The year 1520 saw the first open marshalling of the powers for the great struggle, partly religious and partly political, which was to lead to the triumph of the Anglo-Saxon race. In England, as yet, there was no whisper of revolt against the authority of the papacy. The King had just written his book against the new doctrines of Luther, which was to gain for him the title of Defender of the Faith; Catharine, the Spanish Queen-Consort, an obedient child of the Church, as became the daughter of Isabel the Catholic, lived in yet unruffled happiness with her husband; whilst the all-ruling Wolsey was plotting and intriguing for the reversion of the triple tiara of St. Peter when Pope Leo should die. The first step to the political rise of England was the election (June 1519) of young King Charles of Spain to the imperial crown of Germany, in succession to his grandfather, Maximilian of Hapsburg. The marriage of the new Emperor’s father, Philip of Hapsburg, the heir of Burgundy, with Jane the Mad, the heiress of Spain, had joined to her heritage Flanders, Holland, and the Franche Comté, and had already upset the balance of power. Francis I. had sought to redress matters by securing his own election to the empire, but he had been frustrated, and he saw a Spanish prince in possession of territory on every side of France, shutting her in. Naples had been filched by greedy Ferdinand, and was now firmly Spanish, as Sicily had been for centuries; the Emperor asserted suzerainty over most of Italy, and, above all, over Milan, which Francis himself claimed and occupied. It was clear that the expansion of France was at an end, and her national decline must commence, unless the iron bands braced around her by the Hispano-Germanic Empire could be broken through. It was then that the importance of England as the potential balancing power between the two great rivals became evident. Henry VIII. was rich in money, able, ambitious, and popular. He had devoted all his great energy to improving the resources of his country, and to reconstructing his navy; besides which he held Calais, the key to the frontier battle-ground of Flanders and France, and was as fully conscious of his rising importance as he was determined to carry it to the best market.