Fortunately for England, the situation, alarming as it was, had even more terrors for the Duke of Cleves than for Henry. Charles’ refusal to ratify the treaty of Frankfort had once more blighted the hopes of a peaceful solution of the difficulties in Germany[647]; in May the outbreak of a serious rebellion in Ghent made it imperative for the Emperor to appear in person in the Netherlands, and in early August Francis sent him an invitation to pass through France on his way to the Low Countries. The prospect that Charles, in close alliance with his former rival, would soon be brought within striking distance of Gelderland, was by no means agreeable to Duke William. It was fairly obvious that Charles would bend his energies to punishing the Duke of Cleves for his contempt of the Imperial authority, before attempting to chastise the King of England for the general weal of Christendom. The Duke of Cleves was much more practical than his brother-in-law: like Henry he never let religious considerations or conscientious scruples weigh against the dictates of political expediency. As soon as the news of the Emperor’s invitation from Francis was confirmed, Duke William’s doubts concerning the pre-contract of his sister Anne and the son of the Duke of Lorraine were cleared up with gratifying celerity. He probably had some difficulty in obtaining the consent of the more scrupulous John Frederic to a renewal of the negotiations with England, but his urgency was such that he triumphed over every obstacle. A messenger from Burckhard to Cromwell in the end of August was followed in early September by four ambassadors from Cleves and Saxony who were authorized to conclude the match[648]. The King must have been greatly relieved at the arrival of the envoys. Since May 3 he had heard nothing from his friends in Cleves except for the famous description of his intended bride, which his ambassador Wotton had sent him, for lack of other news. Anne appears to have been of very ‘lowly and gentle conditions. . . . She occupieth her time most with the needle, wherwithall she . . . She canne reede and wryte her [own tongue but of] Frenche Latyn or other langaige she [knows no]ne, nor yet she canne not synge nor pleye . . . enye instrument, for they take it heere in Germanye for a rebuke and an occasion of lightenesse, that great ladyes shuld be lernyd or have enye knowledge of musike . . . your Graces servant Hanze Albein hathe taken theffigies of my lady Anne and the ladye Amelye and hath expressyd theyr imaiges verye lyvelye[649].’ In the end it proved unfortunate for Cromwell that this letter, and the portrait which Holbein made[650] were not sufficient to turn the King against her, without the need of further confirmation. But even if Wotton’s description had been far less flattering, it is doubtful if he could have persuaded Henry to abandon the Cleves marriage at this crisis. The King was now as reckless in accepting the alliance as he had been a few months before in refusing it. He perhaps forgot that though his zeal for the national welfare had never been hampered by religion or conscience, he had not yet put his patriotism to the more practical test of a sacrifice of matrimonial bliss. So the preliminaries of the match were hurried through with a speed quite as remarkable as the delays in the previous negotiations with the Lutherans. The ambassadors departed on October 6 to return to Cleves and conduct Anne to Calais, where a noble company assembled to welcome her, Gregory Cromwell being among the number[651]. Such were the delays of travelling in those times (Wotton wrote to Cromwell that the lady’s party could only make five miles a day[652]) that Anne of Cleves did not arrive at Calais until December 11, and there she waited till the 27th, for weather sufficiently favourable for her crossing[653].
Having landed, she proceeded to Canterbury, where Cranmer welcomed her with due pomp and ceremony. He had received from Cromwell fifty sovereigns to be presented to her on her arrival, and promised to do his best to induce the townspeople to give her fifty angels more[654]. From Canterbury Anne journeyed on to Sittingbourne and Rochester, where she was received on December 31 by the Duke of Norfolk, with a great company of nobles[655]. When Henry heard of her arrival there he determined to visit her in disguise, and, accompanied by eight persons of his Privy Chamber, he rode down to Rochester on New Year’s Day and saw for the first time his intended bride[656]. It is unfortunate that we possess no trustworthy information concerning the impression which Anne made on Henry at this first meeting. A letter which Cromwell wrote to the King, six months later, from the Tower states that when Henry, on his return from Rochester, was asked how he liked the Queen, he had answered ‘hevelye And not plesantlye “nothing so well as She was spokyn of”,’ and had added that had he known as much as he then knew ‘she shold not haue Commen within this Realme[657].’ It will be seen in a later chapter, however, that Cromwell wrote this letter under circumstances which rendered it very improbable that he told the exact truth: there is every reason to think that he greatly exaggerated the aversion which Henry first conceived for Anne of Cleves. In any case if Henry felt any such disgust as Cromwell described, he succeeded admirably in dissembling his feelings. Two days after the meeting at Rochester, he rode in state to meet his bride at Greenwich, and on January 6 he married her. ‘The sonday after,’ Hall adds, ‘there were kepte solempne Justes, . . . on whiche daie she was appareiled after the Englishe fassion, with a Frenche whode, whiche so set furth her beautie and good visage, that euery creature reioysed to behold her[658].’
