was the fear of infection that Giustinian 

 said, ' None of those who were once so assiduous 

 ever went near him.' 149 It was not, however, by 

 any means only as a health resort that the cardinal 

 used his great house ; there is a contemporary de- 

 scription by Hall I6 of a characteristic masquerade 

 given by Wolsey at Hampton Court, to entertain 

 the king in 1519 ; he says : 'There were as many 

 as thirty-six masquers disguised, all in one suite of 

 fine green satin, all over covered with cloth of gold, 

 undertied together with laces of gold, and making 

 hoods on their heads : the ladies had tyers made 

 of braids of damask gold, with long hairs of white 

 gold. All these masquers danced at one time, and 

 afters they had danced they put off their vizors, 

 and then they were all known.' Their supper 

 was ' of countless dishes of confections and other 

 delicacies,' and afterwards, ' large bowls filled with 

 ducats and dice were placed on the table for such 

 as liked to gamble ; shortly after which the supper 

 tables being removed, dancing commenced,' and 

 lasted, as it often did on such occasions, ' till long 

 after midnight.' 



Cavendish says that when the king repaired to 

 the cardinal's house ' for his recreation, divers 

 times in the year, there wanted no preparation or 

 goodly furniture with viands of the finest sort that 

 could be gotten for money or friendship,' and tells 

 an amusing story of the king's coming ' suddenly 

 thither in a masque with a dozen masquers all in 

 garments like shepherds (sic) made of fine cloth of 

 gold and fine satin . . . with vizors of good propor- 

 tion and physiognomy.' He goes on to say that 

 they startled the cardinal and his guests with ' the 

 noise of guns they sitting quiet at a solemn 

 banquet ' and that Wolsey entertained them as 

 strangers, and to the great joy of king and court 

 mistook which was the king, and went up to one 

 of the gentlemen of the court, hat in hand. 161 

 Only Shakespeare could do justice to these scenes 

 of simple yet magnificent festivity, with the figure 

 of the great cardinal moving through the gay 

 courtiers that thronged his stately courts, unmind- 

 ful of the jealousy already at work to undermine 

 his power and his influence with the king. 161a It 

 was in 1522 that Anne Boleyn returned from 

 France, and in 1524 Skelton's satire, Why come ye 

 not to Court? was published, in which he drew 



attention to the vast crowd of suitors who followed 

 the cardinal rather than the king. 161 



It is impossible here to follow the course of 

 Wolsey's diplomacy during the following years, 

 though Hampton Court was the scene of many 

 of his negotiations. 163 In 1515 he had received 

 the cardinal's hat, and in 1517 was made papal 

 legate. His moment of greatest success was per- 

 haps in 1518, when universal peace was concluded 

 among the European nations, but his path was 

 beset with difficulties from the time of Maximilian's 

 death in 1519, and in the course of the next few 

 years his great design to maintain the peace of 

 Europe and the position of England as mediator 

 in the politics of the Continent was overthrown. 164 

 He continued to work for peace, and an important 

 treaty was signed at Hampton Court in 1526 by 

 Wolsey on behalf of Henry VIII, and by the 

 French ambassador on behalf of Francis I, to the 

 effect that neither king should unite with the 

 emperor against the other, and that the King of 

 England should endeavour to procure the libera- 

 tion of the French king's sons, then held as 

 hostages in Spain. 164 Wolsey had been working 

 for some time to arrange a separate peace with 

 France, and his letter to Henry from Hampton 

 Court three days later expresses his satisfaction 

 with the agreement. 106 In the following year the 

 French commissioners, Gabriel de Grammont, 

 Bishop of Tarbe, Francois Vicomte de Turenne, 

 and Antoine le Viste, president of Paris and 

 Bretagne, arrived in England to arrange a further 

 alliance between the two kingdoms and a marriage 

 between Francis I and Henry's daughter Mary, 

 then only ten years old. Dodieu, the secretary 

 to the French embassy, gives a detailed account 

 of the negotiations. 107 The ambassadors seem 10 

 have stayed in ' the village at the end of the Park,' 

 probably Hampton Wick. They were taken to 

 the palace, where the king and queen were staying, 

 and received by Wolsey, afterwards having an audi- 

 ence of the king 'in the hall.' 16 In the evening, 

 after dining with Wolsey and other members of 

 the council, they were admitted to the queen's 

 ' chamber,' and talked with the king on indifferent 

 matters, discussing Luther and his heresy, and the 

 book that Henry had lately written ; the king 

 showing himself, as Dodieu says, ' very learned.' 



The ambassadors and Wolsey afterwards dis- 

 cussed the subject of the treaty at length in the 

 'Cardinal's own room.' 169 They went back to 

 London, and it was some time before a final con- 

 clusion was reached, and the treaty signed by 

 Henry at Greenwich in April 1527. 17 It was rati- 

 fied at Amiens in September, when Wolsey went 



159 Giustinian, Despatches, ii, 90 ; 

 L. and P. Hen. fill, ii, Pref. p. ccxxvi. 



1M Hall, Chron. 595 (ed. 1809). 



> Cavendish, Life of Wolsey (ed. 

 Singer), i, 49. 



i Hen. fill, Act i, Sc. 4. 



> Skelton, Works (ed. Dyce), ii, 

 176-320. 



See L. and P. Hen. fill, 1518, 



Ac. 



eq. 



. 



164 Creighton, Life of Wolsey, 5 1 et 



. and P. Hen. fill, iv (2), 

 2382. 



16 Ibid. 2388. 



"7 Ibid. 1406. 



168 Not the present ' Great Hall,' 

 which was built by Henry VIII after- 

 wards, and the room in which the 

 queen interviewed the ambassadors no 

 longer exists ; but there seems to be 

 little doubt that Wolsey kept a suite of 

 rooms for Katherine on the second 

 floor in the eastern side of the ' Clock ' 



329 



Court, which was afterwards trans* 

 formed and partly rebuilt by George II. 

 The entrance to these rooms remains, 

 with traces of the cardinal's coat-of- 

 arms in the spandrels of the doorway ; 

 Law, Hist. Hampton Court Palace, i, 

 10I-I. 



169 Architecture, see p. 371 et. ieq. 



^ L. and P. Hen. fill, iv (2), 

 p. 1413, Dodieu's narrative. Fortermt 

 of the treaty see Rymer, Foedera, iv, 

 195. 



42 



