38 under the avowed patronage of Henry himself.

[Sidenote: The Lutheran Alliance]

But the force of events was already carrying England far from the
standpoint of Erasmus or More. The dream of the New Learning was to be
wrought out through the progress of education and piety. In the policy of
Cromwell reform was to be brought about by the brute force of the
Monarchy. The story of the royal supremacy was graven even on the
titlepage of the new Bible. It is Henry on his throne who gives the sacred
volume to Cranmer, ere Cranmer and Cromwell can distribute it to the
throng of priests and laymen below. Hitherto men had looked on religious
truth as a gift from the Church. They were now to look on it as a gift
from the king. The very gratitude of Englishmen for fresh spiritual
enlightenment was to tell to the profit of the royal power. No conception
could be further from that of the New Learning, from the plea for
intellectual freedom which runs through the life of Erasmus or the craving
for political liberty which gives nobleness to the speculations of More.
Nor was it possible for Henry himself to avoid drifting from the
standpoint he had chosen. He had written against Luther; he had persisted
in opposing Lutheran doctrine; he had passed new laws to hinder the
circulation of Lutheran books in his realm. But influences from without as
from within drove him nearer to Lutheranism. If the encouragement of
Francis had done somewhat to bring about his final breach with the Papacy,
he soon found little will in the French king to follow him in any course
of separation from Rome; and the French alliance threatened to become
useless as a shelter against the wrath of the Emperor. Charles was goaded
into action by the bill annulling Mary's right of succession; and in 1535
he proposed to unite his house with that of Francis by close intermarriage
and to sanction Mary's marriage with a son of the French king, if Francis
would join in an attack on England. Whether such a proposal was serious or
no, Henry had to dread attack from Charles himself and to look for new
allies against it. He was driven to offer his alliance to the Lutheran
princes of North Germany, who dreaded like himself the power of the
Emperor, and who were now gathering in the League of Schmalkald.

[Sidenote: The Articles of 1536]

But the German Princes made agreement as to doctrine a condition of their
alliance; and their pressure was backed by Henry's partizans