The Nymph from Heaven by Bonny G Smith

Author:Bonny G Smith [Smith, Bonny G]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781981312160
Published: 2018-02-17T05:00:00+00:00

Canterbury, England, May 1520

Under cover of her voluminous skirts, Mary took Katharine’s hand and squeezed it reassuringly. Mary knew what this moment meant to Katharine, and had a good idea of what the queen must be feeling. The trumpets sounded in the hall below; any moment now Henry would make his grand entrance with the Emperor Charles the Fifth by his side, for his formal presentation to his aunt, the Queen of England.

But it had almost never happened.

As Mary suspected, Katharine had sent word to her nephew through the Spanish ambassador that it was of the utmost importance for Charles to suggest a meeting between himself and Henry, before Henry met with François. It could be done at little inconvenience to both parties; Charles would be making his way to Aachen in the Low Countries sometime in the late spring to accept the German crown near to the time when Henry and the entire court of England would be embarking from Dover to Calais on the first stage of the long-awaited meeting between the kings of France and England.

Charles was most eager to meet with his uncle-by-marriage, wishing to put his case to Henry, before Henry met with Charles’ rival ruler on the continent. He thanked his aunt gratefully for looking out for his interests, and sent Henry a most ingratiating letter, begging an audience. The tone of Charles’ letter struck just the right chord with Henry, as Katharine knew it would. If one wanted something from Henry, the only sure way to get it was to make an appeal to his vanity. As she had predicted, Henry was flattered by the prospect of an Imperial visit to England, the like of which had never happened before. Maximilian had never left the continent for Henry’s convenience; and yet his grandson Charles seemed perfectly willing to do so.

But Katharine’s reasons for orchestrating the meeting between her husband and her nephew had less to do with politics than simple family feeling. Charles was her nephew, the son of her dear sister Joanna. That was enough to make her move heaven and earth to ensure that this meeting would take place.

But from the very start, the whole issue had been an unpleasant tug of war between the queen and Cardinal Wolsey. Katharine observed wryly that while Wolsey was carefully stage-managing every last detail of the meeting between Henry and François, he paid but scant lip service to the meeting between Henry and Charles. In fact, it seemed as if he threw as many obstacles in the way of it as he could.

First, there was the issue of where the meeting would take place. The English fleet would be in Dover harbor, and of necessity that was where the king would be. The harbor could not hold two fleets. Katharine had countered that objection with a suggestion that the Imperial fleet land at Sandwich, an easy ride from Dover.

Then Wolsey had balked at the issue of the elaborate protocols that must be arranged and the mutual safeguards that would have to be given for the meeting of the two monarchs.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.