n of Duke
Maurice of Saxony with many of his colleagues from the League of
Schmalkald so weakened the Protestant body that Charles was able to put
its leaders to the ban of the Empire. Hertford was hardly Protector when
the German princes called loudly for aid; but the fifty thousand crowns
which were secretly sent by the English Council could scarcely have
reached them when in April 1547 Charles surprised their camp at Muhlberg
and routed their whole army. The Elector of Saxony was taken prisoner;
the Landgrave of Hesse surrendered in despair. His victory left Charles
master of the Empire. The jealousy of the Pope indeed at once revived
with the Emperor's success, and his recall of the bishops from Trent
forced Charles to defer his wider plans for enforcing religious unity;
while in Germany itself he was forced to reckon with Duke Maurice and
the Protestant princes who had deserted the League of Schmalkald, but
whose one object in joining the Emperor had been to provide a check on
his after movements. For the moment therefore he was driven to prolong
the religious truce by an arrangement called the "Interim." But the
Emperor's purpose was now clear. Wherever his power was actually felt
the religious reaction began; and the Imperial towns which held firmly
to the Lutheran creed were reduced by force of arms. It was of the
highest moment that in this hour of despair the Protestants saw their
rule suddenly established in a new quarter, and the Lutheranism which
was being trampled under foot in its own home triumphant in England.
England became the common refuge of the panic-struck Protestants. Bucer
and Fagius were sent to lecture at Cambridge, Peter Martyr advocated the
anti-sacramentarian views of Calvin at Oxford. Cranmer welcomed refugees
from every country, Germans, Italians, French, Poles, and Swiss, to his
palace at Lambeth. When persecution broke out in the Low Countries the
fugitive Walloons were received at London and Canterbury, and allowed to
set up in both places their own churches.

[Sidenote: Pinkie Cleugh.]

But Somerset dreamed of a wider triumph for "the religion." On his
death-bed Henry was said to have enforced on the Council the need of
carrying out his policy of a union of Scotland with England through the
marriage of its Queen with his boy. A wise statesmanship would have
suffered the Protestant movement which had been growing stronger in the
northern kingdom since Beaton's death to run quietly its