Later on, the Council altered their tactics, and Bonner was accused of dilatoriness in examining heretics. Gardiner, preaching at Paul’s Cross, about this time, inveighed against the prevailing heresies, but in such a manner that his audience took his words in good part, although there were more than ten thousand persons present. He touched discreetly on the Queen’s marriage, and had it not been for Bonner’s articles, the agitation in London would have gradually subsided. But the disturbances which they caused became so serious, and the people remonstrated to such purpose, that they were temporarily withdrawn. Even then, the Londoners were not satisfied, erroneously connecting the Bishop’s measures with Spanish policy, and clamouring for the arrival of Reginald Pole, who, in spite of his long exile, was known to be a thorough Englishman at heart, and to have been disinclined to the Queen’s marriage. But although, when once the alliance was an accomplished fact, the Emperor’s zeal for the salvation of souls appeared suddenly to awake, and although he expressed keen anxiety that the Papal Legate should proceed at once to his mission in England,[478] Pole was still prevented from accomplishing it. His desire to return to his native land was as great as that of his fellow-countrymen for his presence among them, and on the 21st September, he wrote to Philip, complaining that it was now a year since he commenced knocking at his palace gate, nor as yet had any one opened it to him. Were the King to ask, “Who knocks?” he would reply, “I am he, who in order not to exclude your consort from the throne of England, endured expulsion from home and country, and twenty years of exile”. Were he merely to say this much, would he not seem worthy to return to the land of his birth, and to have access to the King? But as he was not acting in his own name, nor as a private person, he knocked and demanded in the name and person of the vicegerent of the King of kings and the Pastor of man, namely, the successor of Peter, or rather of Peter himself, whose authority, heretofore so flourishing and vigorous in England, was now most injuriously ejected thence. Through Pole, Peter had long been knocking at the royal gate, which although open to others, was still closed to him alone. The voice perhaps was not heard? Continuing in the same strain, he expostulated with Philip and Mary, and concluded by saying that if he personally were not acceptable, he begged that another might be summoned in his stead.[479]