Part 7 (1/2)

_From a painting by_ HOLBEIN _in the Imperial Collection at Vienna_]

CHAPTER VII

1536-1540

PLOT AND COUNTERPLOT--JANE SEYMOUR AND ANNE OF CLEVES

From the moment that Henry abruptly left the lists at May-day on the receipt of Cromwell's letter detailing the admissions of Smeaton, he saw Anne no more. No pang of remorse, no wave of compa.s.sion pa.s.sed over him.

He easily believed what he wished to believe, and Anne was left to the tender mercies of Cromwell, to be done to death. Again Henry was a prey to profound self-pity for ever having fallen under the enchantment of such a wicked woman. He, of course, was not to blame for anything. He never was.

He was always the clement, just man whose unsuspecting goodness of heart had been abused by others, and who tried to find distraction and to forget the evil done him. On the very night of the day that Anne was arrested the Duke of Richmond, Henry's son, now a grown youth, went, as was his custom, into his father's room at Whitehall to bid him good night and ask his blessing. The King, we are told,[167] fell a-weeping as he blessed his son, ”saying that he and his sister (Mary) might well be grateful to G.o.d for saving them from the hands of that accursed and venomous harlot who had intended to poison them.” That Anne may have planned the a.s.sa.s.sination of Mary is quite probable, even if she had no hand in the shortening of Katharine's days, and this may have been the real hidden pretext of her death acting upon Henry's fears for himself.[168] But if such were the case, Henry, at least, was deserving of no pity, for when it was only Katharine's life that was in danger he was, as we have seen, brutally callous, and only awoke to the enormity of the ”venomous harlot” when Cromwell made him believe that his own safety was jeopardised. Then no fate was too cruel for the woman he once had loved.

On the day preceding Anne's trial, Jane Seymour was brought from Sir Nicholas Carew's house to another residence on the river bank, only a mile from Whitehall Stairs, to be ready for her intended elevation as soon as the Queen was disposed of. Here Jane was served for the few days she stayed ”very splendidly by the cooks and certain officers of the King, and very richly adorned.”[169] So certain was Henry that nothing would now stand in the way of his new marriage that Jane was informed beforehand that on the 15th, by three in the afternoon, she would hear of her predecessor's condemnation; and Anne's cousin and enemy, Sir Francis Brian, eagerly brought the news to the expectant lady at the hour antic.i.p.ated. The next day, when the sword of the French headsman had made Henry indeed a widower, the King only awaited receipt of the intelligence to enter his barge and seek the consolation of Jane Seymour. At six o'clock in the morning of the 20th May, when the headless body of Anne, barely cold, still awaited sepulture huddled in an old arrow-box in the Church of St. Peter within the Tower, Jane was secretly carried by water from her residence to Hampton Court; and before nine o'clock she had been privately married to the King,[170] by virtue of a dispensation issued the day previously by the accommodating Cranmer.[171] It would seem probable that the day after the private espousals Jane travelled to her home in Wilts.h.i.+re, where she stayed for several days whilst preparations were being made in the King's abodes for her reception as Queen: for all the A's had to be changed to J's in the royal ciphers, and traces of Anne's former presence abolished wherever possible. Whether Henry accompanied his new wife to Wilts.h.i.+re on this occasion is not quite certain, though from Sir John Russell's account it is probable that he did. In any case the King and his new wife visited Mercer's Hall, in Cheapside, on the 29th May, St. Peter's Eve, to witness from the windows the civic ceremony of the annual setting of the watch; and on the following day, 30th May, the pair were formally married in the Queen's closet at Whitehall.

