Dan Snow's History Hit - The Field of the Cloth of Gold

Episode Date: June 8, 2020

500 years ago this week marked the start of one of the most extraordinary diplomatic gatherings in history: The Field of the Cloth of Gold. In 1520, England and France - traditionally bitter rivals - sought to bring conflict to an end in a magnificent show of opulence and pageantry. Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France agreed to meet in a show of conviviality, to reinforce the European-wide 'Universal Peace.' Of course, they didn't pack light. Both kings brought a hefty entourage of almost their entire political nations. My guest this week is Glenn Richardson, who took me to the heart of this rich tapestry of Renaissance diplomacy. He explained the spectacle of sporting competitions and flowing fountains of wine, the care taken to ensure rivalries would not erupt again, and the important role played by women in managing the rivals courts.Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everyone, welcome to Danso's History. We'll have a big chunky round number anniversary. We've got a great one here. They almost don't come better than this. It's the 500th anniversary of the Field of the Cloth of Gold. 500 years ago this week, young King Henry Tudor of England, in his pomp, met King François of France, just outside Calais, at a place so beautifully appointed, the set so magnificently constructed, that it was known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold. These two Renaissance princes, one in his late 20s, the other in his early 30s, glamorous, ambitious, slightly ambitious slightly megalomaniacal probably gathered for a summit a get together a party a tournament that has fascinated people ever since for this big anniversary we've gone straight to the man who literally wrote the book on the field of the cloth of gold from St Mary's University in London is Glenn Richardson he's a historian there he taught me through both the kind of underlying

politics diplomacy in the early 16th century in Western Europe but also the day-to-day Richardson is a historian there. He taught me through both the kind of underlying politics, diplomacy in the early 16th century in Western Europe, but also the day-to-day goings-on during the field of the cloth of gold, the wine fountain, the wrestling match, the behind-the-scenes shenanigans. So we're hoping to get out there just to northern France for this occasion, but obviously lockdown has led to a postponement or cancellation of nearly everything going on in the world. So we won't be doing that, but we are marking it virtually right here on this podcast. Thanks, everyone.

Record numbers of people listening to this podcast. Really appreciate everyone's support, everyone's interest. We're finding it so rewarding to get all these historians up and into the feed, everybody keen to talk about the past and also what's going on at the moment. We feel like we're living through some historic times please head to history hit tv if you want to listen to back episodes of the podcast we've taken them all down off itunes or wherever you get your pod so you can only access them on history hit tv if you become a subscriber it's

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Thank you again to all our subscribers. Thank you to all our listeners. Here, everybody, is Glenn Richardson talking about the field of the cloth of gold. Glenn, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. My pleasure. It's a big anniversary, isn't it? 500 years. Why do we remember the field of cloth of gold? Is it because actually it led to important diplomatic outcomes? or is it just a sort of giant spectacle in the pageantry of the whole thing i think we remember it very much because it's a giant spectacle

and i think it's an aspect of henry viii's reign i think we also remember it because henry viii intended that we should remember it one of the main pieces of evidence for the event is of course the painting of the field of cloth of for the event is of course the painting of the Field of Cloth of Gold which is resident at Hampton Court. Unfortunately but for the coronavirus there would have been a big exhibition at Hampton Court at the moment for the anniversary in which that painting would have been the star. It was done probably in the 1540s and probably for maybe a space at Whitehall Palace or one of Henry's palaces as one of a we think a series of paintings which look back retrospectively at great moments in Henry VIII's reign so if Henry VIII thought it was a great moment then that's probably

as much as anything else why we do because it is part of the Tudor, for want of a better word, image-making, literal image-making, but certainly political spinning in the period. And it is a quite strange activity. It is a very weird event when you first look at it. I've tried to argue in the book and things I've been talking about this year that it does make sense if you try and see it in its context. But I think the whole extravagance is indeed key to why we still think of it. Well, Glenn, let's rehearse that extravagance. Tell me what you would have stumbled across if you'd marched out of Calais this week in 1520. What would it have all looked like? Give me a sense of it. Well, what you would have seen as you came out of Calais

