Through Henry VIII. we get a glimpse of Cranmer at Durham House, for that worthy wrote to the Earl of Wiltshire bidding him "let Doctor Cranmer have entertainment in your house at Durham Place for a time, to the intent he may bee there quiet to accomplish my request, and let him lack neither bookes, ne anything requisite for his studies."[7] Cranmer attended the Earl of Wiltshire as ambassador to Charles V. in 1530, and it is probable that he lodged in Durham House in 1533, for in that year he returned to England, gave formal sentence of the invalidity of the king's marriage with Catharine of Aragon, and pronounced King Henry's marriage with Anne Boleyn to be lawful. So that it is easy to imagine that the king's "request" occupied Cranmer's thoughts at Durham House, and that Henry came here in order to confer with him. That Henry VIII. was familiar with Durham House there is no room for doubt, for, as the pious chronicler, Stow, quaintly puts it, "in the year of Christ 1540," that being the thirty-second year of Henry's reign, "on May-day, a great and triumphant jousting was holden at Westminster, which had been formerly proclaimed in France, Flanders, Scotland, and Spain, for all comers that would undertake the challengers of England; which were, Sir John Dudley, Sir Thomas Seymour, Sir Thomas Ponings, and Sir George Carew, knights, and Anthony Kingston and Richard Cromwell, esquires; all which came into the lists that day richly apparelled, and their horses trapped all in white velvet. There came against them the said day forty-six defendants or undertakers--viz., the Earl of Surrey, foremost, Lord William Howard, Lord Clinton, and Lord Cromwell, son and heir to Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, and chamberlain of England, with other; and that day, after the jousts performed, the challengers rode unto this Durham House, where they kept open household, and feasted the King and Queen, with her ladies, and all the court. The second day Anthony Kingston and Richard Cromwell were made knights there. The third day of May the said challengers did tourney on horseback with swords, and against them came forty-nine defendants--Sir John Dudley and the Earl of Surrey running first, which at the first course lost their gauntlets; and that day Sir Richard Cromwell overthrew Master Palmer and his horse in the field, to the great honour of the challengers. The fifth of May the challengers fought on foot at the barriers, and against them came fifty defendants, which fought valiantly; but Sir Richard Cromwell overthrew that day at the barriers Master Culpepper in the field; and the sixth day the challengers brake up their household. In this time of their housekeeping they had not only feasted the king, queen, ladies, and all the court, as it is afore showed, but also they cheered all the knights and burgesses of the common house in the parliament, and entertained the Mayor of London, with the aldermen and their wives, at a dinner, etc.