[For context, Henry VIII’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon, has recently given birth to their son (who would not live long, but they didn’t know that yet). They are holding feasts and tournaments galore in rabid celebration.]
The Queen, the diplomatic corps, all the nobility were in the tribunes, and the King himself was chief of the defenders in the jousting, entering in a pavilion sprinkled with golden H’s and K’s, and announced, by way of compliment to the Queen, as “Sir Loyal Heart.” Nothing marred the merrymaking, not even the fact that the rude people broke into the festivities before they were ended and rent, tore, and spoiled the pageant by snatching the gold letters from the spangled cloth; and later, when Henry offered the company the golden ornaments on his own clothes, mobbed him also, stripped him to his doublet and hose, stripped one of his courtiers who tried to get away to a less decent state, and ripped the gold lace from the ladies’ dresses, until the King was obliged to call the guards, and the laughing beef-eaters thrust the cockneys out of the doors with the butts of their halberds.
A tattered court sat down to supper, but the King’s high spirits and the Queen’s amusement “turned all these hurts to laughing and game.” On so happy an occasion henry would have given the shirt off his back “for honor and largess.”
Source:
Mattingly, Garrett. “Part II: England’s Queen (1509-1527); Chapter One, Section iii” Catherine of Aragon. New York: Quality Paperback , 1990. 142-43. Print.
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