into that area of France, what's now northern France, which was then English territory known as the Pale of Calais, was the town of Guine. And that was where Henry and Catherine, his queen, and the English court were based. It's a small town, but had quite a good castle in which Henry stayed. But they also constructed this extraordinary temporary banqueting palace just outside the walls of Guine, which took about two months to build. It seems to have been prefabricated in England in February, March. They'd had about a year to plan this meeting, and so sections of it were probably shaped up in England and then shipped across and then erected in France. It was put on brick foundations and it had canvas and timber walls

and had lots and lots of windows in which was real glass, brought not from England, because England didn't have much of a glass industry then, but from nearby Flanders. And the French, who are of course the other side of this, are so amazed by the light and the spectacular palace that they call it the Crystal Palace, making us perhaps think of a later Crystal Palace in the 19th century. Beyond that, you would have seen a kind of mini town of tented pavilions made of canvas tents, not like picnic tents like we would have or camping tents, but great huge tents which

were put together to make up pavilions which I suppose replicated the spaces in a Tudor manor house. And they were dressed over with the Tudor livery colours of white and green in silk and satin, and of course in the material cloth of gold which gives the event its name. And you would have seen lots of people milling around, lots of people working to get food, etc., going in the banqueting palace and other things. As you moved further towards, as it were, the rest of France, you would have come across a tilt yard on one side of the road between the town of Guines and the French town of Ardour. And this tilt yard was built, again, over the same period, very late in April and early May of 1520.

The Field of Cloth of Gold was a tournament, essentially, and that's what you would have seen, a tournament yard with galleries for viewers to be able to watch the various competitions that went on there, and we can say more about that later. But to answer your question, as you then went on beyond that you'd reach the border between English France the Pale of Calais and France proper and on that border is the little town of Ardour and that's where Francis and Francis I of France

and his court were lodged they too had lodgings in the town but also this small town of tents below the walls of Ardour. Again we know a lot about the French tent making it was all done down in the Loire Valley at Tours and during February and March about two or three hundred men and women were working stitching together these canvas panels and then they're all loaded up on carts and taken up to Ardour. And they too were dressed over with silk and velvets. The fleur-de-lis, of course, was the French royal emblem, and that was used a lot. And again, the cloth of gold, which gives the event its name. So you would have had, within a relatively small space, quite a spectacular, you might even say quite an intimidating sight of the elites, the military

and political elites of both countries, both kingdoms meeting together. Was this innovative or did Francis do this with the Emperor Charles? I mean, was this a kind of normal thing to go to your border and show off like this? No, not really. Nothing had been seen quite like that before. They were used to having temporary accommodation and putting up tents and things for special occasions. France has made something of a specialisation of doing that. And in fact, it was the French who suggested that's what they should do, to meet on the border and build these sort of tented cities. I think for both the English and the French, it's a very easy way of being able to show off. I wouldn't say it's not expensive, it is, but it's a relatively easy way, given you're putting up temporary structures, to show off your sophistication, your skills, your people skills, the wealth which you have at your disposal.

And I think in broad terms, that is what the field of Cloth of Gold is about. It's a deliberate effort against the political background, which we can go into or not, as you like. But it's a deliberate effort to both offer friendship, but also intimidate on one hand and on the other, between these two kings who are really jockeying for position in a wider international context. You mentioned Charles V, and he is the third party, as it were, although he's not part officially of the field of cloth of gold. He meets Henry at Canterbury in the last days of May before Henry and Catherine crossed to Calais and then he meets Henry immediately after the field of cloth of gold at Calais for a few days. So although it's about two kings it's really about the three renaissance monarchs of Western Europe at that time. So while the scale of it's unprecedented it's not completely unheard of.

A century before Richard II meets his French counterpart just near the Field of Cloth of Gold, only for a day or so, not a great two-week long event. So there are precedences for it, but it's the scale of the thing which is so extraordinary in 1520. Is that ambition coming from the English side? What does young Henry Tudor want to demonstrate? What does he want to get out of this? To understand that properly, we need to sort of look at why it was held in the first place. As you said, he's a very young, ambitious king. By 1520, he's then aged 28. He's been on the throne since 1509. He's invaded France twice before, since 1509. He's invaded France twice before, 1512 and 1513. On the second campaign, he took the little town of Tiddlewan and the much bigger city of Tournai, which he still held up until this