The people at large looked somewhat askance at this furious haste to marry the new wife before the shed blood of the previous one was dry;[172] but the Court, and those who still recollected the wronged Princess Mary and her dead mother, were enthusiastic in their welcome to Jane.[173] The Emperor's friends, too, were in joyous mood; and Princess Mary at Hunsdon was full of hope, and eager to be allowed to greet her father and his wife now that ”that woman” was dead. Chapuys, we may be sure, did not stand behind the door now when he went to Court. On the contrary, when he first visited Whitehall a few days after the wedding, Henry led him by the hand to Jane's apartments, and allowed the diplomatist to kiss the Queen--”congratulating her upon her marriage and wis.h.i.+ng her prosperity. I told her that, although the device of the lady who had preceded her on the throne was 'The happiest of women,' I had no doubt that she herself would realise that motto. I was sure that the Emperor would be equally rejoiced as the King himself had been at meeting such a virtuous and amiable Queen, the more so that her brother (_i.e._ Sir E. Seymour, afterwards the Duke of Somerset) had been in the Emperor's service. I added that it was almost impossible to believe the joy and pleasure which Englishmen generally had felt at the marriage; especially as it was said that she was continually trying to persuade the King to restore the Princess to his favour, as formerly.” Most of Chapuys' courtly talk with Jane, indeed, was directed to this point of the restoration of Mary; but the new Queen, though inexperienced, had been well coached, and did not unduly commit herself; only promising to favour the Princess, and to endeavour to deserve the t.i.tle that Chapuys had given her of ”peacemaker.” Henry strolled up to the pair at this point, and excused his new wife for any want of expertness: ”as I was the first amba.s.sador she had received, and she was not used yet to such receptions. He (Henry) felt sure, however, that she would do her utmost to obtain the t.i.tle of 'peacemaker,' with which I (Chapuys) had greeted her, as, besides being naturally of a kind and amiable disposition and much inclined to peace, she would strive to prevent his (Henry's) taking part in a foreign war, if only out of the fear of being separated from him.”[174]

But all these fine hopes were rapidly banished. Jane never possessed or attempted to exercise any political influence on her husband. She smiled sweetly and in a non-committal way upon the Princess Mary, and upon the imperialist and moderate Catholic party that had hoped to make the new Queen their instrument; but Cromwell's was still the strong mind that swayed the King. He had obtained renewed control over his master by ridding him of Anne; and had, at all events, prevented England from being drawn into a coalition with France against the Emperor; but he had no intention, even if it had been possible, of going to the other extreme and binding his country to go to war against France to please the Emperor.

Henry's self-will and vanity, as well as his greed, also stood in the way of a complete submission to the Papacy, and those who had brought Jane Seymour in, hoping that her advent would mean a return to the same position as that previous to Anne's rise, now found that they had been over sanguine. Charles and Francis were left to fight out their great duel alone in Italy and Provence, to the general discomfiture of the imperial cause; and, instead of hastening to humble himself at the feet of Paul III., as the pontiff had fondly expected, Henry summoned Parliament, and gave stronger statutory sanction than ever to his ecclesiastical independence of Rome.[175] Anne's condemnation and Elizabeth's b.a.s.t.a.r.dy were obediently confirmed by the Legislature, and the entire freedom of the English Church from Rome rea.s.serted.

But the question of the succession was that which aroused the strongest feeling, and its settlement the keenest disappointment. Now that Anne's offspring was disinherited, Princess Mary and her friends naturally expected that she, with the help of the new Queen, would once more enter into the enjoyment of her birthright. Eagerly Mary wrote to Cromwell bespeaking his aid, which she had been led to expect that he would give; and by his intercession she was allowed to send her humble pet.i.tion to her father, praying for leave to see him. Her letters are all couched in terms of cringing humility, praying forgiveness for past offences, and promising to be a truly dutiful daughter in future. But this did not satisfy Henry.

Cromwell, desirous, in pursuance of his policy of keeping friendly with the Emperor without going to war with France, or kneeling to Rome, hoped to bring about peace between Mary and her father. But the strongest pa.s.sions of Henry's nature were now at stake, and he would only accept his daughter's submission on terms that made her a self-confessed b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and against this the girl, as obstinate as her father and as righteously proud as her mother, still rebelled. Henry's son, the Duke of Richmond, was now a straight stripling of eighteen, already married to Norfolk's daughter, and, failing issue by Jane, here was an heir to the Crown that might carry the Tudor line onward in the male blood, if Parliament could be chicaned or threatened into acknowledging him. So Mary was plied with letters from Cromwell, each more pressing and cruel than the previous one, driving the girl to distraction by the King's insistence upon his terms.[176] Threats, cajolery, and artful casuistry were all tried. Again Mary turned to her foreign advisers and the King's rebellious subjects for support, and again her father's heart hardened when he knew it. Norfolk, who with others was sent to persuade her, was so incensed with her firmness that he said if she had been his daughter he would have knocked her head against the wall until it was as soft as a codlin. But Norfolk's daughter was the d.u.c.h.ess of Richmond, and might be Queen Consort after Henry's death if Mary were disinherited, so that there was some excuse for his violence. Those who were in favour of Mary were dismissed from the Council--even Cromwell was in fear--and Jane Seymour was rudely snubbed by the King for daring to intercede for the Princess. At length, with death threatening her, Mary could stand out no longer. Without even reading it, she signed with a mental reservation, and confident of obtaining the Papal absolution for which she secretly asked, the shameful declaration forced upon her, repudiating the Papal authority, and specifically acknowledging herself a b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

