Eustache Chapuys
Imperial ambassador
Eustace Chapuys (1489 – ), the son of Louis and Guigonne Dupuys, is a Savoyard diplomat who serves Charles V as Imperial ambassador to England from 1529 until 1545 and is best known for his extensive and detailed correspondence.
You are a cultured man with a humorous turn of phrase. You are astute and subtle, but also passionately engaged in Katherine’s cause, and you give wholehearted commitment to her, and then to her daughter Mary. For you, this is not just a matter of duty, it’s personal.
Hilary Mantel, Notes on character
The story so far…
Week 5: Make or Mar / Three-Card Trick
“A little crooked man”, we meet the Imperial ambassador first in 1530, at the dinner of Antonio Bonvisi’s. His timely arrival interrupts an argument between two Thomases, More and Cromwell. He cannot speak English, so everyone must speak French. More and Chapuys whisper together while Cromwell watches them. “Looking is free.”
Cromwell on Chapuys:
Everything Chapuys does, he notices, is like something an actor does. When he thinks, he casts his eyes down, places to fingerse to his forehead. When he sorrows, he sighs. When he is perplexed, he wags his chin, he half-smiles. He is like a man who has wandered inadvertently into a play, who found it to be a comedy, and decided to stay and see it through.
Week 6: Entirely Beloved Cromwell (Part 1)
In Holy Week, the imperial ambassador reminds Cromwell that they are neighbours. He tells Cromwell that the cardinal asks after the queen’s health, but the queen will never forgive the cardinal for driving her and the king apart. Oh, and that his master, the emperor, will not help the cardinal. Wolsey has few friends.
Week 9: Arrange Your Face (Part 2)
“Break the enchantment, mon cher ami. You will not regret it. I serve a most liberal prince.” Chapuys at Austin Friars. Cromwell calls Anne his friend. “A friend! She is a witch, you know?”
Week 10: 'Alas, What Shall I Do For Love?' (Part 1)
Chapuys doesn’t speak English, so gets news from Thomas More in French, in Italian from Bonvisi… he tells the Emperor that the English will rise up against Henry. “Chapuys is, of course, deeply misled.”
Week 12: Anna Regina (Part 1)
Chapuys soon learns that Henry has married Anne. “But there is no guarantee that Your Majesty will have a son. Or any living children at all.”
His words put tears in the king’s eyes. Later he asks, “Do you know how much you are staking, Cremuel, on the body of one woman? Let us hope no evil comes near her, eh?”
Week 13: Anna Regina (Part 2)
Chapuys is sulking at home during the queen’s coronation. “I have failed my master the Emperor. I have failed Katherine.” He, Cromwell, reassures his neighbour that he is not taken in by the Frenchmen that surround the king. “Tomorrow is another battle, tomorrow is another world.”
Week 14: Devil's Spit / A Painter’s Eye
‘Oh no, I fear not,’ Eustache says. ‘Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Your Protestant painter has missed the mark this time. For one never thinks of you alone, Cremuel, but in company, studying the faces of other people, as if you yourself mean to pain them. You make other men think, not “what does he look like?” but “what do I look like?”’ He whisks away, then swings around, as if to catch the likeness in the act of moving. ‘Still. Looking at that, one would be loath to cross you. To that extent, I think Hans has achieved his aim.’
Week 16: The Map of Christendom (Part 1)
Chapuys writes to the emperor: “His early life remains a mystery, but he is excellent company, and he keeps his household and retainers in magnificent style.”
Officially, he and the ambassador are barely on speaking terms. Unofficially, Chapuys sends him a vat of good olive oil. He retaliates with capons. The ambassador himself arrives, followed by a retainer carrying a parmesan cheese.
Chapuys offers Cromwell the emperor’s friendship. Cromwell denies the rumours that the king is looking at another lady.
Week 17: The Map of Christendom (Part 2) / To Wolf Hall
Chapuys comes to visit his sick neighbour. “You are an old hypocrite, you know,” says Cromwell. “You would dance on my grave.”
“My dear Thomas, you are always the only opponent.”
Week 18: Falcons
Back in London, the Emperor’s ambassador, Eustache Chapuys, waits daily for news that the people of England have risen against their cruel and ungodly king. It is news that he dearly wishes to hear, and he would spend labour and hard cash to make it come true.
He asks the king for permission to visit Lady Mary. Henry tells Cromwell, “No.”
He writes to Chapuys, Wait, just wait, till I am back in Lodnon, when all will be arranged…
Week 21: Angels
In Autumn, a fire destroyed the ambassador’s lodgings. Cromwell’s household helped and the two have been on good terms since. Until a frosty meeting at Christmas. Chapuys comes in with a fabulous hat and a sour expression. He attacks the king, Anne and Cromwell. Why? He is miserable. He wants to see Katherine, dying at Kimbolton.
They go to the king at Greenwich to ask permission. There, they meet the French ambassador and the two exchange insults and brag about their offers to the king of England. Charles Brandon Duke of Suffolk barges in and lets slip that the king plans to marry into France, once he is free of Katherine and Anne.
Chapuys has heard too much. But he tells Cromwell, ‘And again for what it is worth, I believe you are fit to deal. I would back you in any assemblage this side of Heaven. You are an eloquent and learned man. If I wanted an advocate to argue for my life, I would give you the brief.’
The king gives Chapuys permission to go to Kimbolton. She rallies and he returns to London. But in the new year she is dead. Chapuys tells Cromwell that she blamed herself for England’s break with Rome. All the deaths. Fisher. More. The Charterhouse monks. “I am going out of life dragging their corpses.”
