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 424 ENGLISHMEN AT WITTENBERG July I have found, unless one may so interpret a greeting sent by Roger Ascham in 1551 to Bucer at Oxford and to ' mine hostess Barnes 1 In 1535 Thomas Cromwell made a special effort to form an alliance with the Schmalkaldic princes, with the purpose of frustrating the calling of a council by the pope. The diplomatic work of his envoys has been sufficiently treated, 2 but several hitherto unnoticed incidents of their visit may be here recorded, and two letters of Barnes written at this time are given as an appendix to this article. One of the ambassadors was Edward Fox, bishop of Hereford, and one was Nicholas Heath, archdeacon of Stafford and afterwards archbishop of York. They brought a handsome present to- Melanchthon as an acknowledgement of his dedication of a new edition of his Loci Communes to Henry. 3 Indeed, there was much talk of their taking Melanchthon with them to England, and when they failed to get him, they thought of another reformer, Prince George of Anhalt. 4 The English talked freely of affairs to Luther. They complained of the tyranny of their king and admired the freedom of the German theologians. 5 Barnes, however, told Luther more good of his king than the reformer could readily believe, 6 but he and the others agreed that Henry did not care for religion, 7 and the others added, * Rex noster est inconstans '. They told a strange tale of a king of England and a rustic, which appears thus in the Table Talk : 8 When the king of England was wandering in the woods, he came to the hut of a poor rustic who did not know him but received him kindly and offered him food left over from a meal. When the king spurned some of it, the rustic hit him, remarking, ' Don't you know that every one is king of his own house ? ' The king bore this patiently and later invited the rustic to a dinner at court. There he offered him many courses, and the rustic ate some of every one. Laughing, the king said, * You are wiser than I ; otherwise you also would have been smitten,' and dismissed him. 1 Ascham, Works, 1761, p. 378. 8 Ante, xxv. 656 f., xxvii. 671 f. ; R. B. Merriman, Life and Letters of T. Cromwell, 1902, pp. 213-41, 372, 419 ; G. Mentz, Johann Friedrich von Sachsen, 1908, ii. 80 ff. ; G. Mentz, Die Wittenberger Artikel von 1536, 1905. 3 This dedication, August 1535, Corpus Reformatorum, ii. 920. Henry's letter to Melanchthon, 1 October 1535, ibid., p. 947; Melanchthon's thanks, 1 December 1535, ibid., p. 995. According to a letter of A. Musa, dated Wittenberg, 11 December 1535, Fox brought 300 or 500 crowns to Melanchthon and Alesius 200 (Buchwald, Zur Wittenberger Stadt- und Universitdts-Geschichte, 1893, p. 113). 4 F. Westphal, Furst Georg von Anhalt, 1907, p. 34; Seckendorf, Historia Luthera- nismi, iii. 111. 5 Luther to Bucer, 14 October 1539, Enders, Luthers Brief wecJisel, xii. 260. 6 Luther's preface to Barnes's Bekantnus des Glaubens, Wittenberg, 1540 (British Museum 3906, cc. 10). 7 Enders, xii. 269. 8 D. M. Lutheri Colloquia, ed. H. E. Bindseil, i. 434. The editor applies this story to Henry VIII, but it is hard to imagine that it was he.