Then Henry was all amiability with his wronged daughter. He and Jane went to visit her at Richmond, whither she had been brought, giving her handsome presents of money and jewels; liberty was given to her to come to Court, and stately service surrounded her. But it was all embittered by the knowledge that Parliament had been induced to acknowledge that all the King's children were illegitimate, and to grant to Henry himself the right of appointing his own successor by letters patent or by will. Alas! the youth in whose immediate interest the injustice was done was fast sinking to his grave; and on the 22nd July 1536 the Duke of Richmond breathed his last, to Henry's bitter grief, Mary's prospects again became brighter, and all those who resented the religious policy and Henry's recalcitrancy now looked to the girl as their only hope of a return to the old order of things. Chapuys, too, was ceaseless in his intrigues to bring England once more into a condition of obedience to the Pope, that should make her a fit instrument for the imperial policy, and soon the disappointment that followed on the elevation of Jane Seymour found vent in the outbreak of rebellion in Lincolns.h.i.+re and Yorks.h.i.+re.

The priests and the great ma.s.s of the people had bent the neck patiently to the King's violent innovations in the observances that they had been taught to hold sacred. They had seen the religious houses, to which they looked for help and succour in distress, destroyed and alienated. The abuses of the clergy had doubtless been great, and the first measures against them had been welcomed; but the complete confiscation of vast properties, in the main administered for the benefit of the lowly, the continued enclosure of common lands by the gentry newly enriched by ecclesiastical plunder, and the rankling sense of the scandalous injustice that had been suffered by Katharine and Mary, for the sake, as the people said, of the King's l.u.s.tful caprice, at last provided the extreme militant Catholic party with the impetus needed for revolt against the Crown.

Imperious Henry was beside himself with rage; and for a time it looked as if he and his system might be swept away in favour of his daughter, or one of the Poles, who were being put forward by the Pope. The Bull of excommunication against Henry and England, so long held back, was now launched, making rebellion righteous; and the imperial interest in England, which was still strong, did its best to aid the rising of Henry's lieges against him. But the rebels were weakly led: the greater n.o.bles had for the most part been bought by grants of ecclesiastical lands; and Norfolk, for all his moral baseness, was an experienced and able soldier.

So the Pilgrimage of Grace, threatening as it looked for a time, flickered out; and the yoke was riveted tighter than ever upon the neck of rural England. To the party that had hoped to make use of her, Jane Seymour was thus, to some extent, a disappointment;[177] but her placid submissiveness, which made her a bad political instrument, exactly suited a husband so imperious as Henry; and from a domestic point of view the union was successful. During the summer Jane shared in her husband's progresses and recreations, but as the months rolled on and no hope came of offspring, ominous rumours ran that Jane's coronation would be deferred until it was proved that she might bear children to the King; and some said that if she proved barren a pretext would be found for displacing her in favour of another. Indeed, only a few days after the public marriage, Henry noticed two very beautiful girls at Court, and showed his annoyance that he had not seen them before taking Jane.

