Then Henry and Cromwell had to look anxiously for support and alliances elsewhere. To the King it was a repugnant and humiliating necessity. He had puffed himself into the belief that he was the most potent and infallible of sovereigns, and he found himself, for the first time, scorned by all those he had reason to fear. He, the embodiment of the idea of regal omnipotence, would be forced to make common cause with those who, like the German Protestants, stood for resistance to supreme authority; with usurpers like Christian III. of Denmark, and trading democracies like Lübeck. With much hesitation and dislike, therefore, he listened, whilst Cromwell urged the inevitable policy upon him, which led him farther and farther away from the inner circle of potentates to which he and his father had gained entrance in the course of the events related in the first chapters of this book. Cromwell's arguments would probably have been unavailing but for the opportune "discovery," in the usual fortuitous Cromwell fashion, of a dangerous aristocratic conspiracy against Henry himself. Cardinal Pole had been entrusted with the Papal excommunication, and everywhere impressed upon English Catholics the duty of obeying their spiritual father by deposing the King.[188] Whether anything in the form of a regular conspiracy to do this existed in England is extremely doubtful; but the Cardinal had naturally written to his relatives in England, especially to his brother Geoffrey, and perhaps to his mother, the Countess of Salisbury, a princess of the blood royal of York. First Geoffrey was seized and carried to the Tower, and some sort of incriminating admission drawn from him by threats of torture, though, so far as can be gathered, nothing but the repetition of disaffected conversations. It was enough, however, for Cromwell's purpose when he needed it; and the fatal net was cast over Pole's elder brother, Lord Montague, the Marquis of Exeter, allied to the royal house, the Master of the Horse, Sir Nicholas Carew, Sir Edward Neville, and half a score of other high gentlemen, known to be faithful to the old cause--all to be unjustly sacrificed on the scaffold to the fears of Henry and the political exigencies of Cromwell. Even the women and children of the supposed sympathisers with the Papacy were not spared; and the aged Countess of Salisbury, with her grandson, and the Marchioness of Exeter, with her son, were imprisoned with many humbler ones.