Katharine Parr's secretary, Buckler, he said, had
been in Germany for weeks, trying to arrange a league between the
Protestant princes and England. This was a matter of the highest
importance, and Charles when he heard of it was doubly desirous of keeping
his English brother from quite breaking away; whilst in September there
arrived in England from France a regular embassy from the Duke of Saxony,
the Landgrave of Hesse, the Duke of Wuertemburg, and the King of Denmark,
ostensibly to promote peace between England and France, but really bent
upon effecting a Protestant alliance. Henry, indeed, was seriously
alarmed. He was exhausted by his long war in France, harassed in the
victualling of Boulogne and even of Calais, and fully alive to the fact
that he was practically defenceless against an armed coalition of the
Emperor and France. In the circumstances it was natural that the influence
over him of his wife, and of his brother-in-law Hertford, both inclined to
a reconciliation with France and an understanding with the German
Protestants, should increase.

Katharine, now undisguisedly in favour of such a policy, was full of tact;
during the King's frequent attacks of illness she was tender and useful to
him, and the attachment to her of the young Prince Edward, testified by
many charming little letters of the boy, too well known to need quotation
here, seemed to promise a growth of her State importance. The tendency was
one to be strenuously opposed by Gardiner and his friends in the Council,
and once more attempts were made to strike at the Queen through Cranmer,
almost simultaneously with a movement, flattering to Henry and hopeful for
the Catholic party, to negotiate a meeting at Calais or in Flanders
between him and the Emperor, to settle all questions and make France
distrustful. For any such approach to be productive of the full effects
desired by Gardiner, it was necessary to couple with it severe measures
against the Protestants. Henry was reminded that the coming attack upon
the German Lutherans by the Emperor, with the acquiescence of France,
would certainly portend an attack upon himself later; and he was told by
the Catholic majority of his Council that any tenderness on his part
towards heresy now would be specially perilous. The first blow was struck
at Cranmer, and was struck in vain. The story in full is told by Strype
from Morice and Foxe, and has been repeated by every historian of the
reign. Gardiner a