the interests of Europe were sacrificed on both sides to this foolish and fatal disunion.  Circumstances indeed would not permit the division to remain in its first intensity, and their common danger compelled the two nations into a partial understanding.  Yet the reconciliation, imperfect to the last, was at the outset all but impossible.  Their relations were already embittered by many reciprocal acts of hostility.  Henry VIII. had won his spurs as a theologian by an attack on Luther.  Luther had replied by a hailstorm of invectives.  The Lutheran books had been proscribed, the Lutherans themselves had’ been burnt by Henry’s bishops.  The Protestant divines in Germany had attempted to conciliate the emperor by supporting the cause of Catherine; and Luther himself had spoken loudly in condemnation of the king.  The elements of disunion were so many and so powerful, that there was little hope of contending against them successfully.  Nevertheless, as Henry saw, the coalition of Francis and the emperor, if the pope succeeded in cementing it, was a most serious danger, to which an opposite alliance would alone be an adequate counterpoise; and the experiment might at least be tried whether such an alliance was possible.  At the beginning of August, therefore, Stephen Vaughan was sent on a tentative mission to the Elector of Saxe, John Frederick, at Weimar.[617] He was the bearer of letters containing a proposal for a resident English ambassador; and if the elector gave his consent, he was to proceed with similar offers to the courts of the Landgrave of Hesse and the Duke of Lunenberg.[618] Vaughan arrived in due time at the elector’s court, was admitted to audience and delivered his letters.  The prince read them, and in the evening of the same day returned for answer a polite but wholly absolute refusal.  Being but a prince elector, he said, he might not aspire to so high an honour as to be favoured with the presence of an English ambassador.  It was not the custom in Germany, and he feared that if he consented he should displease the emperor.[619] The meaning of such a reply delivered in a few hours was not to be mistaken, however disguised in courteous language.  The English emissary saw that he was an unwelcome visitor, and that he must depart with the utmost celerity.  “The elector,” he wrote,[620] “thirsted to have me gone from him, which I right well perceived by evident tokens which declared unto me the same.”  He had no anxiety to expose to hazard the toleration which the Protestant dukedoms as yet enjoyed from the emperor, by committing himself to a connection with a prince with whose present policy he had no sympathy, and whose conversion to the cause of the Reformation he had as yet no reason to believe sincere.[621]

The reception which Vaughan met with at Weimar satisfied him that he need go no further; neither the Landgrave nor the Duke of Lunenberg would be likely to venture on a course which the elector so obviously feared.  He, therefore, gave up his mission, and returned to England.