It is just over 500 years since the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Katherine of Aragon’s nephew, visited England from late May to early July 1522 and undertook with Henry VIII and members of his court a magnificent joint progress around the south of England. A service of Vespers in the Sarum Rite will be held in the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court Palace on 22 June 2025 to mark the occasion. The present-day Choir of His Majesty’s Chapel Royal and the period instrument consort His Majesty’s Sackbuts and Cornetts will be performing. It will be preceded by a Procession of clergy, musicians and the visiting ‘royalty’ through the courts and cloisters of the palace to the Chapel.
Tickets for this event, which marks the last major community activity at a progress venue of the Henry on Tour project, are available from the Chapel Royal Hampton Court Palace.
It is also a curtain raiser to HRP’s ‘Henry on Tour’ Schools’ Festival at Hampton Court 23-27 June (now fully booked) which welcomes school children from all over the country and is based on the same 1522 joint progress theme.
Historical Context
Charles was travelling from the Low Countries, where he ruled as Duke of Burgundy, to his Spanish kingdom of Castille, but broke the journey in England ostensibly to sign the Treaty of Windsor. This was a document providing formal confirmation of a powerful alliance between the Empire and England against the French, to be cemented, too, by Charles’ betrothal to Henry’s only daughter, the Princess Mary, at a ceremony in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle on 19 June (the feast of Corpus Christi).
Charles and Henry had met on two occasions two years earlier. The first was in May 1520, when the two rulers celebrated the important religious feast of Pentecost at Canterbury just prior to the Henry’s embarkation for the Continent for his meeting with the French king, Francis I in June 1520 at ‘the Field of Cloth of Gold’, near Guines. After his exploits there and before returning to England, Henry subsequently entertained Charles in Calais, then a territory of the English crown, though bad weather ruined some of the planned festivities.
In May 1522, on entering the realm of England the Emperor was once again formally welcomed at Calais before crossing the Channel to Dover, where he and his substantial entourage of courtiers, clerics and musicians were greeted most warmly initially by Wolsey and then by Henry himself. Billeted at the Castle, they spent time there inspecting ships of the royal fleet while the guests awaited their luggage, which had unfortunately been delayed.
This unique joint progress was a major opportunity for Henry to demonstrate his prestige as a Renaissance prince, and for members of his court and household to get the measure of their Continental peers. From inspecting the pride of the royal fleet at Dover, to a civic welcome and religious observances at Canterbury, gun salutes up the Thames from Gravesend to Greenwich and with elaborate pageants and feasting in the city of London, the whole scenario, coinciding as it did with the important religious festivals of Whitsun, Trinity and Corpus Christi, was intended to be spectacularly memorable. It certainly made an impression on Charles as he told the Abbot of Najera that ‘The procession was very brilliant, the welcome hearty, and the expenses must have been great’.
Prior to their arrival at Windsor, King Henry and Queen Katherine together with Princess Mary, the Emperor and his leading nobles were hosted by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey at Hampton Court Palace on 10 June 1522. Indeed, one ambassador reported that ‘The Emperor has left London and has been going from one country seat of the King of England to another, on his way to Windsor’. Although Hampton Court was not yet a personal royal residence, the splendour of Wolsey’s palace reflected well on Henry’s own royal majesty since a king with courtiers who had such glorious country houses was undoubtedly one of great worship and renown.
Procession and Vespers
The ancient hymn Te Deum Laudamus (‘We praise you, O God’), sung in procession, was traditionally performed at coronations and victory parades and was also a feature of triumphal ‘welcome’ ceremonies staged by civic bodies on the arrival of the royal party on progress. It was sung in St George’s Chapel, Windsor to celebrate the signing of the Treaty of Windsor in June 1522 with the participation of organs and minstrels playing trumpets, shawms and sackbuts. It is performed here as a prelude to the service of Vespers, but in reality would have been a separate event.
The pre-Reformation service of Vespers, wholly in Latin, combines the liturgical antiphons, psalms and responses in plainchant with polyphonic masterpieces by familiar Tudor composers: John Taverner, who in 1525 was appointed master of the Choristers at Wolsey’s Cardinal College and whose setting of the Magnificat is for 4 lower voices; and Robert Fayrfax, a long-standing Gentleman of the Chapel Royal, who died in 1521. Since the text of the Fayrfax anthem is appropriate for the feast of St Alban (22 June) it could very probably have been performed at Sunday Vespers on the final leg of the progress when the royal party was staying at the bishop of Winchester’s palace at Farnham in Hampshire, en route to Winchester. From there Charles journeyed on to Southampton, where he rejoined his ship.
