All through the summer abbeys and shrines had been going down fast. "Dagon is everywhere falling," wrote a Kentish fanatic, and, as Castillon said, by the end of the year hardly a single abbey was left standing. The recent trend of political events had served to excite the King's worst passions, and when the French Ambassador went to see him early in November, he found him in a towering rage. The French had treated his Ambassadors abominably; the Emperor and King were plotting together to take the Duchess of Milan away from him and give her to Monsieur de Vendôme, which, "if it be done, would finish the picture."[217] Late on this same evening, Lord Exeter, a grandson of Edward IV. and head of the noble house of Courtenay, and his cousin, Lord Montague, the son of Lady Salisbury and brother of Cardinal Pole, were thrown into the Tower on the charge of high-treason. All that the most prolonged cross-examination of their servants and friends could bring out to prove their guilt, was that in my Lord of Exeter's garden at Horsley Place, in Surrey, Sir Edward Nevill had been heard singing merry songs against the knaves that ruled about the King, and, clenching his fist, had cried: "I trust to give them a buffet and see honest men reign in England one day." But the King had long ago told the French Ambassador that he was determined to exterminate the White Rose, and, as Castillon remarked, no pretext was too flimsy to bring men to the block. On the 9th of December, Exeter, Montague, and Nevill, all died on the scaffold, and Castillon wrote to King Francis: "No one knows who will be the next to go." Terror reigned throughout the land, and no one of noble birth was safe.[218] Mary of Hungary might well shudder at the thought of giving her niece to such a man. But every day her position became more difficult. Soon after her return from Compiègne she wrote to Charles, urgently begging for instructions as to how she was to proceed with the English Ambassadors. If the King persists in treating of the Duchess's marriage, is she to consent or to refuse altogether? And if so, on what pretext? Is she to discuss the question of the Papal dispensation, which Henry will never consent to receive from the Pope, but without which the Emperor cannot possibly allow the union.[219] In reply to this letter, Charles wrote from Toledo, on the 5th of December, telling her to temporize with the English, and to consult her Council on the best method of procedure.[220] A carefully-worded paper, in Mary's own handwriting, setting forth the results of the deliberation with the Council in clear and concise language, was forwarded to the Emperor early in January: