De unitatc ecelesiastica, the whole family fell under the displeasure of the king, who resolved to make an end of them. The Lord Montague was the first victim, beheaded in 1539 on a charge of reasonable conversations, evidence having been wrung from his unhappy brother, Sir Geoifrey Pole. In 1541 the aged countess, at tainted with her son Montague, niet her death at the barbarous hands of an unskilful headsman. Sir Geo5rey Pole, seeing that his house was doomed, lied the country, and joined the cardinal in exile. He returned with him at Mary's accession, both dying in 1558. His sons Arthur and Edmund, taken in 1562 as plotters against Queen Elizabeth, were committed to the Tower of London, where they died after eight years of imprisonment.
See T. Rymer's Feodera; C. Frost, History of Hull (1827); Chromcon de Melsa (Rolls Series); G. E. C., Complete Peerage; Testamenta Eboracensza (Surtees Soc.); Hon. and Rev. H. A. Napier, Swmcombe and Ewelrne (1858); Dzct. Nat. Bwg., s.v. “ Pole'; E. Foss, Judges of England (1848-1864); Chromcon Anglrae (Rolls Series); Paston Letters, edited by J. Gaifdner; Sir ]. H. Ramsay, Lancaster and York (1892); Letters and Papers of Rrrhard III. and Henry VII. (Rolls Series); Inquests post morlem, Close and Patent Rolls, Rolls of Parliament. (O. BA.)
POLE, REGINALD (1500-1558), English cardinal and archbishop of Canterbury, born at Stourton Castle, Staffordshire, was the third son of Sir Richard Pole, Knight of the Garter, and Margaret, countess of Salisbury, a daughter of George, duke of Clarence, and therefore niece of Edward IV. He was intended for the church from his youth; and when seven years old was
sent for five years to the grammar school which Colet had founded near the Carthusian monastery at Sheen. Here he had Linacre and William Latimer as teachers. In his thirteenth year he went to Magdalen College, Oxford, and two years after took
his degree in arts. In 1517 Henry VIII. appointed his young
kinsman to a prebend in Salisbury, and soon afterwards to the
deaneries of Wimbofne and Exeter. He was a friend of Sir
Thomas More, who says that Pole was as learned as he was
noble and as virtuous as he was learned. In 1 519, at the king's
expense, he went to Padua, the Athens of Europe, according to
Erasmus; and there, where Colet and Cuthbert Tunstall had
also been educated, the " nobleman of England " as he was
called, came into contact with the choicest minds of the later
Italian Renaissance, and formed the friendships that influenced
his life
In 1525 he went to Rome for the ]ubilee, and two years after returned to England and was initiated by Thcmas Cromwell into the mysteries of statesmanship, that mastei telling him that the main point consisted in discovering and following the will of princes, who are not bound by the ordinary code of honour. When the divorce question arose, Pole, like many other excellent men, seems at first to have been in its favour. He probably took the same view that Wolsey had, viz. that the dispensation of Julius II. was insuiiicient, as of two existing diriment impediments only one had been dispensed. When however the king raised the theological argument which ended in disaster, Pole could not accept it; and, after the failure of Campeggio's mission, when the king asked him for his opinion, he excused himself on the score of inexperience, but went by Henry's order to Paris (1530) to obtain the judgment of the Sorbonne, making the condition that another should be joined with him to do the necessary business. At this time, he says, the more he saw into the case the less he knew how to act as he was desired. On his return to England he spoke strongly against the project to the king, who seems to have dealt gently with him in the hope of using him for his own ends. He offered him the sees of York or Winchester, and kept them vacant for ten months for his acceptance. There was a stormy interview at York Place; but Pole succeeded in mollifying the king's rage so far that Henry told him to put into writing his reasons against the divorce This was done, and, recognizing the difficulties of the situation, the king gave him leave to travel abroad, and allowed him still to retain his revenues as dean of Exeter. In 1 5; 5. which saw by the deaths of Bishop Fisher and Sir Thomas More a change in Henry's policy, Pole received orders to send a formal opinion on the" royal supremacy, and the king promised to find him suitable employment in England, even if the opinion were an adverse one. The parting of the ways had been reached. Pole's reply, which took a year to write, and was afterwards published with additions under the title Pro unitate ecclesiae, was sent to England (May 25, 1536) and was meant for the king's eye alone. It contained a vigorous and severe attack upon the royal policy, and did not shrink from warning Henry with temporal punishment at the hands of the emperor and the king of France if he did not repent of his cruelties and return to the Church. He was again summoned to return to England to explain himself, but declined until he could do so with honour and safety; but he was on the point of going at all risks, when he heard from his mother and brother that the whole family would suffer if he remained obstinate. Paul III. who had prepared a bull of excommunication and deposition against Henry, summoned Pole to Rome in October, and two months after created him cardinal. In January 1537 he received a sharp letter of rebuke from the king's council, together with the suggestion that the differences might be discussed with royal deputies either in France or Flanders, provided that Pole would attend without being commissioned by any one. He replied that he was willing and had the pope's leave to meet any deputies anywhere. Paul III. in the early spring of that year named him legate a laters to Charles V. and Francis I., for the purpose of securing their assistance in enforcing the bull by helping a projected rising in England against Henry's tyranny. The mission failed, as the mutual jealousy of the sovereigns would not allow either to begin operations. Moreover, the fear of Henry was sufficient to make the French king refuse to allow one who was at tainted by act of parliament to remain in the kingdom; so Pole passed over to Flanders, to mait for the possible arrival of any royal deputies. The proposed conference never took place, and in August 1537 the cardinal returned to Rome. There he was appointed to the famous commission which Paul III. established for considering the reforms necessary for the church and Roman curia. The report Cortszlium delectorium cardinalium is, in its plain-spoken directness, one of the most noteworthy documents of the history of the period. Towards the end of 1 539, after Henry had destroyed the shrine of St Thomas Becket, another attempt was made to launch the bull of deposition, and Pole again was sent to urge Charles V. to assist. Once more his efforts were in vain, and he retired to his friend Sadoleto at Carpentras. As Pole had escaped Henry's power the royal vengeance now fell on his mother, who was executed as a traitor on the 27th of May 1 541. When the news came to the cardinal he said to his secretary Beccatelli that he had received good tidings: “ Hitherto I have thought myself indebted to the divine goodness for having received my birth from one of the most noble and virtuous women in England, but henceforth my obligation will be much greater, as I understand I am now the son of a martyr. We have one patron more added to those we already have in heaven ”; and returning to his oratory Pole found peace in his sorrow.
On the 21st of August 1 541 the cardinal was appointed legate at Viterbo, and for a few years passed a happy and congenial life amid the friends that gathered round him. Heie he came into close relations with Vittoiia Colonna, Contarini, Sadoleto, Bembo, Morone, Marco Antonio, Flaminio, and other scholars and leaders of thought; and many of the questions raised by the Reformation in Germany were eagerly discussed in the circle of Viterbo. The burning question of the day, justification bv faith, was a special subject of discussion. The “dolce libriccino, " the famous T rattato utilissimo del beneficio di Gem Christo crocijisso versa i cl/ristiani, which was the composition of a Sicilian Benedictine and had been touched up by the great latinist Flaminio, just appeared at Mantua in 1542 under the auspices of Morone, and had a Wide circulation (over 40,000 copies of the second edition, Venice 1543, were sold). Containing extracts from the Hundred and Ten Divine Considerations of Tuan Valdes (qxv),
