Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/591

1551.] of the Galilean bishops might depend on the admission of the Lutherans.

It was at this conjuncture that the English difficulty came to a point with the Emperor. Warwick had been already corresponding privately with the French Court, and the result of Sir William Pickering's mission was the immediate arrival in London of an agent of Henry. The terms of alliance could not be settled on the spot, but an understanding was arrived at sufficiently clear for present purposes; and on the 10th of April the council were in a position to take up the gauntlet which Charles had flung before them. Doctor Wotton was despatched to Brussels with instructions to say that 'the form of prayer, or usage of the communion, was a thing established by law by consent of Parliament, by which the whole estate of the realm and the King's person were ruled, being such an universal and high court as there was none in all English policy to be compared to it, and therefore supreme over all persons in the realm:' that the Lady Mary was a subject of the realm, and must submit, like others, to the law. As to the ambassadors, if Sir Thomas Chamberlain was allowed to use the English communion in Flanders, the Flemish ambassador might use the mass in England, and if not, not. Friendship could not exist without equality, and the reciprocity which England demanded was no more than was conceded to Turks in Christendom and to