id, and by special envoys to Mary of Hungary in
Flanders. But it was all "buckler play," as the imperial agents and
Charles himself soon found out. Henry and Cromwell knew perfectly well
that no stable alliance with the Emperor was possible then unless their
religious policy was changed; and they had gone too far to change it
without humiliation, if not destruction, to Henry; the real object of the
negotiations being simply to obtain some sort of promise about the cession
of Milan, by which Francis might be detached from the imperial alliance.
But it was unsuccessful; and, for once, the two great antagonists held
together for a time against all Lutheranism and heresy.

Then Henry and Cromwell had to look anxiously for support and alliances
elsewhere. To the King it was a repugnant and humiliating necessity. He
had puffed himself into the belief that he was the most potent and
infallible of sovereigns, and he found himself, for the first time,
scorned by all those he had reason to fear. He, the embodiment of the idea
of regal omnipotence, would be forced to make common cause with those who,
like the German Protestants, stood for resistance to supreme authority;
with usurpers like Christian III. of Denmark, and trading democracies like
Luebeck. With much hesitation and dislike, therefore, he listened, whilst
Cromwell urged the inevitable policy upon him, which led him farther and
farther away from the inner circle of potentates to which he and his
father had gained entrance in the course of the events related in the
first chapters of this book.

Cromwell's arguments would probably have been unavailing but for the
opportune "discovery," in the usual fortuitous Cromwell fashion, of a
dangerous aristocratic conspiracy against Henry himself. Cardinal Pole had
been entrusted with the Papal excommunication, and everywhere impressed
upon English Catholics the duty of obeying their spiritual father by
deposing the King.[188] Whether anything in the form of a regular
conspiracy to do this existed in England is extremely doubtful; but the
Cardinal had naturally written to his relatives in England, especially to
his brother Geoffrey, and perhaps to his mother, the Countess of
Salisbury, a princess of the blood royal of York. First Geoffrey was
seized and carried to the Tower, and some sort of incriminating admission
drawn from him by threats of torture, though, so far as can be gathered,
nothing but the repetition of disaffected con