In the end, then, Wolsey's perfidious policy failed; and his personal ambition for the papacy was also frustrated.
But while "the congress of kings," as Erasmus called it, was disporting itself at Guines and Calais, the tide of a new movement was swiftly and steadily rising, no more obeying them than had the ocean obeyed Canute.
More in England than in most countries the Reformation was an imported product.

Its "dawn came up like thunder" from across the North Sea.
Luther's Theses on Indulgences were sent by Erasmus to his English friends Thomas More and John Colet little more than four months after their promulgation.

[Sidenote: March 5, 1518] By February, 1519, Froben had exported to England a number of volumes of Luther's works.
One of them fell into the hands of Henry VIII or his sister Mary, quondam Queen of France, as is shown by the royal arms stamped on it.
Many others were sold by a bookseller at Oxford throughout 1520, in which year a government official in London wrote to his son in the country, [Sidenote: March 3, 1520] "there be heretics here which take Luther's opinions." The universities were both infected at the same time.

At Cambridge, especially, a number of young men, many of them later prominent reformers, met at the White Horse Tavern regularly to discuss the new ideas.

The tavern was nicknamed "Germany" [Sidenote: 1521] and the young enthusiasts "Germans" in consequence.