Eustace Chapuys
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Eustace Chapuys (1489–1556) served as the Imperial ambassador to England from 1529 until 1545 and is best known for his extensive and detailed correspondence.
He was born in Annecy in Savoy. He attended the University of Turin from 1507, staying there for at least 8 years. In 1517 he became an official of the diocese of Geneva and subsequently served the Duke of Savoy and Charles de Bourbon. In 1527 he entered the service of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V.
After going to Savoy as ambassador, he went to England in September 1529 to take over the post of resident ambassador there from Don Iñigo de Mendoza, a post that had been rather instably occupied since the forced withdrawal of Louis of Praet in 1525. Chapuys's legal background made him an ideal candidate to defend Henry VIII's wife Catherine of Aragon (who was also an aunt of Emperor Charles V) against the legal proceedings that historians call the "Divorce Crisis" and which led, eventually, to the English rejection of Papal authority and break from the Roman Catholic Church. Chapuys' attempts to defeat English machinations against Catherine eventually failed and Henry married Anne Boleyn. Catherine died in January of 1536.
Chapuys stayed as resident ambassador in England until May 1545 (save a brief interlude in April 1539 which he spent in Antwerp). He then asked to be relieved of his post due to increasing illness, but only after introducing his successor (François van der Delft) to the post did the Emperor allow him to leave. Afterwards, Chapuys resided in Leuven (in the Low Countries) where he founded a grammar school for promising students from his native Savoy (the Collège Chapuisienne).
Chapuys also appears as a character in William Shakespeare's play The Famous History of the Life of King Henry VIII under the name of Capucius. He is a major character in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons, though he is excised from the film version. Chapuys is portrayed by Anthony Brophy in Showtime's series The Tudors.
[edit] References
- Richard Lundell, "The Mask of Dissimulation: Eustace Chapuys and Early Modern Diplomatic Technique: 1536-1545" (Ph.D. Thesis, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2001).
- Martin Lunitz, Diplomatie und Diplomaten im 16. Jahrhundert (Hartung-Gorre Verlag, Konstanz, 1988)
