Documents and Interpretation AN ENGLISHMAN'S VIEW OF THE COURT OF HENRI III, 1584-1585: RICHARD COOK'S DESCRIPTION OF THE COURT OF FRANCE' DAVID POTTER AND P R ROBERTS* In February 1585, at a most critical juncture in international affairs, a delegation led by Henry, earl of Derby, was sent to Paris to invest Henri III formally with the Order of the Garter. The outlook was ominous. In the previous summer the death of the king's brother and heir, the duke of Anjou, and the assassination of the prince of Orange had presaged upheaval in French and international politics. Henri had just turned down the desperate offer of unconditional sovereignty made by the rebel leaders in the Netherlands and had done so largely because the power of France to intervene there had been neutralized by the opposition of the Catholic League at the instigation of Spain. Derby's visit was the occasion for the last great celebration at the Valois court. 1 It is likely that Derby took with him a curious description of the organiza- tion of the French court and government written by one Richard Cook of Kent (the exact identity remains uncertain), who had been on embassy with Sir Henry Cobham, resident ambassador in the early 1580s, and may have stayed on with his successor Sir Edward Stafford. 2 Cook must have drafted the account some time between November 1583 and September 1584 since he mentions Cheverny as chancellor (he was appointed in 1583) and describes Videville as chief of finance (he was put out of office in September 1584). Derby might have found a few details outmoded but the treatise had been brought up to date as far as possible. Though the English version of this treatise was dedicated on 4 February 1585 to Sir Henry Cobham's brother, Lord Cobham, it is in fact pan of a longer and much more elaborate work in French which Cook had presented to the earl of Derby by a letter of dedication dated from the Middle Temple, 28 October 1584 and in which he addresses his patron as * Dr Potter and Dr Roberts are Lecturers in History at the University of Kent, Canterbury 1 F Yates, The Valois Tapestries (1959), pp 116-17, R Strong, 'Festivals for the Garter embassy at the court of Henry HI',/ Warburg C, 22 (1959), 60-70 1 Washington, DC, F[olger] S[hakespeare] L[ibraryj MS V b 41 fos 117-24 © Oxford University Press 1988 Fnmcb History Vol 2 No 3, pp. 312-344 at University of Kent on October 8, 2014 http://fh.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from