or ill,' Starkey ironically wrote, 'his Grace requireth no judgment of you, as of one that of such things hath no great experience as yet. Whether it should be convenient that there should be one head in the Church, and that the Bishop of Rome … set this aside … and in the matrimony, whether the policy he hath used therein be profitable to the realm or no … leave that aside … only show you whether the supremacy which the Bishop of Rome has for many ages claimed be of Divine right or no … and if the first matrimony were to make, you would approve it then or no … and the cause why you would not.'
Finally, as Pole once before had been tempted to give an opinion against his conscience, Starkey warned him to reply sincerely and honestly; to think first of God and the truth; and only when his conscience would permit him, to consider how he could satisfy the King. 'His Grace said to me,' the letter concluded, 'that he would rather you were buried there than you should, for any worldly promotion or profit to yourself, dissemble with him in these great and weighty causes.'[1]
The tone of this concluding passage teaches us not to rely too absolutely on Pole's own version of the attempts which had before been made upon his constancy. Perhaps the admonition, perhaps the irony, of his correspondent galled him. At any rate, the King desired the truth, and the truth he should have. Other things had been in rapid development since Pole left England. He,
- ↑ Strype's Memorials, vol. ii. p. 281.
