Anglo-French Flyting

The earliest example of cross-cultural flyting within the Tudor period is also the one that generated the most prolific outpouring of responses among all the verse exchanges I have examined. This occurred in 1489 and took place between courtiers resident at the court of Henry VII and the French ambassador to England. When Robert Gaguin made a libel against Henry, his courtiers rushed to his defence by counter-attacking the French diplomat with a tirade of Latin invectives in what amounts to an upmarket skimmington or charivari, calculated to drive him from the court. What is particularly remarkable about this event is that, as David R. Carlson points out, all the known poets connected to Henry’s court appear to have contributed. ¹⁶⁸

Gaguin became exasperated when his embassy to Henry was dismissed with open hostility. He had been sent to gain the English king’s approval of Charles VIII’s claim to Naples, and especially to secure his acknowledgement of the French king’s right as guardian to declare void the dynastic marriage between his ward, Anne, Duchess of Brittany and the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximillian. Met with the curt response that Henry had as sound a claim to sovereignty over France as Charles had over Naples, Gaguin hit back with a short invective in two parts. The first satirises the English as a “sly people” with whom it is impossible to reach agreement, and the second is addressed directly to Henry and accuses him of ingratitude and of causing a rift between Charles and his father-in-law Maximillian. ¹⁶⁹ The prolific responses Gaguin’s insult generated illustrate some of

¹⁶⁸ In his Vita Henrici VII Bernard André recalls that nearly two hundred verses were composed against Gaguin on this occasion, The Life of Henry VII According to Bernard Andreas, trans. Dale Edward Casper (University of Minnesota, unpublished MA thesis, 1972), p.101. David R. Carlson, ‘Politicizing Tudor Court Literature: Gaguin’s Embassy and Henry VIII’s Humanists’ Response’, SP, 85 (1988), 279-304 (p.284). All subsequent Latin quotations and English translations from this flyting are quoted from Carlson.

¹⁶⁹ These events are discussed by both Carlson (1988) and H. L. R. Edwards, ‘Robert Gaguin and the English Poets’, MLR, 32 (1937), 430-4.