Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/137

1538.] 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; 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.

Charles, meanwhile, on his side 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 the Emperor would cloud his reputation with so sustained duplicity; and in August, while still dallying with the French offers, he sent Sir Thomas Wriothesley to Flanders, to obtain, if possible, some concluding answer.

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