Cloth of Gold

[hitman]

Ok lets lay the scene here a little bit, In 1520 Henry the VIII and Francis the I hold a huge Tournament in France known today as "Cloth of Gold". As one might imagine these two young rival Kings nearly bankrupted their respective countries in order to put on a better show.

"For three weeks (June 7-June 24) the two courts strove to outdo each other in displays of wealth and splendor. There were jousts and processions, masques, balls, banquets, sporting events, and even fireworks. Queen Catherine sat beneath a canopy of estate entirely lined with pearls to watch her husband and King Francis joust against one another. Each day the monarchs and their entourages appeared in more sumptuous and elaborate costumes."

Now my question is given the sheer amount of money not only in the respective courts but also amongst the spectators and the inevitable sea voyages to get many of the goods and people to Calais where this event was held were there any pirate attacks? I haven't found any indications of them but I can't belive that kind of traffic wouldn't garner attention. Lets face it pick pockets love Disney land and this kind of opportunity would be hard to resist so any body got some info on this?

P.S. Sorry to leave the golden age again but then I have a weird fascination with pirates in various time frames and places.

[Fox]

I can't see it myself. I don't know of any pirate attacks and it seems to me to be pretty unlikely for a couple of reasons:

1. the ships carrying things from England to France were probably Royal warships (I haven't checked that, it's just a probability)

2. Calais is visible from England, essentially we're talking about waters very close to the shore, and a coastline very heavily defended.

I can't think of any Tudor pirate daft enough to steal from the King, in the first place, let alone to do it from heavily armed warships within sight of the guns of one of the most powerful castles (if not THE most powerful at the time) in England

Pilfering on the other hand I'm sure went on - seamen with their hands in the chests of pearls and gold lace, but pirate attacks seem very unlikely to me.

[hitman]

I was thinking more along the lines of ships supplying the event than the actual King's court Foxe, although I do take your point with one minor exception as the Spanish consider Sir Francis Drake a pirate and he did indeed rob from the king of Spian. To me it seems natural that given three weeks of royal one upsmanship the sheer amount of goods leaving Europe's major supply centers and the natrual habit to ship these supplies by sea would be a tempting target. Although raiding the king's jewels would be quite a story I agree it is almost certian to have never happened but I was and to some degree still am intrested in the surronding supply ships. Conceviably these would be bringing supplies from most of Europe and hence traveling well known shipping lanes and hence pirate havens. True this may indeed be more my writers imagination than a historical hunt but the idea does intrigue.

[Fox]

I think you'll probably find that a lot of the supply ships were in fact Royal warships. Anything coming from England would certainly have been well protected by the Navy and the shore batteries. As for goods coming from foreign parts, it's difficult to say. A fair amount might well have come overland (depending on where it came from of course), but you're right, there would have been a number of ships coming in from the Baltic and the Med.

Drake was certainly a pirate who robbed from a king, but I was thinking more specifically of pirates robbing Henry VIII personally. Also, there is a world of difference between what Drake did and the idea of plundering naval vessels within sight of the guns of Dover castle. When Drake raided the Spanish mainland, and indeed Panama, it was more in the nature of a military attack than an act of piracy, and there were certainly no Drake-style military attacks on the Cloth of Gold supplies to my knowledge.

The thing to do of course would be to find out exactly where the supplies taken to the Field of the Cloth of Gold all came from, and how they were transported there.

[hitman]

Agreed all the way around. However and this is borderline on topic. I did a short story on a roman pirate once. (No I never could find many good sources for them and streched what I did have to the breaking point.) One of the few refrence's I could find though mentioned the Roman army in Gaul and Britian preffered to ship everything by boat wether in river systems or by sea. So my question is By the Tudor age had the river systems been surpassed by roads for transport. Obviously this has no bearing on pirates at the Cloth of Gold but as a curious aside. Oh and although I can't say as I have yet had any luck I am looking into orgins for supplies at the Cloth of Gold.

[Fox]

In general I think rivers were probably the preferred method of haulage, along with coastal boats - a vessel with a crew of 3 or 4 could transport the same amount of stuff as a dozen or more wagons. However, that depends on where the goods are being transported to and from. The canal system which rivalled the railways in the 19th century was hardly conceived of in the 18th century, let alone the 16th, but many inland towns and villages still have quays, or the evidence of quays from the medieval period and later.

The road system didn't really become the main infrastructure until the 19th century at the earliest, probably not until the early 20th.