Though Luther and the Princes set great store on the projected alliance, on account of the increase of strength it would have brought the German Evangelicals, yet their hopes were to be shattered, for the articles above referred to did not find acceptance in England. Luther was later on to declare that everything had come to nought because King Henry wished to be head of the Protestants in Germany, which the Elector of Saxony would not permit: “Let the devil take the great Lords! This rogue (‘_is nebulo_’) wanted to be proclaimed head of our religion, but to this the Elector would in no wise agree; we did not even know what sort of belief he had.”[30] Probably the King demanded a paramount influence in the Schmalkalden League, and the German Princes were loath to be deprived of the direction of affairs. After all hopes of an agreement had vanished Henry VIII made no secret of his antipathy for the Lutheran teaching. The quondam Defender of the Faith even allowed himself to be carried away to acts of bloodshed. In 1540 he caused Luther’s friend, Robert Barnes, the agent already referred to, to be burnt at the stake as a heretic. Barnes had adopted the Lutheran doctrine of Justification. It was not on this account alone, however, that he was obnoxious to the King, but also because the latter had grown weary of Anne of Cleves, whom Barnes and Thomas Cromwell, the King’s favourite, had given him as a fourth consort, after Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour. Cromwell, though not favourably disposed to Lutheranism, was executed a few days before. On April 9, 1536, Luther had written to Cromwell a very polite letter, couched in general terms,[31] in answer to a courteous missive from that statesman handed to him by Barnes. From Luther’s letter we see that Cromwell “had been described to him in too favourable a light,”[32] as though predisposed to the Lutheran doctrine or to regard Luther as a divinely sent teacher. Luther deceived himself if he fancied that Cromwell was ready to “work for the cause”; the latter remained as unfriendly to Lutheranism proper as the King himself. In the year of Barnes’s execution Melanchthon wrote the letter to Veit Dietrich in which he expresses the pious wish, that God would send a brave murderer to bring the King to the end he deserved.[33]