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 view to securing the assistance of his Habsburg brothers-in-law and of Catholic Europe, he abjured his Lutheranism and represented his attempt to regain his thrones as a crusade against heresy. In 1531-2 he overran Norway, but Lübeck blockaded the coast, forced him to capitulate, and procured his lifelong imprisonment at Sonderburg. This outrage on royal majesty, coupled with the mercantile hostility between Lübeck and the Netherlands, precipitated naval war between the Dutch and Baltic cities; and the situation was complicated by the death of Frederick I in April, 1533. Several claimants for his vacant throne appeared. Frederick left two sons, Christian III, a Lutheran, and John, who seems to have entertained some hopes of maintaining his pretensions by the help of the Catholic party. The old King, Christian II, was regarded as impossible, and the Habsburgs put forward as their candidate Count Frederick of the Palatinate (afterwards the Elector Palatine Frederick II), who married old Christian's daughter. Such was the situation with which the democrats of Lübeck, who had obtained control of the Council in February and elected Jürgen Wullenwever Burgomaster in March, 1533, had to deal.

The distrust with which the revolutionists of Lübeck were viewed by both Protestant and Catholic Princes made Wullenwever's course a difficult one. He started for Copenhagen to conclude an alliance between the two cities, but Copenhagen looked on him askance, and he then offered his friendship to the young Christian III with no better result. Lübeck, however, found an unexpected ally in Henry VIII, who was then trying every means to reduce the Habsburg power, and regarded with alarm the prospect of a Habsburg victory in Denmark. Marx Meyer, a military adventurer who had taken service under Lübeck, had been sent to sea in command of a fleet against the Dutch. Landing in England without a passport, he had been lodged in the Tower of London; but Henry saw in him a convenient instrument against the Habsburgs. He conferred on Meyer a knighthood, and promised Lübeck assistance; while the Lübeckers undertook to tolerate no Prince upon the Danish throne of whom the English King did not approve. But Henry's promises were not very serious, and the Lübeckers were wise in not putting too much trust in them. They were better advised in concluding a four years' truce with the Netherlands at the price of free trade through the Sound in order to concentrate their efforts upon establishing their control over Denmark.

The element on which ^ they relied was the democratic spirit in the Scandinavian kingdoms and particularly in the towns. Melchior Hofmann had preached at Stockholm, where Gustavus Vasa declared that the populace aimed at his assassination. At Malrno and Copenhagen the Burgomasters eventually adopted Wullenwever's views, and both peasants and artisans in Denmark were excited and discontented. The expulsion of the old King Christian had been in the main an aristocratic revolution,