point. He'd been doing quite well as making a name for himself in the great English line of kings fighting the French, in his case against Louis XII. There had been an earlier Anglo-French peace in 1514, and that's the occasion when Henry's sister, not his daughter, Mary, marries Louis XII of France. She's the only woman ever to be Queen of France. They were married in October 1514 as part of an Anglo-French peace after the 1513 war. So that itself was quite extraordinary for Henry to have done that. The presiding intelligence, I like to think about this, is Thomas Wolsey, Henry's Lord Chancellor and Cardinal, who I think is very much in touch with the need for peace and things in Europe. And he presides over the first Anglo-French rapprochement in 1514.

Unfortunately, although he had a very lovely time, we presume, with the young and nubile Mary Tudor, Louis XII is dead by January 1515, and is succeeded by Francis I, who is very young, younger than Henry, just as ambitious. His intentions are not so much focused on England, but on Italy and the Duchy of Milan, which his predecessor Louis had conquered but then lost. And within nine months of his accession, Francis had taken a huge army over the Alps and conquered the Duchy of Milan. Absolutely set, whatever Henry had achieved in 1513 was just knocked out of the ring in terms of status, in terms of importance in Europe. And he wants to maintain that position. By about 1517, the other big powers in the world,

of course, are the Ottomans, and they'd moved into Egypt and Syria. And Pope Leo X was worried that all this endemic fighting in Italy and other places in Europe was preventing Christendom having an effective response to potential threat from the Ottomans. So he decides we'll have a five-year truce between European princes. Cardinal Balzi gets hold of that plan and thinks, well, I can do one better than that. What he proposes is really Europe's first collective security agreement. It's known as the Treaty of Universal Peace. And what it is, is that rather like NATO, everybody signs up to a non-aggression pact and swears to the attack against one is an attack against all. And anybody who breaks the agreement will themselves be subject to sanction by everybody else.

And quite surprisingly, in a way, everybody in Europe seems to sign up to this ideal. And there's a big conference in London in October 1518, and this thing called the Treaty of Universal Peace is signed. And all the people we're concerned with, Henry, Francis and Charles, who's then King of Spain, are all part of this agreement. And one of the terms of that agreement, which is itself locked into position by an Anglo-French alliance between Henry and Francis, one of the terms of that alliance was that the two kings would meet. They were supposed to meet in 1519, so within six months of the treaty being signed. But at that point,

the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian von Habsburg, who was also involved, died. And Francis and Charles, and to a lesser extent Henry, were all competitors to succeed him as the Holy Roman Emperor, therefore the most powerful, most high status prince in Western Europe. And as I think most people know, the outcome of that was that Charles was successful. That caused a delay, which is why they eventually met in 1520. So all of that is just the background to say that, to answer your question, what Henry, I think, is trying to do is trying to use this

universal peace as a way of holding Francis in check. Because if Francis is part of this peace agreement, he can't go charging off and doing deeds of daring do in Italy anymore, which is exactly what Henry wants to keep him. He also has to assent to the idea that Henry is the arbiter of disputes under this non-aggression pact, not the Pope, but Henry. So its status, it's reasserting Henry's position as a powerful European prince through peaceful means this time rather than warfare. And that chimes with the rhetoric of people like Erasmus of Rotterdam who are very dismayed by the amount of war.

Sir Thomas More in England writes Utopia and talks about the importance of peace among princes. So there's a lot of public spirit in this about it. There's a yearning for peace, but it's peace not for its own sake, but peace on my terms, according to each of them. And what about the day-to-day? You mentioned earlier it was kind of basically a tournament. I mean, what's the itinerary? What's the schedule? How long does it last? Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt, and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed

not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Last for about two weeks, it begins formally on the 7th of June when the two kings meet. June when the two kings meet. Francis does Henry the honour of coming onto English territory and they meet not very far from Ardour in the Pale of Calais, surrounded by their chief nobles and walsies there. In the Hampton Court painting, in the top of the painting, there's a scene of

the two kings sort of with their arms around each other, often misinterpreted as the famous wrestling match between them. But in fact, it's a depiction of the two of them meeting and embracing as brothers in arms on the 7th of June. And that kicks things off. Henry, of course, has made his way from Dover, having met Charles with Catherine, first to Calais, then to Guine. Francis has come up from the Loire Valley to Ardaba. So they meet on the 7th in the evening. Everybody thinks it's all marvellous. They talk for much longer than is intended, but then they separate. And then a couple of days later, they turn up at the tournament field and lead the ceremony in which all the knights who want to participate in this tournament of peace.

