The Scottish King,though nearly related to Henry by marriage,had taken part against him in this war.The Earl of Surrey,as the English general,advanced to meet him when he came out of his own dominions and crossed the river Tweed.The two armies came up with one another when the Scottish King had also crossed the river Till,and was encamped upon the last of the Cheviot Hills,called the Hill of Flodden.Along the plain below it,the English,when the hour of battle came,advanced.The Scottish army,which had been drawn up in five great bodies,then came steadily down in perfect silence.So they,in their turn,advanced to meet the English army,which came on in one long line;and they attacked it with a body of spearmen,under LORD HOME.At first they had the best of it;but the English recovered themselves so bravely,and fought with such valour,that,when the Scottish King had almost made his way up to the Royal Standard,he was slain,and the whole Scottish power routed.Ten thousand Scottish men lay dead that day on Flodden Field;and among them,numbers of the nobility and gentry.
For a long time afterwards,the Scottish peasantry used to believe that their King had not been really killed in this battle,because no Englishman had found an iron belt he wore about his body as a penance for having been an unnatural and undutiful son.But,whatever became of his belt,the English had his sword and dagger,and the ring from his finger,and his body too,covered with wounds.There is no doubt of it;for it was seen and recognised by English gentlemen who had known the Scottish King well.
When King Henry was making ready to renew the war in France,the French King was contemplating peace.His queen,dying at this time,he proposed,though he was upwards of fifty years old,to marry King Henry's sister,the Princess Mary,who,besides being only sixteen,was betrothed to the Duke of Suffolk.As the inclinations of young Princesses were not much considered in such matters,the marriage was concluded,and the poor girl was escorted to France,where she was immediately left as the French King's bride,with only one of all her English attendants.That one was a pretty young girl named ANNE BOLEYN,niece of the Earl of Surrey,who had been made Duke of Norfolk,after the victory of Flodden Field.Anne Boleyn's is a name to be remembered,as you will presently find.
And now the French King,who was very proud of his young wife,was preparing for many years of happiness,and she was looking forward,I dare say,to many years of misery,when he died within three months,and left her a young widow.The new French monarch,FRANCIS THE FIRST,seeing how important it was to his interests that she should take for her second husband no one but an Englishman,advised her first lover,the Duke of Suffolk,when King Henry sent him over to France to fetch her home,to marry her.The Princess being herself so fond of that Duke,as to tell him that he must either do so then,or for ever lose her,they were wedded;and Henry afterwards forgave them.In making interest with the King,the Duke of Suffolk had addressed his most powerful favourite and adviser,THOMAS WOLSEY-a name very famous in history for its rise and downfall.
Wolsey was the son of a respectable butcher at Ipswich,in Suffolk and received so excellent an education that he became a tutor to the family of the Marquis of Dorset,who afterwards got him appointed one of the late King's chaplains.On the accession of Henry the Eighth,he was promoted and taken into great favour.He was now Archbishop of York;the Pope had made him a Cardinal besides;and whoever wanted influence in England or favour with the King-whether he were a foreign monarch or an English nobleman-was obliged to make a friend of the great Cardinal Wolsey.
He was a gay man,who could dance and jest,and sing and drink;and those were the roads to so much,or rather so little,of a heart as King Henry had.He was wonderfully fond of pomp and glitter,and so was the King.He knew a good deal of the Church learning of that time;much of which consisted in finding artful excuses and pretences for almost any wrong thing,and in arguing that black was white,or any other colour.This kind of learning pleased the King too.For many such reasons,the Cardinal was high in estimation with the King;and,being a man of far greater ability,knew as well how to manage him,as a clever keeper may know how to manage a wolf or a tiger,or any other cruel and uncertain beast,that may turn upon him and tear him any day.Never had there been seen in England such state as my Lord Cardinal kept.His wealth was enormous;equal,it was reckoned,to the riches of the Crown.His palaces were as splendid as the King's,and his retinue was eight hundred strong.He held his Court,dressed out from top to toe in flaming scarlet;and his very shoes were golden,set with precious stones.His followers rode on blood horses;while he,with a wonderful affectation of humility in the midst of his great splendour,ambled on a mule with a red velvet saddle and bridle and golden stirrups.
Through the influence of this stately priest,a grand meeting was arranged to take place between the French and English Kings in France;but on ground belonging to England.A prodigious show of friendship and rejoicing was to be made on the occasion;and heralds were sent to proclaim with brazen trumpets through all the principal cities of Europe,that,on a certain day,the Kings of France and England,as companions and brothers in arms,each attended by eighteen followers,would hold a tournament against all knights who might choose to come.