[Footnote 233: _Ibid._, ii., 2930.]
[Footnote 234: _L. and P._, ii., 2891.]
In conveying the news to Wolsey, Tunstall begged him to urge Henry "to
refrain from his first passions" and "to draw his foot out of the
affair as gently as if he perceived it not, giving good words for good
words which they yet give us, thinking our heads to be so gross that
we perceive not their abuses".[235] Their persistent advances to
Charles had, he thought, done them more harm than good; let the King
shut his purse in time, and he would soon have Charles and the Emperor
again at his feet.[236] Tunstall was ably seconded by Dr. William
Knight, who thought it would be foolish for England to attempt to undo
the Treaty of Noyon; it contained within itself the seeds of its own
dissolution. Charles would not wait to marry Francis's daughter, and
then the breach would come.[237] Henry and Wolsey had the good sense
to act on this sound advice. Maximilian, Francis and Charles formed at
Cambrai a fresh league for the partition of Italy,[238] but they were
soon at enmity and too much involved with their own affairs to think
of the conquest of others. Disaffection was rife in Spain, where a
party wished Ferdinand, Charles's brother, to be King.[239] If Charles
was to retain his Spanish kingdoms, he must visit them at once. He
could not go unless England provided the means. His request for (p. 095)
a loan was graciously accorded and his ambassadors were treated with
magnificent courtesy.[240] "One day," says Chieregati,[241] the papal
envoy in England, "the King sent for these ambassadors, and kept them
to dine with him privately in his chamber with the Queen, a very
unusual proceeding. After dinner he took to singing and playing on
every musical instrument, and exhibited a part of his very excellent
endowments. At length he commenced dancing," and, continues another
narrator, "doing marvellous things, both in dancing and jumping,
proving himself, as he is in truth, indefatigable." On another day
there was "a most stately joust." Henry was magnificently attired in
"cloth of silver with a raised pile, and wrought throughout with
emblematic letters". When he had made the usual display in the lists,
the Duke of Suffolk entered from the other end, with well-nigh equal
array and pomp. He was accompanied by fourteen other jousters. "The
King wanted to joust with all of them; but this was forbidden by the
council, which, moreover, decided that each jouster was to run six
courses and no more, so that the entertainment might be ended on that
day.... The competitor assigned to the King was the Duke of Suffolk;
and they bore themselves so bravely that the spectators fancied
themselves witnessing a joust between Hector and Achilles." "They
tilted," says Sagudino, "eight courses, both shivering their lances at
every time, to the great applause of the spectators." Chieregati
continues: "On arriving in the lists the King presented himself before
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