One of the ironies about the medieval elites is that even when you're celebrating peace, you have to pretend to be at war. If you can't be at war, you've got to pretend to be, which is what a tournament is. Henry and Francis form the challengers. They don't fight against each other, but they fight side by side, leading a mixed team of English and French knights. So they all hang up their shields on this artificial tree of honour, which they call it, and that sets the tournament off, which begins, I think, about the 10th of June. And the first competition, which goes for three or four days, is jousting at the tilt. So both Henry and Francis participate in that, because that's the most prestigious of

the competitions. They lead a group of challengers, and there's also groups of responders, mixed teams, again, of English and French knights. So this is not Euro 2020, England against France. It's England and France mixed with each other. So those jousts go well. I think Francis gets slightly injured in one of them. Henry, of course, is a superb jouster,

and the score checks show that he does very well, as does Francis, even if the overall standard of tilting doesn't seem to have been that great. That's followed by the tourney for a few days later, which is a mixed, freer form of combat, where you have two or three knights fighting on horseback in an arena rather than down a tilt. And the idea there is that the horses are made to leap and jump and they clash with their swords. All the swords, of course, are blunted or rebated, as they would have said. Hopefully nobody gets injured, although people were. In fact, I think one French knight is actually killed in the tournament,

reminding us that it is a dangerous sport. And then the final set of competitions, towards the end of the 10, 12 day period over which they're held, you have fighting on foot between barriers or over barriers rather. And the idea there is that because the knights are separated more or less from the waist down, they have to lift their arms and they have to fight in ways that offers a better show for the spectators. And there were stands on either side with a tilt yard so people could have a look.

That too is depicted, not very accurately, but it is depicted in the top right-hand corner of the Hampton Court painting. You see a picture of knights jousting with Henry and Frances, Queen Catherine and Queen Claude all watching the competition. That's kind of what occupied most days over the 10-12 day period. On Sundays, there wasn't any fighting because it was, you know, the holy day of the week. Instead, there were banquets which were held at the two towns. And perhaps contrary to expectations, it's not as if, you know, Henry says, come on, Francis, come over to my place and we'll have a few beers and have a chat and all the rest of it. The importance of reciprocity, of equality of status was obsession at the field. So what happened instead was Francis came from Ardra across to Guine, and there he was entertained by Queen Catherine and the English court.

Simultaneously, and almost as it were as a hostage for the other, Henry goes to Ardbaugh, and he's entertained there by Queen Claude and Francis's mother, Louise de Savoie, who's a very powerful politician in France in her own right. And these banquets go on for about six hours, and there's multiple courses, extraordinary amounts of wildlife that are slaughtered for this thing, and something like almost 7, extraordinary amounts of wildlife that are slaughtered for this thing. Something like almost 7,000 birds of various kinds, bitterns, storks, swans, starlings, anything that flies basically, is recorded in the English kitchen accounts for the series of banquets that are put up, along with obviously venison and fish, all kinds of different animals.

A lot of the animals are brought from England. A lot of the deer parks in England, they take the deer and ship them across and pen them outside Guine. And there, the poor things have to wait to make the ultimate sacrifice. And the French are doing a similar thing over at Ardra. So, the idea was, again, hospitality is a form of gift- giving, but it's also a form of, I suppose, not intimidation exactly, but it is a way of showing you've got the material resources at your hands to provide such a spectacular banquet. there would have been dancing, formal dancing, masks and things. Henry and Francis are recorded as dressing up on various occasions as heroes of chivalric romance or classical heroes like Achilles and Jason and all that sort of stuff. And they play out these masks.

