ed a league with the
Pope, the King of England, and the Venetians, to maintain the liberty of
Italy. The Pope absolved him from his oaths, and he refused to return
into Spain. The passions of the rival monarchs were now much excited,
and challenges and the lie were exchanged between them. No duel was
fought, nor probably intended; but the notoriety of the challenge went
far to establish a false point of punctilio, we will not call it honor,
among gentlemen, and single combats became more frequent than in the
ages of barbarism.

In 1529, the course of these calamities was suspended by the treaty of
Cambray, negotiated in person by two women. The Duchess of Angouleme and
Margaret of Austria, governess of the Low Countries, met in that city,
and settled the terms of pacification between the rival monarchs.

For Charles's honorable conduct on Luther's appearance before the diet
of Worms, the reader may refer to the life of the reformer in the
present volume. The cause of Lutheranism gained ground at the diet of
Nuremberg; and if Charles had declared in favor of the Lutherans, all
Germany would probably have changed its religion. As it was, the
Reformation made progress during the war between the emperor and Clement
VII. All that Charles acquired from the diet of Spire, in 1526, was to
wait patiently for a general council, without encouraging novelties. In
1530, he assisted in person at the diet of Augsburg, when the
Protestants (a name bestowed on the reformers in consequence of the
protest entered by the Elector of Saxony and others at the second diet
of Spire) presented their confession, drawn up by Melancthon, the most
moderate of Luther's disciples. About this time Charles procured the
election of his brother Ferdinand as king of the Romans, on the plea
that, in his absence, the empire required a powerful chief to make head
against the Turks. This might be only a pretence for family
aggrandizement; but the emperor became seriously apprehensive lest the
Lutherans, if provoked, should abandon the cause of Christendom, and
policy therefore conceded what zeal would have refused. By a treaty
concluded with the Protestants at Nuremberg, and ratified at Ratisbon in
1531, Charles granted them liberty of conscience till a council should
be held, and annulled all sentences passed against them by the imperial
chamber; on this they engaged to give him powerful assistance against
the Turks.

In 1535, Muley Hassan, the exiled king