After six months of marriage without sign of issue, Henry began to take fright. The Duke of Richmond was dead, and both the King's daughters were acknowledged by the law of England to be illegitimate. He was already forty-six years of age, and had lately grown very obese; and his death without further issue or a resettlement of the succession would inevitably lead to a dynastic dispute, with the probable result of the return of the House of York to the throne in the person of one of the Poles under the aegis of Rome. Whenever possible, Jane had said a good word for the Princess Mary, and Henry began to listen more kindly than before to his wife's well-meant attempts to soften him in favour of his daughter. The Catholic party was all alert with new hopes that the King, convinced that he could father no more sons, would cause his elder daughter to be acknowledged his heir;[178] but the reformers, who had grown up numerously, especially in and about London, during Henry's defiance of Rome, looked askance at a policy which in time they feared might bring back the old order of things. The mainstay of this party at Court, apart from the professed Lutherans and the new bishops, were those who, having received grants of ecclesiastical property, despaired of any return to the Roman communion and the imperial alliance without the restoration of the Church property. Amongst these courtiers was Jane's brother, Edward Seymour, Viscount Beauchamp, who had received large grants of ecclesiastical lands at intervals since 1528. He was a personal friend of the King, and had taken no active part in the intrigue that accompanied his sister's elevation, though after the marriage he naturally rose higher than before in the favour of the King. He was a clever and superficially brilliant, but ostentatious and greedy man, of no great strength of purpose, whose new relations.h.i.+p to the King marked him out as a dominating influence in the future. The Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, upon whom Henry had depended as generals, were now very old and ailing, and there was no other peer but Cromwell of any ability in the Councils.

Even thus early it was clear that Seymour's weight would, notwithstanding the circ.u.mstances of his sister's rise, be thrown on to the anti-Papal side when the crucial struggle came. He was, moreover, a new man; and as such not welcomed by the older n.o.bility, who, though desirous of retaining their Church plunder, were yet bound by their traditions against bureaucrats such as Cromwell, and the policy of defiance of the Papacy that he and his like had suggested and carried out. Cromwell's own position at this time (1536-37) was a paradoxical one. It was he who had led Henry on, step by step, to entire schism and the plunder of the Church; it was he who not only had shown how to get rid of Katharine, but how to destroy her successor; and it was he whom the Catholic party hated with a whole-hearted detestation, for the King's acts as well as his own.

On the other hand, he was hardly less distrusted by the reforming party; for his efforts were known to be directed to a reconciliation with the Emperor, which could only be effected conjointly with some sort of arrangement with the Papacy. His efforts to please the imperialists by siding with the Princess Mary during her dispute with her father led him to the very verge of destruction. Whilst the young Princess was being badgered into making her shameful and insincere renunciation of her faith and birthright, Cromwell, the very man who was the instrument for extorting her submission, sat, as he says, for a week in the Council considering himself ”a dead man,” because the King believed that he was encouraging Mary to resist. Cromwell, therefore, like most men who endeavour to hold a middle course, was distrusted and hated by every one; and it must have been obvious to him that if he could ensure the adhesion of the rising Seymour interest his chance of weathering the storm would be infinitely improved. His son had recently married Jane Seymour's sister, and this brought him into close relations.h.i.+p with the family, and, as will be seen, led in the next year to a compact political union between the Seymour brothers, Cromwell, and the reforming party, as against the n.o.bles and traditional conservatives.

For the time, however, Cromwell held on his way, endeavouring to keep in with the imperialists and Mary; and it was doubtless to his prompting that Jane used her influence, when at its highest point, to reconcile the Princess personally to her father. To the great joy of the King, in March 1537, Jane was declared to be with child. The Emperor had already opened a negotiation for the marriage of Mary with his brother-in-law, the Infante Luiz of Portugal, and Henry was playing a waiting game till he saw if Jane would bear him a child. If so, Mary might go; although he still refused to legitimise her; but if no more issue was to be born to him, he could hardly allow his elder daughter to leave England and fall into the hands of the Emperor. Charles, on the other hand, was extremely anxious to obtain possession of so valuable a pledge for the future as Mary; and was willing to go to almost any lengths to get her, either by fair means or foul, fearing, as he did, that the girl might be married discreditably in England--he thought even to Cromwell himself--in order to destroy her international value to Henry's rivals.