It is important to notice that even in this hour of national peril, Henry did not make any overtures to the Elector of Saxony or the Landgrave of Hesse. Not even the immediate prospect of war with France and Spain could induce him to go as far as this and to bind himself by ties religious as well as political. Even Cromwell had by this time discovered the uselessness of endeavouring to persuade the King to return to an alliance of which he had never really approved; more than this, he at last seemed to realize, that as advocate of a policy which his master had definitely abandoned, he ran great danger of losing his influence if not his life. It was rather late for him to attempt to break away from a plan with which his name had become identified; but he saw that he must purchase safety at the cost of consistency, and he took care in future to discourage all efforts of the Lutherans to come to an agreement. The reception accorded to an embassy which the firm but persistent Schmalkaldner sent to England in January 1540, and the words which Cromwell spoke to the ambassador on that occasion give us a very clear insight into the attitude of the King’s minister[659]. It was the last attempt which the Lutherans made to treat with England during Cromwell’s ministry, and its failure marks the end of the negotiations which had begun with the mission of Vaughan and Mont in 1533. Philip of Hesse had sent his councillor, Ludwig von Baumbach, to Henry’s Court once more, with instructions to express to the King his sorrow at the passage of the Six Articles, and his hope that they would not lead to any action contrary to the word of God and the truth of the Gospels. The Landgrave also trusted that the King would not suffer the negotiations with the Lutherans to drop, but the ambassador was to make it clear that a political alliance would be conditional, as always, on religious agreement[660].
Baumbach arrived early in January and immediately betook himself to Cromwell, whom he evidently considered the best friend the Lutherans had at the English Court. But this time he met with a cold reception[661]. The minister kept asking him if he had power to conclude a political alliance—a perfectly safe question, for no one knew better than Cromwell that the Lutherans would insist on doctrinal reconciliation in the first place. Baumbach tried to give an evasive answer, but was soon summoned to Henry, who repeated his minister’s demand with still greater directness. The ambassador could only reply that he must consult with Burckhard, who having returned with Anne of Cleves to England, was still in London. On January 12 the two Lutherans had a conversation with Cromwell, in which the latter defined his position with absolute clearness. He told the ambassadors that the King desired a political alliance with them, but that this must come first; the religious question could be settled later. Baumbach and Burckhard answered that this was impossible; nothing could be done until a theological agreement had been concluded. At this Cromwell could contain himself no longer. With almost pathetic frankness he turned to the Lutherans and told them that he plainly saw what they wanted in regard to religion; but, as the world stood then, that he must hold to the same belief as his master, even if it cost him his life[662]. Such was the faith of the man who six months later was brought to the block on the charge of counter-working the King in matters of religion! There is little need to dwell on the rest of Baumbach’s stay in England. He had another interview with Henry, who, angered at the firmness of the Lutherans on the religious question, now took occasion to throw contempt on their usefulness as political allies. He told some preposterous lies to Baumbach, informing him that he had heard nothing of the danger of the coalition of Charles and Francis of which the envoy talked so much, although he had faithful ambassadors at both Courts. Even if he were attacked, he said, he was fully able to defend himself, owing to England’s insular position and strong navy, which was well manned by his own subjects. German soldiers, on the contrary, would be of little use to him as sailors, for they would certainly be always seasick. After making a few counter-proposals which he knew would never be accepted, he dismissed Baumbach with a polite but non-committal message to the Landgrave, and Cromwell, who bade the envoy farewell on January 21, followed suit. But though the minister had used this last mission of the Lutherans mainly as an opportunity to break away from the policy which he had hitherto advocated, but which he now realized the danger of being connected with, his efforts to save himself were too late. We shall see in the next chapter that the events of the previous years had so thoroughly identified him with the Lutheran alliance in the minds of the people, that his enemies were enabled to make use of his supposed adherence to it, as a pretext for conspiring his ruin.
