nd executed in the opening of 1539, while the Countess of Salisbury was
attainted in Parliament and sent to the Tower.

[Sidenote: The Lutheran Marriage]

Almost as terrible an act of bloodshed closed the year. The abbots of
Glastonbury, Reading, and Colchester, men who had sate as mitred abbots
among the lords, were charged with a denial of the king's supremacy and
hanged as traitors. But Cromwell relied for success on more than terror.
His single will forced on a scheme of foreign policy whose aim was to bind
England to the cause of the Reformation while it bound Henry helplessly to
his minister. The daring boast which his enemies laid afterwards to
Cromwell's charge, whether uttered or not, is but the expression of his
system, "In brief time he would bring things to such a pass that the King
with all his power should not be able to hinder him." His plans rested,
like the plan which proved fatal to Wolsey, on a fresh marriage of his
master. Henry's third wife, Jane Seymour, had died in childbirth; and in
the opening of 1540 Cromwell replaced her by a German consort, Anne of
Cleves, a sister-in-law of the Lutheran Elector of Saxony. He dared even
to resist Henry's caprice when the king revolted on their first interview
from the coarse features and unwieldy form of his new bride. For the
moment Cromwell had brought matters "to such a pass" that it was
impossible to recoil from the marriage, and the minister's elevation to
the Earldom of Essex seemed to proclaim his success. The marriage of Anne
of Cleves however was but the first step in a policy which, had it been
carried out as he designed it, would have anticipated the triumphs of
Richelieu. Charles and the House of Austria could alone bring about a
Catholic reaction strong enough to arrest and roll back the Reformation;
and Cromwell was no sooner united with the princes of North Germany than
he sought to league them with France for the overthrow of the Emperor.

[Sidenote: Fall of Cromwell]

Had he succeeded, the whole face of Europe would have been changed,
Southern Germany would have been secured for Protestantism, and the Thirty
Years War averted. But he failed as men failed who stand ahead of their
age. The German princes shrank from a contest with the Emperor, France
from a struggle which would be fatal to Catholicism; and Henry, left alone
to bear the resentment of the House of Austria and chained to a wife he
loathed, turned savagely on his minister. In