As soon, however, as Jane's pregnancy was announced Mary's position changed. If a child was born in wedlock to the King, especially if it were a son, there would be no need to degrade Mary by joining her to a lowly husband; she might, on the contrary, become a good international marriage a.s.set in the hands of her father, who might bargain with Charles or Francis for her. The fresh move of Jane Seymour, therefore, in her favour, in the spring of 1537, when the Queen's pregnancy had given her greater power over her husband, was probably welcome both to the King and Cromwell, as enhancing Mary's importance at a time when she might be used as an international political p.a.w.n without danger. Jane was sad one day in the early period of her pregnancy. ”Why, darling,” said the King, ”how happeneth it you are not merrier?”[179] ”It hath pleased your Grace,”

replied the Queen, ”to make me your wife, and there are none but my inferiors with whom to make merry, withal, your Grace excepted; unless it would please you that we might enjoy the company of the Lady Mary at Court. I could be merry with her.” ”We will have her here, darling, if that will make thee merry,” said the King. And before many days had gone, Mary, with a full train of ladies, was brought from Hunsdon, magnificently dressed, to Whitehall, where, in the great presence chamber, Henry and his wife stood before the fire. The poor girl was almost overcome at the tenderness of her reception, and fell upon her knees before her father and his wife. Henry, as usual anxious to throw upon others the responsibility of his ill-treatment of his daughter, turned to his Councillors, who stood around, and said, ”Some of you were desirous that I should put this jewel to death.” ”That were a pity,” quoth the Queen, ”to have lost your chiefest jewel of England.”[180] The hint was too much for Mary, who changed colour and fell into a swoon, greatly to her father's concern.

At length the day long yearned and prayed for by Henry came. Jane had for some months lived in the strictest quietude, and prayers and ma.s.ses for her safe delivery were offered in the churches for weeks before. In September she had travelled slowly to Hampton Court, and on the 12th October 1537 a healthy son was born to her and Henry. The joy of the King was great beyond words. The gross sensualist, old beyond his years, had in vain hoped through all his st.u.r.dy youth for a boy, who, beyond reproach, might bear his regal name. He had flouted Christendom and defied the greatest powers on earth in order to marry a woman who might bear him a man child. When she failed to do so, he had coldly stood aside whilst his instruments defamed her and did her to death; and now, at last, in his declining years, his prayer was answered, and the House of Tudor was secure upon the future throne of England. Bonfires blazed and joy bells rang throughout the land; feasts of unexampled bounteousness coa.r.s.ely brought home to the lieges the blessing that had come to save the country from the calamity of a disputed succession. The Seymour brothers at once became, next the King and his son, the most important personages in England, the elder, Edward, being created Earl of Hertford, and both receiving great additional grants of monastic lands. In the general jubilation at the birth, the interests of the mother were forgotten. No attempt appears to have been made to save her from the excitement that surrounded her; and on the very day of her delivery she signed an official letter ”Jane the Quene” to Cromwell, directing him to communicate to the Privy Council the joyful news.

The most sumptuous royal christening ever seen was in bustling preparation in and about her sick-chamber; and that no circ.u.mstance of state should be lacking, the mother herself, only four days after the birth, was forced to take part in the exhausting ceremony. In the chapel at Hampton Court, newly decorated like the splendid banqueting-hall adjoining, where the initials of Jane carved in stone with those of the King, and her arms and device on glowing gla.s.s and gilded scutcheon still perpetuate her fleeting presence, the christening ceremony was held by torchlight late in the chill autumn evening. Through the long draughty corridors, preceded by braying trumpets and followed by rustling crowds of elated courtiers, the sick woman was carried on her stately pallet covered with heavy robes of crimson velvet and ermine. Under a golden canopy, supported by the four greatest n.o.bles in the land, next to Norfolk, who was one of the G.o.dfathers, the Marchioness of Exeter bore the infant in her arms to the scene of the ceremony; and the Princess Mary, fiercely avid of love as she ever was, held the prince at the font. Suffolk, Arundel, and doomed Exeter, with a host of other magnates, stood around; whilst one towering handsome figure, with a long brown beard, carried aloft in his arms the tiny fair girl-child of Anne, the Lady Elizabeth, holding in her dainty hands the holy chrisom. It was Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, looked at askance by the rest as a new man, but already overlapping them all as the uncle of the infant prince. During the _Te Deum_ and the long, pompous ceremony of the baptism the mother lay flushed and excited upon her couch; whilst the proud father, his broad face beaming with pride, sat by her side, holding her hand.

