The History of the Reformation Volume 1 Book III. [29 Jan 1536.] This was the last public good act of this unfortunate queen (age 35); who, the nearer she drew to her end, grew more full of good works. She had distributed in the last nine months of her life between fourteen and fifteen thousand pounds to the poor, and was designing great and public good things. And by all appearance, if she had lived, the money that was raised by the suppression of religious houses had been better employed than it was. In January, she brought forth a dead son. This was thought to have made ill impressions on the king; and that, as he concluded from the death of his sons by the former queen, that the marriage was displeasing to God; so he might, upon this misfortune, begin to make the like judgment of this marriage. Sure enough the popish party were earnestly set against the queen, looking on her as a great supporter of heresy. And at that time Fox (age 40), then bishop of Hereford, was in Germany, at Smalcald, treating a league with the protestant princes, who [?]sisted much, on the Ausburg Confession. There were many conferences between Fox and doctor [?]arnes, and some others, with the Lutheran divines, for accommodating the differences between them; and the thing was in a good forwardness: all which was imputed to the queen. Gardiner was then ambassador in France, and wrote earnestly to the king, to dissuade him from entering into any religious league with these princes; for that would alienate all the world from him, and dispose his own subjects to rebel. The king thought the German princes and divines should have submitted all things to his judgment; and had such an opinion of his own learning, and was so puffed up with the flattering raises that he daily heard, that he grew impatient of any opposition, and thought that his dictates should pass for oracles. And because the Germans would not receive them so, his mind was alienated from them.