tween the two great Continental sovereigns in union with Rome
boded ill for England and for its King. There were others, too, to whom
such a combination boded ill. The alliance between France and the infidel
Turk to attack the Christian Emperor had aroused intense indignation
amongst Catholics throughout the world against Francis; and the Pope,
utilising this feeling, strove hard to persuade both Christian sovereigns
to cease their fratricidal struggle and to recognise that the real enemy
to be feared and destroyed was Lutheranism or heresy in their midst.
During the Emperor's absence, and the war, Protestantism in Germany had
advanced with giant strides. The Princes had boldly refused to recognise
any conciliatory Council of the Church under the control of the Pope; and
the pressure used by the Emperor to compel them to do so aroused the
suspicion that the day was fast approaching when Lutheranism would have to
fight for its life against the imperial suzerain of Germany.

Already the forces were gathering. George of Saxony, the enemy of Luther,
was hurrying to the grave, and Henry his brother and heir was a strong
Protestant. Philip of Hesse had two years before thrown down the gage, and
had taken by force from the Emperor the territory of Wuertemburg, and had
restored the Protestant Duke Ulrich. Charles' brother Ferdinand, who ruled
the empire, clamoured as loudly as did Mary of Hungary in Flanders and
Eleanor of Austria in France, for a peace between the two champions of
Christendom, the repudiation by France of the Turkish alliance, and a
concentration of the Catholic forces in the world before it was too late
to crush the hydra of heresy which threatened them all. It was natural in
the circumstances that the enemies of the Papacy should be drawn together.
A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind, and a common danger drew Henry of
England and Philip of Hesse together. Henry was no Lutheran, and did not
pretend to be. He had been drawn into the Reformation by the process that
we have followed, in which interested advisers had worked upon his
passions and self-esteem; but he had gone too far in defiance of Rome now
to turn back, and was forced to look to his own safety by such policy as
was possible to him. For several months after Jane Seymour's death the
envoys of the German Protestants were in England in close negotiation with
Henry and Cromwell. In order that a close league should be made, it was
necessary that some