ABSTRACT
While Cromwell was establishing the king as supreme head, he had to rely on the alliance with France inherited from Wolsey's last years. This proved relatively easy until late in 1533 when Francis I, at last understanding where things were tending in England, began to waver. In consequence other feelers were put out. In 1533 Cromwell tentatively opened fruitless negotiations with the Lutheran princes of Germany; in 1534, Henry himself, forsaking the determined neutrality which he normally favoured after witnessing the collapse of Wolsey's policy of alliances, involved himself in the affairs of protestant Lubeck, a Baltic town which was trying to prevent the imperial nominee from ascending the vacant throne of Denmark. Nothing came of all this except ephemeral trouble; Charles V was hindered from succouring his aunt (whose treatment grew worse after 1533) not by English skill but by his commitments in the Mediterranean and his troubles in Germany. In 1535 things began to look black. France showed signs of turning from the understanding with England to 'friend.. ship with Spain: the spectre of a union of the catholic powers
against schismatic England, which was to haunt Cromwell to his death, seemed for a time very real. Immediately, negotiations with the German Lutherans were resumed, though still to no purpose; this time it was hoped to get not only a political alliance but also the services of great reformers like Melanchthon. Melanchthon stayed at home, but Cromwell took advantage of some episcopal vacancies to promote well-known English protestants. In 1535 Hugh Latimer succeeded to Worcester and Nicholas Sh~"iCton to Salisbury; these and others were the heretical bishops whose dismissal the pilgrims of grace demanded a year later. Cromwell clearly wished to face attack with Henry as the leader of a reformed country, but it is much less certain whether the king was with him in this. Henry seems to have understood the essential safety of England's isolated position. Crom\vell was always much too inclined to practise the directness and thoroughness of his methods in the field of foreign affairs which required delays, waiting, and opportunism; he was temperamentally a worse foreign minister than the king.
