The might of France was broken.

The Papacy was restored to freedom.

England had again figured as a great power in Europe.

But the millions left by his father were exhausted, his subjects had been drained by repeated subsidies, and, furious as he was at the treachery of his Spanish ally, Henry was driven to conclude a peace.
[Sidenote: Protest of the New Learning] To the hopes of the New Learning this sudden outbreak of the spirit of war, this change of the monarch from whom they had looked for a "new order" into a vulgar conqueror, proved a bitter disappointment.

Colet thundered from the pulpit of St.Paul's that "an unjust peace is better than the justest war," and protested that "when men out of hatred and ambition fight with and destroy one another, they fight under the banner, not of Christ, but of the devil." Erasmus quitted Cambridge with a bitter satire against the "madness" around him.