[610] Throughout the negotiations for the Cleves marriages Cromwell made desperate efforts to assert the dignity of the King, which he could not help feeling was a little lowered by approaching vassals of the Emperor with matrimonial offers. Mont was especially directed to confer with Burckhard about the sister of the Duke of Cleves, ‘not as demaunding her, but as geving them a prick to stirr them to offre her, as the noblest and highest honour that could come into that noble house of Cleves, if they could bring it to passe.’ Of course nothing could induce the mighty King of England to demean himself by asking any favours of the petty princes of Germany; it was their place, not his, to be the suitor.
[611] Cf. Ulmann, vol. i. pp. 579, 580; Ranke, vol. i. pp. 226–229.
[612] Life of Duke John of Cleves in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, vol. xiv. p. 214.
[613] Ranke, vol. iv. p. 128; Heidrich, 1, 2.
[614] Heidrich, 21.
[615] Heidrich, 4.
[616] Ranke, vol. iv. p. 129.
[617] Heidrich, 34, 35. Driven by political necessity, William in 1543 finally took the decisive step, and declared himself ready to introduce the new religion into his dominions, in the hope of gaining aid from his brother-in-law against the Emperor. But the offer came too late. The political situation had changed once more, and the overcautious Elector now definitely and unconditionally refused the aid which he had before made dependent on William’s acceptance of Lutheranism. The lands of the Duke were invaded by the Imperial forces, and William was forced, at the treaty of Venlo, Sept. 7, 1543, to renounce all claims to Gelderland and Zutphen, to return to the Church of Rome, and to permit no religious innovations in Juliers and Berg. Subsequently, however, encouraged by the milder attitude of the Emperor Ferdinand towards the Reformers, he devoted himself with partial success to an attempt to effect a sort of compromise between the two faiths in his own possessions, and to establish there a purified and enlightened Catholic Church, ‘Erasmian’ in its tendencies, and in many respects approaching very closely to the tenets of the Augsburg Confession. Cf. Heidrich, 91–94, and the Life of William of Cleves in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, vol. xliii. pp. 107–113.
[618] Letters, 287.
[619] Letters, 295.