But the French king, when he goes to Guine, he's the star. Henry at Ardra is the star. And they're both good dancers. They're both very gallant. They make a great fuss of the ladies of the court. And all that's done, at an agreed time, they fire guns from one town to the other so that they know when they're ready. And once again, they sort of come back and check out with each other as they pass back to their respective courts. So at no time is there the

danger that Henry can personally offer Francis less hospitality personally than he has received, and vice versa, if you see what I mean. So it's all very carefully worked out to balance these egos and also the status of these two princes. I'm very glad I wasn't in charge of protocol there, I'll tell you. Did the legendary wrestle take place, and who won? It's only mentioned in one French source that apparently, although they never dined together formally, they did apparently informally eat and drink occasionally together. And on one such occasion, perhaps even while watching some wrestling, Henry sort of shapes up to Francis and says, come on, let's have a go. Because Henry, of course, sees himself,

probably quite rightly, as a very competent sportsman. He's a good archer. He probably did some wrestling himself. What he doesn't seem to appreciate, though, is that Francis had been taught by a Breton wrestling master. And I don't know if you've ever seen Cornish wrestling. It's a particular kind of grappling sport. And they think that Cornish wrestling and Breton wrestling are related. Anyway, to cut a long story short, Francis does a kind of hip throw and Henry lands on his back and is quickly helped up by Francis who says, oh great, you know, well that was fun, wasn't it? And then Henry says, oh come on, best of three. But so well had Francis won the competition that he wasn't really obliged by the rules to give Henry another go. And they

both dusted themselves down and laughed it off, etc. So some people believe it never happened at all. The English accounts don't mention it at all. But you might not be surprised about that, given the result. But I'm prepared to believe it might have happened. It's the kind of thing I can see Henry doing. And I can see Francis responding in a similar way. And what about the wine fountain? Is that an urban myth?

No. At the front of the palace, the temporary palace, was the descriptions from various ambassadors, Venetian and various others, all conflict. But so far as we can tell, there was one or two fountains which apparently flowed with wine and possibly Hippocras, the spiced wine drink, which was the celebratory drink, the equivalent for us of champagne, which they didn't have in the 16th century. And nobody really knows how often this fountain flowed with wine. Maybe it did when the French king came with his entourage. Maybe it flowed at other times. It wasn't going permanently. But what I love about the cloth of

gold painting of course is it shows people helping themselves to this wine and starting to brawl and fight you know what the English are like after a few beers on a Saturday night and there's even one bloke in the painting who's leaning up against the palace vomiting having had too much of the stuff so it is authenticated by the chronicle Edward Hall talks about people coming from all around the countryside and the pale of Calais and beyond to see the spectacle of these two kings and wow, free booze, you know, let's go. So yeah, it does seem to have existed. I think they built a replica at Hampton Court a few years ago, which is now in the base court there, based on the painting. There's something so wonderfully English about that. Just let's

finish up by saying what were the effects, if any, lasting legacy of this giant diplomatic party? Well, there's sort of two sides to that. Fairly evidently, it didn't bring in about a universal peace that was meant to do. I think the problem was that the competition between, not so much between Henry and Francis, really, but between Francis and Charles V was just too much. Without giving you chapter and verse, each had dynastic claims against the other along the border between what is now Germany and France. It comes all the way up until the First World War, that sort of competition on the borders, and also in Italy. of competition on the borders, and also in Italy. So although Wolsey and Henry are trying to keep both of these other two under control in order that Henry can seem to be very important, in practical terms, there's not a lot they can do. Francis, I think, hopes it's going to come true,

probably wants it to all work, but is really worried that the longer he waits, Charles V's power, once he becomes emperor, is building. And he's very worried that, quite rightly, that Charles wants to take his much-prized Milan off him. And in the spring of 1521, so barely a year later, he covertly attacks the imperial territory through Sudan. And when the emperor counterattacks, he then tries to say oh look help help i'm being attacked you know you must help me according to the terms of the universal peace and you know you're my brother and my ally come to my aid wolsey does sort of do that he calls a conference at calais in 1521 and he spends about a month there trying to negotiate on the surface at least

between the two but i think wolsey realizes he's never squeamish about war, he realises that if these two are going to fight it out, then Henry had better make sure he's on the winning side. So he signs in August 21, he signs the secret treaty of Bruges with Charles, whereby Henry will, in time, come in as his ally. So war breaks out really fully in 1521, goes until 1525. Charles does take Milan off Francis. He's eventually defeated, of course, famously at the Battle of Pavia in February 25, on the emperor's 25th birthday. And he's taken off to Spain for a year as a captive. He has to sign to get home again. He's got to sign the Treaty of Madrid in 1526, which basically gives Charles everything that Charles wants. Now, unlike, for example, the universal peace of 1518, this is a win-lose situation as far as he's concerned. And no sooner

