The Field of Cloth of Gold by Glenn Richardson (review)

The 1520 meeting between François I and Henry VIII, now known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold, is well known to many scholars of the period, but as Glenn Richardson points out in this new examination of the event, it is some forty years since it has been the object of dedicated study. This is surprising for, as Richardson argues, in this time a wealth of new scholarly approaches such as cultural, gender, and material history appear particularly apt to bring new perspectives to this glittering act of cultural diplomacy.

Richardson’s text sets out to do just that, investigating what the Field was meant to achieve, how it conveyed its messages in material and gestural forms, and its impact on the wider European stage of the era. Richardson is well placed to conduct such an analysis, having previously studied both Henry and François (alongside Charles V) in his 2002 work Renaissance Monarchy. What new insights can his analysis of this particular event bring to how we understand kingship, aristocratic display, governing masculinity, and international diplomacy at this period?

Richardson is perhaps strongest on the practical elements of the meeting, dedicating several chapters to the extensive preparations and resources required for the Field. He provides many fascinating details of the provision of food and drink, and timber and cloth preparation for the Field’s temporary housing with lavish textile furnishings and coverings. In each case, Richardson highlights the diplomatic complexities of negotiating even these minute details, each of which carried deep significance concerning the hospitality and might of the respective monarchs.

Richardson’s style is very accessible. Modern comparisons to more recent events such as the French–British Chunnel project or national narrative formation in the Beijing Olympics were perhaps designed to assist a broader readership. However, the rather descriptive nature of much of the work seems a missed opportunity to conduct a deeper analysis, engaged with the current historiography highlighted in the work’s Introduction, to make explicit what wider arguments these details can contribute to.

Moreover, for a text in which material and visual cues are so significant, it is surprising that visual sources are not integrated in a more sustained way. None of the black-and-white images included in the inset pages are linked by figure numbers where they are discussed in the text. Pertinent details such as the artist, title, date, or location of the images is not provided in either the image captions or on the List of Illustrations page. Richardson argues in Chapter 4 that the panel series from the Hôtel de Bourgtheroulde, Rouen, is one of the few near-contemporary depictions, yet only two panels are shown in the selected illustrations. Neither is named in the caption as belonging to that series nor does the description provide information on the personnel included in the scenes (even the monarchs are listed in opposite order to their appearance in Figure 10). Figure 12, ‘Francis and Henry after Wrestling’, is discussed only obliquely on p. 139. The illustration description itself makes no mention that it is presumably a nineteenth-century (British?) imagining of this event, commenting: ‘This humorous depiction of the episode of the wrestling match between Francis and Henry VIII is very much at Henry’s expense.’ In short, a reader glancing through the illustrations or List of Illustrations page is given no cue that this is a far later visualisation, made in a very different context and for a very different audience, in order to interpret it.

Disappointing too are the relatively brief references to Queens Claude and Katherine, both of whom attended and participated in aspects of the event. Women’s own sense and display of honour is not investigated here, nor are the material and visual messages of their attire, gestures, or activities at the Field afforded sustained analytical attention. Instead, in...