Field of the Cloth of Gold
summit meeting in Pale of Calais in 1520
The Field of the Cloth of Gold (French: Camp du Drap d'Or, pronounced [kɑ̃ dy dʁa d‿ɔʁ]) was a summit meeting between King Henry VIII of England and King Francis I of France from 7 to 24 June 1520. Held at Balinghem, between Ardres in France and Guînes in the English Pale of Calais, it was an opulent display of wealth by both kings.
The summit was arranged to increase the bond of friendship between the two kings following the Anglo-French treaty of 1514. The two monarchs would meet again in 1532 to arrange Francis's assistance in pressuring Pope Clement VII to pronounce Henry's first marriage as illegitimate. Under the guidance of English Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, these European states sought to outlaw war forever among Christian peoples.
The Pale of Calais, home to the meeting in Balinghem, was the final English possession in France. This territorial leftover from the Hundred Years' War caused some tensions between the English and French, as the latter preferred a location closer to the border, but topographical considerations proved the decisive factor.
Background
Two entities had started to emerge as powers in Western Europe at this time: France, under Francis I, and the Habsburg-dominated Holy Roman Empire, under Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. The Kingdom of England, still a lesser power, was being courted as an ally by the two major powers. The 1518 Treaty of London, a non-aggression pact between major European powers to help resist the Ottoman expansion into southeastern Europe, had just been signed.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1030061. The Library of Congress control number is sh85048112. Authority coordinates are 50.852, 1.923. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1520, 1514, 1532 and 1518.
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This entry incorporates text from “Field of the Cloth of Gold” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.