rce, and the king,
the queen, and the Archbishop of Canterbury were declared to have incurred
the threatened censures.

The privy council met on the 2nd of December, and it was determined in
consequence that copies of the "Act of Appeals," and of the king's
"provocation" to a general council, should be fixed without delay on every
church door in England. Protests were at the same time to be drawn up and
sent into Flanders, and to the other courts in Europe, "to the intent the
falsehood and injustice of the Bishop of Rome might appear to all the
world." The defences of the country were to be looked to; and "spies" to be
sent into Scotland to see "what they intended there," "and whether they
would confeder themselves with any outward princes." Finally, it was
proposed that the attempt to form an alliance with the Lutheran powers
should be renewed on a larger scale; that certain discreet and grave
persons should be appointed to conclude "some league or amity with the
princes of Germany"--"that is to say, the King of Poland, the King of
Hungary,[670] the Duke of Saxony, the Duke of Bavaria, the Duke of
Brandenburg, the Landgrave of Hesse, and other potentates."[671] Vaughan's
mission had been merely tentative, and had failed. Yet the offer of a
league, offensive and defensive, the immediate and avowed object of which
was a general council at which the Protestants should be represented, might
easily succeed where vague offers of amity had come to nothing. The
formation of a Protestant alliance, however, would have been equivalent to
a declaration of war against Catholic Europe; and it was a step which could
not be taken, consistently with the Treaty of Calais,--without first
communicating with Francis.

Henry, therefore, by the advice of the council, wrote a despatch to Sir
John Wallop, the ambassador at Paris, which was to be laid before the
French court. He explained the circumstances in which he was placed, with
the suggestion which the council had made to him. He gave a list of the
princes with whom he had been desired by his ministers to connect
himself--and the object was nothing less than a coalition of Northern
Europe. He recapitulated the injuries which he had received from the pope,
who at length was studying "to subvert the rest and peace of the realm;"
"yea, and so much as in him was, utterly to destroy the same." The nobles
and council, he said, for their own sake as well as for the sake of the
kingdom, had ent