letters containing a proposal for a resident English ambassador; and if the elector gave his consent, he was to proceed with similar offers to the courts of the Landgrave of Hesse and the Duke of Lunenberg.[170] Vaughan arrived in due time at the elector's court, was admitted to audience, and delivered his letters. The prince read them, and in the evening of the same day returned for answer a polite but wholly absolute refusal. Being but a prince elector, he said, he might not aspire to so high an honour as to be favoured with the presence of an English ambassador. It was not the custom in Germany, and he feared that if he consented he should displease the emperor.[171] The meaning of such a reply delivered in a few hours was not to be mistaken, however disguised in courteous language. The English emissary saw that he was an unwelcome visitor, and that he must depart with the utmost celerity. "The elector," he wrote,[172] "thirsted to have me gone from him, which I right well perceived by evident tokens which declared unto me the same." He had no anxiety to expose to hazard the toleration which the Protestant dukedoms as yet enjoyed from the emperor, by committing himself to a connexion with a prince with whose present policy he had no sympathy, and whose conversion to the cause of the Reformation he had as yet no reason to believe sincere.[173] The reception which Vaughan met with at Weimar satisfied him that he need go no further; neither the Landgrave nor the Duke of Lunenberg would be likely to venture on a course which the elector so obviously feared. He, therefore, gave up his mission, and returned to England. [Sidenote: The failure a not unprofitable lesson to England.] The first overtures in this direction issued in complete failure, nor was the result wholly to be regretted. It taught Henry (or it was a first commencement of the lesson) that so long as he pursued a merely English policy he might not expect that other nations would embroil themselves in his defence. He must allow the Reformation a wider scope, he must permit it to comprehend within its possible consequences the breaking of the chains by which his subjects' minds were bound--not merely a change of jailors. Then perhaps the German princes might return some other answer. [Sidenote: September 7. Birth of the Princess Elizabeth.] [Sidenote: Exultation in London.] [Sidenote: Light and shadow.]