Warwick therefore, endowed with plentiful cunning and no scruples, decided to be rid of him once for all, and put in the mouth of an accomplice a story, with enough truth in it to be plausible, which sufficed for his purpose. In October Warwick, having procured his own elevation to the Dukedom of Northumberland, that of Dorset to the Dukedom of Suffolk, and that of Herbert to the Earldom of Pembroke, arrested Somerset at the Council. The Duke was accused of compassing the deaths of several Lords of the Council, and of preparations for an armed revolt and for appealing to the populace. On the greater part of the specific charges, the evidence was quite inadequate--but finding that Somerset might be held to have gone far enough to incur the death-sentence for felony under the law passed by the parliament of 1549-50, Northumberland (as Warwick must now be called) made a show of magnanimously withdrawing the accusations so far as he was personally affected. Somerset was duly condemned; but it was not till the end of January (1552) that he was actually executed, in spite of the somewhat pathetic demonstrations in his favour of the populace, who refused to the last to believe that the sentence would really be carried out, and lamented his doom with tears. [Sidenote: Pacification of Passau] While Somerset's trial was still going on, agents arrived in England from the German Protestants, inviting assistance in the contemplated revolt against Charles--a movement carried out with sudden and triumphant effectiveness by Maurice of Saxony in the following spring. Had Northumberland given his adhesion, the formation of a Lutheran alliance at this juncture might have very materially altered the subsequent course of events. The opportunity however was not taken. Indeed it is scarcely surprising that the signs of the times should have been misread. Maurice had helped Charles against the Schmalkaldic League before; yet everything depended on his discarding the apparently erratic politics of his past career, and displaying in full measure the organising and military genius of which he had given promise, though it still remained to be conclusively proved. He did in fact prove it a few months later, when he all but succeeded in pouncing on the Emperor at Innsbruck. Charles was forced to a hasty flight, and, finding a practically united Germany in arms against him, was reduced to accept the pacification of Passau (July), conceding all that the Lutherans demanded. Maurice's brilliant exploit not only terminated Charles's resistance to the Reformation in Germany; it also released England from all danger of his active hostility. [Sidenote: England stands aside]