The plan undertaken in concert with his great ally was not the first effort of Charles to give his ideas effect. During his exile on the continent various tenders had been made for papal support; Charles promised in return conversion and favour to his Catholic subjects; and within a few years of the Restoration a serious negotiation was started with Pope Alexander VII. In 1663 Sir Richard Bellings was sent on a mission to Rome to beg the bestowal of a cardinal’s hat on the Abbé d’Aubigny, almoner to the newly-married queen, and cousin to the king. Charles took the opportunity to propose through Bellings the formation of an Anglican Roman Church in England. He was to announce his conversion, the Archbishop of Canterbury was to be patriarch of the three realms, and liberty of conscience should be assured to remaining Protestants. Roman Catholicism would become the state religion and Rome gain the whole strength of the English hierarchy.[41] An understanding was impracticable and the scheme fell through; but the renewed solicitations of the English court on Aubigny’s behalf were successful. In November 1665 he was nominated Cardinal, and died almost immediately after. To the hopes of the Catholics his death was a terrible blow. “The clouds,” wrote the general of the Jesuits on hearing of it, “which are gathering over Holland, Poland, and Constantinople are so dense that every prudent man must see reason to apprehend enormous catastrophes and storms that will not be ended without irreparable disasters. But in my mind all these coming evils are overshadowed by the death of the Abbé Aubigny, which deprives the Church, for a time at least, of the joy of beholding an English cardinal of such illustrious blood, created at the public instances of two queens, and at the secret request of a king, a prodigy which would, without doubt have confounded heresy and inaugurated bright fortunes to the unhappy Catholics.”