n his passionate temperament
might be easily instigated to take steps which they would rather
avoid.[132] After Catharine's death they made mutual advances, which
it is true did not bring about a good understanding, but yet excluded
actual hostilities. It would only disturb our view if we were here to
follow one by one the manifold fluctuations in the course of these
political relations and negociations. One motive in favour of peace
under all circumstances was supplied by the ever-growing commerce
between England and the Netherlands, on which the prosperity of both
countries depended, and the destruction of which would have been
injurious to the sovereigns themselves. When, some time after, the
prospect of an alliance with France against England was presented to
him by the interposition of the new Pope, Paul III, Charles declined
it. He remarked that the German Protestants, to whom his attention
must be mainly directed, would be strengthened by it.[133] At the most
an interruption of this system could only be expected in case civil
disturbances in England invited the Emperor to make a sudden attack.
Once it even appeared as if a Yorkist movement might be combined with
the religious agitation. A descendant of Edward IV, the Marquis of
Exeter, formed the plan of marrying the Princess Mary, and undertaking
the restoration of the old church system. He found much sympathy in
the country for this plan; the co-operation of the Emperor with him
might have been very dangerous.

Henry lost no time in fortifying the harbours and coasts against such
an attack.

But the chief means of preventing all dangers of this kind lay in
cutting from under them the ground on which they rested. Henry VIII
was not minded to yield a jot of the full power he had inherited: on
the contrary his supremacy in church matters was confirmed in 1539 by
a new act of Parliament: another finally ordained the suppression of
the greater abbeys also, whose revenues served to endow some new
bishoprics, but mainly passed into the possession of the Crown and the
Lords: the unity of the Church and the exclusive independence of the
country were still more firmly established. But the more Henry was
resolved to abide by his constitutional innovations, the more
necessary it seemed to him, in reference to doctrine, to avoid any
deviation that could be designated as heretical. And though he some
years before made advances to the Protestants because he needed their
su