We unfortunately do not possess the letter in which Mont and his companion, a certain Thomas Paynell, reported their first reception at the Saxon Court, but the reply of Cromwell on March 10 gives us considerable information about the success of the ambassadors[619]. John Frederic had apparently welcomed the prospect of the two marriages by which Henry proposed to bind himself to Cleves, and had promised, through Burckhard, to do his best to bring them about. Cromwell’s letter goes on to direct Mont to follow up the advantage already gained by telling bad stories about Charles, and to ‘inculcate and p_er_suade vnto the said duke and landisgrave the moment & i_m_porta_n_ce of that grudge, which the_m_pero_ur_ doth beire, for the Bishop of Rom_es_ pleas_ure_ against them and oth_e_r of the avangelik sorte, which they may nowe easely p_er_ceive by that he worketh and goeth aboute.’ At the same time, another embassy, headed by a certain Dr. Nicholas Wotton, was sent to Cleves to obtain confirmation of the promises of Burckhard, and further to carry on negotiations for a supply of gunners and artillerymen to be furnished to Henry in case he should need them; and finally to signify the King’s willingness to make an offensive and defensive league with Duke William[620]. The latter was at first less eager to accept the alliance which England offered than his brother-in-law was to promote it: he wanted to postpone a definite answer in the hope that he might yet come to a peaceful solution of his difficulty with the Emperor[621]. But as this prospect daily grew more and more remote, he became correspondingly willing to entertain Henry’s proposals, and the outlook for the accomplishment of the practical part of Cromwell’s plan seemed very favourable. The comparatively unimportant overtures for theological reconciliation with the Elector and the Landgrave were apparently at first received with less enthusiasm by the Lutherans, who had already had some experience of the King’s vacillating policy and evidently thought it a little suspicious that Henry had suddenly become so very urgent. We have seen that the King’s proposals for a religious agreement were chiefly intended as a blind to cover the more practical matrimonial proposals which had followed, but Cromwell evidently thought it worth while to keep up the deception as a precaution. A second letter from the King’s minister directs Mont and Paynell to continue to urge on the Elector and Landgrave the importance of theological unity, and to ‘conduce to haue them somw[hat reproved for] ou_er_sight & slakenes, in shewing [so little] gratuite, and by that for to pryk th[em to] redubb the same and give you more f[avourable] a_n_swer.’