The King, the Cardinal-Legate, and the Field of Cloth of Gold

The Field of Cloth of Gold was a meeting in June 1520 between King Francis I of France and King Henry VIII of England. They met to affirm a treaty of peace and alliance between them, which was itself the centre of an international peace between most European princes. The presiding intelligence over the meeting was Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, simultaneously the Lord Chancellor of England and Pope Leo X’s legate a latere in England.1 This article looks at the context of that event from Wolsey’s perspective, examining how the Universal Peace of 1518 was used in his own ambitions as well as those of Henry VIII. It shows how Wolsey strove to use the international situation at the time to obtain legatine authority, principally to advantage his own king, and himself, rather than the pope whose legate he was, and in whose name he ostensibly acted.