does he get back to France in early 26, then he repudiates the treaty. Henry and Charles had said that they would carve up France between them, and Henry got very excited when he heard about Francis' defeat at Pavia. He thought, yes, this is it. At last, I can be king of France, etc. Charles wasn't interested. All he wanted was to use the crushing victory to impose his own settlement on France, regardless of Henry. As soon as Henry appreciates that, and it's Wolsey who tells him that's what the situation is, he says, right, okay, fine. So suddenly we're back with England and France again in alliance, this time against a much more focused Charles V. And that's a situation that lasts for the next 15 years, really, because of course in 27,

last for the next 15 years, really, because, of course, in 27, when that peace agreement is agreed between Francis and Henry, that's the same year that Henry first begins to want to see the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Catherine, of course, is the aunt of Charles, and I think you can see what's sort of happening. As long as all that's going on, Henry needs Francis as his only ally and once he breaks from Rome in 3334 with the act of supremacy, Francis is his only powerful friend in Europe. Francis manipulates that as much as he possibly can to get as many concessions out of Henry as he can. But it's a very difficult alliance, but it sort of works,

almost until the end of Henry's reign. It finally does break down. Charles does briefly reunite with Henry in 42, and then, as everybody knows, there's the invasion of Boulogne, the capture of Boulogne in 44, the loss of the Mary Rose in 45, and the reigns both come to an end by the end, effectively, of 46. So it's a long-winded way of saying it, but no, it didn't bring about a universal peace, but it certainly brought about a very difficult but effective Anglo-French alliance for about 15

years in a very turbulent context in European history. And that had all kinds of implications, political, cultural even, the kind of palaces that Henry builds, the competition with Francis keeps going so that places like Whitehall, where the cloth of gold painting will one day be put, are really built in emulation of what Francis is doing at Fontainebleau, at Chambord, ambassadors exchanged. Henry's always eager to know what Francis is up to.

So it's a culturally productive but politically difficult relationship. Anglo-French relations always are, then and now. So that would be my long-winded answer to your question. That's a very good answer. Last question. Anne Boleyn, was she at the French court in 1520? She'd gone over with Henry's sister, had she? So did she have a role to play at the Cloth of Gold? Not as far as we know.

She was a, as they say, damsel donna to Queen Claude. So she was in her household and was there. Her father, Thomas Boleyn, was the first resident English ambassador. In 1519, as a part of this universal peace, Henry and Francis exchanged resident ambassadors for the first time. And that's Sir Thomas Boleyn, who's there. So no, Anne isn't recorded as playing a particular role. It's possible she might have seen or met Henry then. I think the conventional understanding is that she doesn't really get to know Henry until

she returns from France in 1522. But she's there. She's one of a number of powerful women, or future powerful women. Francis's sister, Marguerite of Navarre, is there as well. I've mentioned his mother, Louise of Savoie. His mistress, Madame de Chateaubriand, is there. So women are very much a part of this whole thing. While the blokes are buffing about spears and lances and doing their thing, it's the women who are conducting a lot of the soft power diplomacy between the two courts and Anne Boleyn is part of that I'm sure she would have been used as a translator and things because it's by no means clear that a lot of English nobles actually spoke very fluent French they

probably spoke kind of frongly and I can imagine that Anne would have been very useful as a sort of genteel translator on occasions well thank you thank you very much indeed, Glenn Richardson. Your book is out. Yes, the paperback version of The Field of Cloth of Gold is due out imminently from Yale. And my biography of Cardinal Wolsey is due out in the autumn. Oh, my goodness. Come back on and tell us about Wolsey.

That'd be great. I'd be very happy to. Great, Glenn. Thank you so much I hope you enjoyed the podcast just before you go bit of a favor to ask I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money. Makes sense. But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review. I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather, the law of the jungle out there, and I need all the fire support I can get. So that will boost

it up the charts. It's so tiresome, but if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you.