The Lutherans did not send another embassy to England for a long time. Negotiations were not resumed until more than four years later, when the situation had entirely changed, and even then they failed as signally as before. But though Henry had thus dealt the death blow to the hopes of the Schmalkaldner, he did not suffer the year 1539 to close without attempting to form an alliance of a very different sort with another prince of the Empire. As soon as he had heard of the failure of the plan for the marriage of the Princess Mary and the Duke of Cleves, Henry began to look about for another German husband for his daughter. It was doubtless with the royal authority that Christopher Mont had let fall a casual hint in conversation with a certain Nürnberg merchant named Gundelfynger, that Henry would gladly see Mary wedded to a prince of the Empire. The merchant responded by proposing Duke Philip of Bavaria as a suitable candidate for her hand. This prince was a member of the Palatinate branch of the Wittelsbach family, and a nephew of the Elector Louis. He had been a faithful servant of the Emperor and his brother Ferdinand in the first outbreaks of the religious strife after the formation of the Schmalkaldic League, and had been severely wounded in a brave attempt to oppose the Hessian lanzknechts at the battle of Laufen[663]. In spite of the fact that he belonged to a notoriously wavering family, he appears to have been a firm adherent of the Old Faith, at least at the time of which we are speaking. But on the other hand he was certainly loyal to every tradition of Wittelsbach impecuniosity. He had sacrificed all his property in the Emperor’s service, and Charles had characteristically refused to make good his losses, and had also insulted him by opposing his suit for the hand of the Duchess of Milan. A financially successful marriage seemed to offer Philip the only chance of recovering his lost fortunes, and it was at this juncture that the possibility of a match with the daughter of the rich King of England was opened to him. The proposal of Gundelfynger seems to have met with Henry’s approval, and he soon signified to Philip his desire that the latter should visit him in England. The Duke jumped at the chance to conclude a marriage which promised so many pecuniary advantages, and his anger at the ingratitude of Charles certainly did not make him any less anxious to listen to Henry’s proposals. He arrived in London on December 8[664], and at first the negotiations for the match proceeded with unexpected rapidity. Against two points on which Henry insisted, however, Philip raised strong objections[665]: the first was that he should take Mary as a bastard, ‘incapable by the laws and statutes of the realm of claiming any succession or title by right of inheritance,’ The second was the King’s refusal to except the name of the Pope from the list of those against whom the financial and political agreement which was to accompany the marriage was to be concluded: Philip, as a faithful Catholic, was apparently at first unwilling to enter a league which might bring him into conflict with the See of Rome. But the firmness of the King, coupled with the great financial profits which the match promised to Philip, finally triumphed over the religious scruples of the Wittelsbacher, and on January 24 he signed a treaty in which he accepted the marriage and the compact under the conditions on which Henry insisted: the agreement, however, was not to be considered binding unless Philip could get it ratified by his relatives in Germany before Whitsuntide, 1540. He left England, January 27, for this purpose, but his attempts were unsuccessful, and the proposal came to nothing. It was taken up a second time at a later date, and again abandoned. But though the scheme finally fell through there are a few interesting things to be noticed in connexion with the negotiations for it, which serve to make clear the trend things were taking at the time of Philip’s visit in London.
