Another disappointment awaited him. The Cardinal of Ancona died, the most influential member of the Sacred College, and on whom Clement relied to gain over the emperor, who greatly respected him. But this did not cool the pontiff’s zeal: ‘I am thoroughly decided to please the king in this great matter,’[261] he said to Henry’s envoys, and added: ‘To have universal concord between all the princes of Christendom, I would give a joint of my hand.’[262] In fact Clement set to work and went so far as to tell Charles that, according to the theologians, the pope had no right to grant a dispensation for a marriage between brother and sister; but the emperor was immovable. The pope then proposed a truce of three or four years between Henry, Francis, and Charles, during which he would convoke a general council, to whom he would remit the whole affair. Francis informed Henry that all this was nothing but a trick.[263] [Sidenote: Henry Marries Anne Boleyn.] The king, convinced that the pope was trifling with him, no longer hesitated to follow the course which the interests of his people and his own happiness seemed to point out. He determined that Anne Boleyn should be his wife and Queen of England also. It was now that, according to the second hypothesis, the marriage took place. Cranmer states in a letter written on the 17th of June, 1533, that he did not perform the ceremony, that he did not hear of it until a fortnight after, and that it was celebrated ‘much about Saint Paul’s day last[264] (25th of January, 1533). Which date must we accept: this, or the 15th of November, given by Hall, Hollinshed, Burnet, and others? Cranmer’s language is not precise enough to settle the question. Whatever may have been the date of the marriage—November or January—it became the universal topic of conversation in the beginning of 1533; people did not speak of it publicly, but in private, some attacking and others defending it. If the members of the Romish party circulated ridiculous stories and outrageous calumnies against Anne, the members of the national party replied that the purity of her life, her moderation, her chastity, her mildness, her discretion, her noble and exalted parentage, her pleasing manners, and (they added somewhat later) her fitness to give a successor to the crown of England, made her worthy of the royal favor.[265] Men may have gone too far in their reproaches as well as in their eulogies.