Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/468

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448
REIGN OF HENRY THE EIGHTH.
[ch. 19.

proved relations with the Empire. The English nobles were constant to the national traditions of enmity and friendship; the alliance of the French was a thing of yesterday; the princes of Spain and Burgundy had stood side by side with England for five generations. The interest rather perhaps than the sentiment of Charles V. taught him to respond to the feeling; he was gratified not a little by the sacrifice of Anne of Cleves; and in the concluding months of the year the renewal of the early engagement between himself and the Princess Mary was talked of openly both in Flanders and England.[1] The Duke of Cleves, on the other hand, on the verge of a quarrel with the Emperor for the Duchy of Gueldres, sought and obtained the support of France, cementing his alliance by a marriage with the daughter of the Queen of Navarre.

Indications were thus apparent of a change of partners preparatory to the opening of a new game: and little differences simultaneously arose between the Courts of London and Paris, which might easily haA 7 e been composed had there been a desire to settle them, but which, as easily, with the wind in the wrong quarter, might be fanned into a quarrel.

By the treaty drawn at Moor Park in 1525, and a second time ratified in London in 1532,[2] the French and English Governments had undertaken respectively to give neither shelter nor countenance to refugees. In virtue of this obligation Henry had demanded the cap-

  1. State Papers, vol. viii.
  2. Rymer, vol. vi. part 2, p. 171.