on of a Catholic League among the states about it
under Maximilian, the Duke of Bavaria. Both were ostensibly for
defensive purposes: but the peace of Europe was at once shaken.
Ambitious schemes woke up in every quarter. Spain saw the chance of
securing a road along western Germany which would enable her to bring
her whole force to bear on the rebels in the Low Countries. France on
the other hand had recovered from the exhaustion of her own religious
wars, and was eager to take up again the policy pursued by Francis the
First and his son, of weakening and despoiling Germany by feeding and
using religious strife across the Rhine. In 1610 a quarrel over Cleves
afforded a chance for her intervention, and it was only an assassin's
dagger that prevented Henry the Fourth from doing that which Richelieu
was to do. England alone could hinder a second outbreak of the Wars of
Religion; but the first step in such a policy must be a reconciliation
between King and Parliament. James might hector about the might of the
Crown, but he had no power of acting with effect abroad save through the
national good-will. Without troops and without supplies, his threat of
war would be ridiculous; and without the backing of such a threat Cecil
knew well that mediation would be a mere delusion. Whether for the
conduct of affairs at home or abroad it was needful to bring the
widening quarrel between the king and the Parliament to a close; and it
was with a settled purpose of reconciliation that Cecil brought James to
call the Houses again together in 1610.

[Sidenote: The Great Contract.]

He never dreamed of conciliating the Commons by yielding unconditionally
to their demands. Cecil looked on the right to levy impositions as
legally established; and the Tudor sovereigns had been as keen as James
himself in seizing on any rights that the law could be made to give
them. But as a practical statesman he saw that the right could only be
exercised to the profit of the Crown if it was exercised with the
good-will of the people. To win that good-will it was necessary to put
the impositions on a legal footing; while for the conduct of affairs it
was necessary to raise permanently the revenue of the Crown. On the
Tudor theory of politics these were concessions made by the nation to
the king; and it was the Tudor practice to buy such concessions by
counter-concessions made by the king to the nation. Materials for such a
bargain existed in the feudal right