It was hard upon midnight when the Queen gave her blessing to her child and was carried back to her chamber, with more trumpet blasts and noisy gratulation. The next day, as was to be expected, she was in a high fever, so ill that she was confessed and received extreme unction. But she rallied, and seemed somewhat amended for the next few days, though ominous rumours were rife in London that her life had purposely been jeopardised in order to save that of the child at birth.[181] They were not true, but they give the measure of the public estimate of Henry's character, and have been made the most of by Sanders, Rivadeneyra, and the other Jesuit historians. On the 23rd October the Queen fell gravely ill again, and in the night was thought to be dying. Henry had intended to ride to Esher that day, but ”could not find it in his heart” to go; and the next night, the 24th October, Jane Seymour died, a sacrifice to improper treatment and heartlessly exacted ceremonial. Henry had not been married long enough to her to have become tired of her, and her somewhat lethargic placidity had suited him. She had, moreover, borne him the long-looked-for son; and his grief for her loss was profound, and no doubt sincere. Much as he hated signs of mortality, he wore black mourning for her for three months, and shut himself up at Windsor away from the world, and above all away from the corpse of his dead wife, for a fortnight. Jane's body, embalmed, lay in the presence chamber at Hampton Court for a week. Blazing tapers surrounded the great hea.r.s.e, and ma.s.ses went on from dawn to midday in the chamber. All night long the Queen's ladies, with Princess Mary, watched before the bier, until the end of the month, when the catafalque had been erected in the chapel for the formal lying in state. On the 12th November, with the greatest possible pomp, the funeral procession bore the dead Queen to Windsor for burial in a grave in St. George's Chapel, destined to receive the remains of Henry as well as that of his third wife, the mother of his son.[182] The writers of the time, following the lead of Henry and his courtiers, never mentioned their grief for the Queen without promptly suggesting that it was more than counterbalanced by their joy at the birth of her son, who from his first appearance in the world was hailed as a paragon of beauty and perfection. Thanksgivings for the boon of a male heir to the King blended their sounds of jubilation with the droning of the ma.s.ses for the mother's soul, and the flare of the bonfires died down into the flickering tapers that dimly lit the funerals. Even Henry himself, in writing to give the news of his son's birth, confessed that his joy at the event had far exceeded his grief for Jane's death.

So far as the Catholic party that had promoted it was concerned, the marriage with Jane had been a failure. The Pilgrimage of Grace had been drowned in the blood of ruthless slaughter: and partly because of Mary's scruples and fears, partly because they themselves had been gorged with the plunder of the Church, nearly all the great n.o.bles stood aside and raised no voice whilst Cromwell and his master still worked havoc on the religious houses, regardless of Jane's timid intercession. Boxley, Walsingham, and even the sacred shrine of Canterbury, yielded their relics and images, venerated for centuries, to be scorned and destroyed; whilst the vast acc.u.mulated treasures of gold and gems that enriched them went to fill the coffers of the King, and their lands to bribe his favourites.

Throughout England the work of confiscation was carried on now with a zeal which only greed for the resultant profit can explain.[183] The attacks upon superst.i.tion in the Church by those in authority naturally aroused a feeling of greater freedom of thought amongst the ma.s.s of the people. The establishment of an open Bible in English in every church for the perusal of the paris.h.i.+oners, due, as indeed most of the doctrinal changes were, to Cranmer, encouraged men to think to some extent for themselves. But though, for purposes to which reference will be made presently, Henry willingly concurred in Cranmer's reforming tendencies and Cromwell's anti-ecclesiastical plans for providing him with abundant money, he would allow no departure from orthodoxy as he understood it. His love for theological controversy, and his undoubted ability and learning in that direction, enabled him to enforce his views with apparently unanswerable arguments, especially as he was able, and quite ready, to close the dispute with an obstinate antagonist by prescribing the stake and the gibbet either to those who repudiated his spiritual supremacy or to those who, like the Anabaptists, questioned the efficacy of a sacrament which he had adopted. For Henry it was to a great extent a matter of pride and self-esteem now to show to his own subjects and the world that he was absolutely supreme and infallible, and this feeling unquestionably had greatly influenced the progress effected by the reformation and emanc.i.p.ation from Rome made after the disappointing marriage with Jane Seymour.

But there was also policy in Henry's present action. Throughout the years 1536 and 1537 Francis and the Emperor had continued at war; but by the close of the latter year it was evident that both combatants were exhausted, and would shortly make up their differences. The Papal excommunication of Henry and his realm was now in full force, making rebellion against the King a laudable act for all good Catholics; and any agreement between 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.