350, 351.
He renewed his friendship with Francis, and opened negotiations for marrying his infant daughter, Elizabeth, with the duke of Angouleme, third son of Francis.

These two monarchs also made advances to the princes of the Protestant league in Germany, ever jealous of the emperor's ambition; and Henry, besides remitting them some money, sent Fox, bishop of Hereford, as Francis did Bellay, lord of Langley, to treat with them.

But during the first fervors of the reformation, an agreement in theological tenets was held, as well as a union of interests, to be essential to a good correspondence among states; and though both Francis and Henry flattered the German princes with hopes of their embracing the confession of Augsbourg, it was looked upon as a bad symptom of their sincerity, that they exercised such extreme rigor against all preachers of the reformation in their respective dominions.[*] Henry carried the feint so far, that, while he thought himself the first theologian in the world, he yet invited over Melaricthon, Bucer, Sturmius, Draco, and other German divines, that they might confer with him, and instruct him in the foundation of their tenets.

These theologians were now of great importance in the world; and no poet or philosopher, even in ancient Greece, where they were treated with most respect, had ever reached equal applause and admiration with those wretched composers of metaphysical polemics.

The German princes told the king, that they could not spare their divines; and as Henry had no hopes of agreement with such zealous disputants, and knew that in Germany the followers of Luther would not associate with the disciples of Zuinglius, because, though they agreed in every thing else, they differed in some minute particulars with regard to the eucharist, he was the more indifferent on account of this refusal.