In order to understand the precise bearing on the foreign affairs of England of the two marriages which Cromwell proposed, and of the political league which would naturally go with them, we must make a slight digression here and examine the very peculiar position in which the Duke of Cleves found himself at this juncture. Various political considerations, above all an increasing jealousy of the power of the House of Saxony, had led the Emperor Maximilian in 1496 to declare Maria, the only child of the Duke of Juliers and Berg, to be the lawful heiress of these two provinces; a step which was in direct contravention of a grant which Maximilian, at his election as King of the Romans, had made to Frederic the Wise of the reversion of Juliers and Berg in case of failure of male heirs in the ducal line there. This grant was definitely revoked in various documents of the years 1508 and 1509; and Duke John of Cleves, who in the meantime had married the heiress Maria of Juliers and Berg, was permitted to unite these three rich provinces in his own hand, and to establish a strong power on the Lower Rhine which prevented undue preponderance of the House of Wettin, and furnished a useful support for the Hapsburgs in the western part of the Empire[611]. The peace-loving Duke John lived and died in friendship with Maximilian and his grandson, although his desire to see a reform in the Church had prevented his definite acceptance of the Imperial invitation to join a Catholic League against the Schmalkaldner in 1537. Instead he devoted himself to strengthening his power in his own possessions by a series of wise and prudent measures, through which he welded the three component parts of his dominions into one[612]. But during the last year of his life (which ended on February 6, 1539, while Mont was on his way to the Saxon Court) affairs took a turn which was destined to bring his son and heir William into direct conflict with the Empire. In June, 1538, the warlike Duke Charles of Gelderland, whose possessions lay next to the province of Cleves on the north, died leaving no children. His life had been spent in a struggle against the pretensions to his hereditary dominions brought forward by the Emperor as heir of Charles the Bold, and in order to prevent the substantiation of the Imperial claims at his death he had planned to leave his lands to the King of France[613]. This scheme however had encountered strong opposition from the estates of Gelderland, who regarded with little favour a proposal so threatening to their comparatively independent position, and Duke Charles was finally forced, much against his will, to designate young William of Cleves as his successor. The latter, though by nature weak and irresolute, was not in a position to refuse the chance which fortune had thrown in his way: he accepted the proffered inheritance, and the death of his father soon after left him in full possession of the four rich provinces[614].