Katherine gives Chapuys one of the silk flowers. Chapuys leaves his Christmas hat in the custody of Cromwell. ‘I shall be in mourning for some time. But do not wear it, Thomas. You will stretch it out of shape.’
Week 23: The Black Book (Part 2)
Chapuys does not go to Katherine’s funeral because she is not being buried as a queen. He visits Cromwell, who alarms him with talk of pike fishing. He wants to know about the Seymour girl and whether there ‘may be a scorpion lurking under the honey.’ Cromwell is coy.
He warns Cromwell: ‘Anne is desperate and dangerous. Strike first, before she strikes you.’
Week 24: The Black Book (Part 3)
Chapuys joins the other conspirators at Cromwell’s fantasy banquet.
They meet in the real world. They butter each other up: Crumb touching his hat at the mention of Lady Mary, Chapuys lamenting ‘the poor cardinal.’ Their common goal: an alliance between their masters. Chapuys’ price: Lady Mary, back in the line of succession.
The payment for this is white humiliation. Chapuys is tricked into bowing before Anne and eating with her brother George. Cromwell assures him that it will be worth it. But Henry explodes with rage at both of them. He, Chapuys, is saved by Edward Seymour, who glides in with suave confidence.
Chapuys: ‘My dear friend. I thought your last hour had come. Do you know, I thought you would forget yourself and hit him?’
Week 28: Master of Phantoms (Part 4/5)
Chapuys in high spirits and his Christmas hat. He thinks Mark was tortured, but then, all of London thinks so too. He looks forward to more meals with Master Secretary in a world where Anne is not queen and England is at ease.
Week 31: Salvage (Part 1/3)
At court, Chapuys ‘is fishing’ for intelligence. So much has happened so quickly and Chapuys is playing catchup for his emperor.
Chapuys comes for supper at Austin Friars. There are eels, served two ways. Veal, carved by Cromwell. And peaches. He tries to find out Cromwell’s plans: What will happen to Mary? On what grounds was the marriage annulled? He thinks Cromwell should be more afraid than he appears.
Week 33: Salvage (Part 3/3)
Cromwell summons the ambassador. Over dinner he tells Chapuys that the affair has broken him and that he is a ‘dead man.’ Later, up a garden tower with strawberries, he convinces the ambassador to tell Mary to obey the king so that she can be put back into the line of succession.
Later, after father and daughter have been reconciled, Chapuys comes to him in Hackney to congratulate themselves.
Week 35: Wreckage (II) (Part 2/2)
Chapuys has been spreading rumours of a potential match between Lady Mary and Cromwell. He goes to see the ambassador, ‘I believe I am to be married.’ At home he tells Rafe, ‘Chapuys is not our friend.’
Week 36: Augmentation
Chapuys is cynical of England’s role as a mediator between the emperor and the King of France. ‘He will go to the side that promises him most and costs him least… Henry talks so much of his honour.’ Cromwell agrees. ‘Oh… they all do.’
Week 37: The Five Wounds
Chapuys does not say that William Tyndale is dead. ‘He has only let him fall, as it were naturally, into the past tense.’
The ambassador crows as the country rises up against Cromwell and the new religion. He needles Crumb on the matter of ‘the inferiority of your birth’, noting that he has no retainers to muster against the rebels. Chapuys notes that both men say what they have to say about a rebellion in England.
Week 39: Vile Blood (Part 2/2)
With Robert Aske sharing Christmas with the king, Cromwell must make do with Eustace Chapuys. ‘He sits him down over a quiet supper and evades his close questions about the north.’ He tells Chapuys that he talks to the wrong people. ‘The Poles and the Courtenays don’t know what is happening, I know what is happening.’
'Go on thinking that,' Chapuys says, 'if you find it comfortable.'
Week 40: The Bleach Fields
Chapuys delights over the appearance of Cromwell’s daughter. ‘It is a miracle,’ he says. ‘Like Lazarus. Though one wonders, was he truly welcome?’
Week 41: The Image of the King (Part 1/2)
Chapuys introduces Cromwell to the imperial envoy, Diego de Mendoza. He complains when Cromwell says they can have fifteen minutes with Mary: ‘It is hardly time enough for them to pray together.’
Chapuys queries why Cromwell keeps Call-Me close. ‘He was Gardiner’s man.’ Cromwell tells him that Robert Aske has implicated him in the rebellion of last year.
‘I know how it is, Eustache. You come to my house and you sit down to supper and you say to me, peace. You go home and light your candle and you write to your master, war … Lucky for you, I am more clement than the cardinal. I shall not lock you up.’
Week 43: Nonsuch
March, 1538. The Emperor opens talks about marrying Henry to his niece, Christina. He joins Mendoza at Hampton Court and the next day, he sends Cromwell two hundred sweet oranges.
Week 44: Corpus Christi (Part 1/2)
Chapuys at Richmond. To Cromwell: Lady Mary ‘seems confident you will save her from any unwanted bridegroom.’ As Mendoza goes, Chapuys complains that the envoy has been rewarded ‘richly’ while he is ‘forced to take our loans.’
Week 45: Corpus Christi (Part 2/2) / Inheritance
Chapuys: ‘Cremuel is happy enough if the evidence follows the trial.’
Week 46: Ascension Day (Part 1/2)
Chapuys is recalled. He comes for a last supper with Cromwell. He warns Cromwell again about his lack of friends. ‘I mean, men of great family.’ He describes his and Cromwell’s careers as ‘accidental’. He recognises Mathew from the Courtenay house.
Chapuys' farewell: ‘Mon cher, I do not know when I shall return. Should we by some mischance, never again…’