The first immediate effect was on the treaty for the king's marriage. Notwithstanding the trifling of the commissioners in April,--notwithstanding the pacification of Nice, and the omission of the king's name among the contracting parties,--Charles succeeded in persuading Wyatt that he was as anxious as ever for the completion of the entire group of the proposed connexions; and Henry, on his part, was complacently credulous. The country was impatient to see him provided with a wife who might be the mother of a Duke of York. Day after day the council remonstrated with him on the loss of precious time;[372] and however desirable in itself the imperial alliance appeared, his subjects were more anxious that he should be rapidly married somewhere, than that even for such an object there should be longer delay. But Charles continued to give fair words; and the king, although warned, as he avowed, on all sides, to put no faith in them, refused to believe that Charles would cloud his reputation with so sustained duplicity; and in August he sent Sir Thomas Wriothesley to Flanders, to obtain, if possible, some concluding answer. [Sidenote: October.] [Sidenote: He grows cold.] [Sidenote: November 20.] [Sidenote: Wriothesley reports a hostile feeling at Brussels.] The Regent, in receiving Wriothesley, assured him that his master's confidence was well placed--that "the Emperor was a prince of honour," and never meant "to proceed with any practice of dissimulation." Whatever others might choose to say, both she and her brother remained in one mind and purpose, and desired nothing better than to see the Duchess Christina Queen of England.[373] Her language remained similarly cordial till the beginning of October; and, as the least violent hypothesis is generally the safest, it may be believed that till this time the Emperor had really entertained, or had not as yet relinquished, the intention of bestowing his niece as he professed to wish. But from the end of the autumn the tide turned, and soon flowed visibly the other way. There was no abrupt conclusion--the preliminaries were wearily argued day after day. The English minister was still treated with courtesy; but his receptions had lost their warmth, and with court and people his favour chilled with the changing season. He was taunted with the English apostasy from the Church. "It is said that religion is extinct among us," he wrote in November,--"that we have no masses--that the saints are burned--and all that was taken for holy clearly subverted."[374] Each day the prospect became visibly darker: from cordiality there was a change to politeness--from politeness to distance--from distance to something like a menace of hostility. The alteration can without difficulty be interpreted. [Sidenote: The Pope launches his bull,] [Sidenote: January. And Pole's book is printed.]