Instruments and organs may not have accompanied voices at this time, but in both liturgical and ceremonial contexts provided interludes and interpolations or an alternative to sung text in plainchant (such as the Te Deum). The instrumental settings used in this service come from two significant Henrician manuscripts housed in the British Library containing anthologies of both sacred and secular court repertoire, the Henry VIII Manuscript (BL Add. MS 31922) and the Ritson Manuscript (BL Add. MS 5665). The composers of both the Henry VIII MS’s The base of Spayne and Consort XXI are unknown, but the instrumental versions of Nesciens mater (in the Ritson MS) and O lux beata Trinitas (found in a Scottish Anonymous MS) are by the little-known Devonshire-based John Trouluffe and the better-known Robert Fayrfax respectively. The Trumpet Fanfares are after celebrated fifteenth-century Franco-Flemish composer Guillaume Dufay.
Musicians
Wolsey’s own chapel, whose master of music was Richard Pygott, accompanied him around the country and on diplomatic missions abroad. It was well-known for its excellent musical forces and rivalled the king’s in its proficiency and in the number of choristers employed. It is highly probable they joined with the Chapel Royal (or at least ‘the riding chapel’) on the occasion of Charles V's visit. An interesting example of cross-fertilisation between the two institutions at this period can be seen in the career of Robert Philips, who began as a chorister in the Chapel Royal and later obtained a position as lay clerk in Wolsey’s chapel in the early 1520s, before re-joining the Chapel Royal in or after 1524.
For the Tudor Chapel Royal, which usually accompanied the king on his progresses, a foreign royal visit brought particular challenges and opportunities. Challenges: integrating two communities of musicians trained in different traditions of performing and accustomed to divergent forms of worship; communicating in non-native languages (perhaps Philip van Wilder, the king’s Flemish chamber musician helped with this); and sharing the limelight to bring equal honour to their two royal masters. Opportunities: for the English to learn new repertories; for the visitors to perform in new venues and see new landscapes. The Master of the Choristers was William Cornysh (d.1523), who with another hat on had masterminded an allegorical entertainment idealising the alliance which was put on for the two kings when they were in London. He had also been pressed into providing lodging for eight members of the Emperor’s retinue at his Greenwich home. This was no doubt an extremely busy time for him and all the king’s musicians.
The English choirs may have been supplemented by singers from the Imperial Chapel. Although members of the Emperor’s ‘Grand Chapelle’ (comprising a master of the choristers, 8 choristers, 16 clerks in addition to chaplains and priests) are listed as being amongst Charles’ entourage, a slight reduction in the total numbers crossing the Channel meant that only his ‘Petite Chapelle’ attended on the Emperor whilst in England. It is not clear, though, who from either group actually travelled, as no names are provided and the ranks of the ‘Petite Chapelle’, which was originally listed as comprising 8 clerics, was doubled in revised listings. While the ratio of priests to clerks and choristers is not given, presumably the expansion in numbers was to incorporate at least some of the singers of the ‘Grand Chapelle’ (albeit a slimmed down complement), who would otherwise have been left behind and unable to reflect their master’s prestigious choral establishment.
The King’s Trumpets and various minstrels of the royal household would have travelled with Henry’s entourage to provide fanfares and ‘goodly armonye of musike’. Charles V brought 8 Trumpets, 6 ‘phiffers’ and a ‘tamburin’ with him as part of his retinue. His ‘Grand Chapelle’ included an organist and an organ blower, who if they travelled with the court probably brought along a portative organ (similar to the one built by Walter Chinaglia, based on surviving instruments in Innsbruck, Austria and Montepulciano, Italy, which is being used for this service).
Costumes
The stunning costumes worn by ‘Queen Katherine’ and ‘Princess Mary’ have been especially made for this occasion by Emma Stanton and Holly Cassidy, final-year degree students at Wimbledon College of Arts, based on descriptions of clothing ordered by the Queen for both her and her daughter in 1520-1 contained in a manuscript of her accounts (now in the John Rylands Library, Manchester).
For a reflection on the event at Hampton Court Palace, see our blog post Hosting Henry VIII and Charles V at Hampton Court.