The whole affair was carried on so secretly, and we have so little documentary evidence, that it is very difficult to form any certain conclusions concerning this attempted compact. The name of Cromwell figures prominently in connexion with it; we find Duke Philip consulting with the minister at his house, and visiting the Princess Mary in his company[666]; but it is pretty obvious that all the negotiations were conducted throughout with the full approval of the King, and not, as was the case with the Lutheran affair, partially in opposition to the royal wishes. For the scheme was radically different from the proposed Lutheran alliance which had failed, and not exactly similar to the union with Cleves which had just been completed. It was far more cautious and non-committal than either of them, and it was for this reason that Henry liked it. In the first place, Philip was a Catholic, so that an agreement with him involved no contradiction to the doctrines proclaimed in the Six Articles. In the second place, he was ostensibly a close ally of the Emperor’s and a member of the Imperial Order of the Golden Fleece[667], though, as we have seen, the ingratitude of Charles after his services in Germany must necessarily have tended to make their relations less cordial. Henry was doubtless accurately informed of all this, and saw in an agreement with a member of this powerful though vacillating Wittelsbach family, an opportunity to gain valuable aid in case he were really attacked, without ostensibly committing himself to a policy which would at any time prevent a return to cordial relations with France and Spain. In the next chapter we shall see that it was precisely during Philip’s visit at the English Court that Henry’s hopes of staving off the dreaded coalition of Charles and Francis against him were once more revived in a most unexpected way. The terms of the agreement which he attempted to conclude with the Duke may thus be regarded as the first intimation of the complete reversal of England’s foreign policy which was witnessed by the first six months of the year 1540. According to the draft of a treaty drawn up in England to be presented to Philip for his approval, the Duke was to send to the King’s assistance the number of —— horse and foot if Henry was attacked by any prince or private person, and was further to aid the King if he made war for the recovery of any right of which he was defrauded[668]. We unfortunately do not possess the original copy of the treaty signed on January 24, but in an account of Philip’s life by his brother Ottheinrich, it appears that the final agreement was that the Duke should furnish the King with 1,000 horsemen and 4,000 foot-soldiers against everyone except the Roman Empire[669]. The exception of the ‘Roman Empire,’ which was probably introduced at Philip’s request, was a provision of so vague a nature that it could not bind either party very strictly; it certainly could not have applied to a coalition of Charles and Francis, which was all that Henry wanted, and it had the additional advantage that it made it appear that the compact was not especially directed against the Emperor, and so could not be resented by him. On the subject of the Pope and the illegitimacy of Mary, the King, as we have seen, had remained firm: to yield to Philip on these two points would simply have been to stultify all the work of the previous ten years, a step which Henry, even in the gravest peril, was not prepared to take. But the other terms of the agreement were precisely to his taste. The new treaty could be very useful if the crisis came, and yet it was so arranged that with his well-known ability for quibbling, the King could easily throw it over, if his hopes of a change for the better in his relations with France and Spain were actually fulfilled. It thus stands out in sharp contrast to the Lutheran alliance which Cromwell had advocated, and which, if it had been accomplished, would have irrevocably committed England to permanent hostility to Charles. The terms of the treaty with Philip were cautious, carefully guarded, and strictly non-committal; the Lutheran alliance, had it been carried through, would have been rash, definite, and irrevocable. The contrast between the two schemes is the contrast between the policies of Henry and Cromwell. Though the treaty with Philip was never ratified and the agreement which it proposed was thus never destined to succeed, the fact that so many efforts were made to accomplish it at the very moment that the negotiations with the Lutherans, of which Cromwell had been the chief supporter, were finally abandoned, is very significant in revealing the relative positions of King and minister at the opening of the year 1540.
Briefly to review the state of affairs at this critical juncture. The dread of an attack by the joint forces of France and Spain, which had hung over England for more than a year, seemed to call for a defensive league with some outside power. But even in this hour of national peril the King did not forget the lesson that he had learned at Wolsey’s fall: he remembered that the situation on the Continent had often changed before and was likely to do so again, and therefore in his search for a foreign alliance he took the greatest pains to keep his hand free. Cromwell, on the contrary, was now too far advanced in the policy he had followed since the summer of 1538 to be able to retreat from it, though the warning conveyed by the reaction of June, 1539 had certainly opened his eyes to the dangers of the course he pursued. But it was in vain that he attempted to persuade his master to sanction an alliance with the Lutherans. Henry refused to consent to any move which would bind him as permanently as this. Instead the King directed his efforts towards concluding an agreement of a very different nature with Duke Philip of Bavaria, but his demands were so great that this scheme also failed, owing to the unwillingness of the other members of the Wittelsbach family to ratify the treaty. The only alliance which did materialize was that with Cleves. It was a sort of compromise between the Lutheran and the Bavarian plans; it committed England less definitely than the one, though more so than the other. But the responsibility for it had been made to rest entirely on Cromwell’s shoulders, and the minister must have realized that his safety depended on its success. While it was under negotiation, the danger from France and Spain seemed so threatening that the policy of Cromwell was apparently justified. Almost at the moment of its completion, however, events took place which totally changed the aspect of affairs, called for the abandonment of the alliance with Cleves, and led to the ruin of the man whose fortunes were identified with it. What these events were will be seen in the succeeding chapter.