and so Pole remained in England. Broken down as much by the blow as by ill-health the cardinal died at Lambeth on the 17th of November 1558, twelve hours after Mary’s death and under the unmerited disgrace of the papacy in defence of which he had spent his life. He was buried at Canterbury near the spot where the shrine of St Thomas Becket once stood.
The chief sources for Pole’s biography are his life written in Italian by his secretary Beccatelli, which was translated into Latin by Andrew Dudith as Vita Poli cardinalis (Venice, 1563), and his letters (Epistolae Reginaldi Poli) edited by Girolarno Quirini and published in 5 volumes (Brescia, 1744–1757), a new edition of which is in preparation at Rome with additions from the Vatican Archives. See also the State Papers (foreign and domestic) of Henry VIII., Edward VI. and Mary; the Spanish and Venetian State Papers; vol. i. of A. Theiner’s Acta genuina S.S. Oecumenici Caecilii tridentini (1874); the Compendio dei processi del santo uffizio di Roma da Paolo III. a Paolo IV. (Società romana di storia patria, Archivio, iii. 261 seq.); T. Phillipp’s History of the Life of R. Pole (Oxford, 1764–1767); Athanasius Zimmermann, S.J., Kardinal Pole sein Leben und seine Schriften (Regensburg, 1893); Marcin Haine, Life of Reginald Pole (1910); and F. G. Lee, Reginald Pole. (E. Tn.)
POLE, RICHARD DE LA (d. 1525), pretender to the English crown, was the fifth son of John de la Pole (1442–1491), 2nd duke of Suffolk, and Elizabeth, second daughter of Richard, duke of York and sister of Edward IV. His eldest brother John de la Pole, earl of Lincoln (c. 1464–1487), is said to have been named heir to the throne by his uncle Richard III., who gave him a pension and the reversion of the estates of Lady Margaret Beaufort. On the accession of Henry VII., however,
Lincoln took the oath of allegiance, but in 1487 he joined the rebellion of Lambert Simnel, and was killed at the battle of Stoke. The second brother Edmund (c. 1472–1513), succeeded his father while still in his minority. His estates suffered under the attainder of his brother, and he was compelled to pay large sums to Henry VII. for the recovery of part of the forfeited lands, and also to exchange his title of duke for that of earl. In 1501 he sought the German King Maximilian in Tirol, and received from him a promise of substantial assistance in case of an attempt on the English crown. In consequence of these treasonable proceedings Henry seized his brother William de la Pole, with four other Yorkist noblemen. Two of them, Sir James Tyrell and Sir John Wyndham, were executed, William de la Pole was imprisoned and Suffolk outlawed. Then in July 1502 Henry concluded a treaty with Maximilian by which the king bound himself not to countenance English rebels. Presently Suffolk fell into the hands of Philip, king of Castile, who imprisoned him at Namur, and in 1506 surrendered him to Henry VII. on condition that his life was spared. He remained a prisoner until 1513, when he was beheaded at the time his brother Richard took up arms with the French king Richard de la Pole joined Edmund abroad in 1504, and remained at Aix as surety for his elder brother’s debts. The creditors threatened to surrender him to Henry VII., but, more fortunate than his brother, he found a safe refuge at Buda with King Ladislas VI. of Hungary. He was excepted from the general pardon proclaimed at the accession of Henry VIII., and when Louis XII. went to war with England in 1512 he recognized Pole’s pretensions to the English crown, and gave him a command in the French army. In 1513, after the execution of Edmund, he assumed the title of earl of Suffolk. In 1514 he was given 12,000 German mercenaries ostensibly for the defence of Brittany, but really for an invasion of England. These he led to St Malo, but the conclusion of peace with England prevented their embarkation. Pole was required to leave France, and he established himself at Metz, in Lorraine, built a palace at La Haute Pierre, near St Simphorien. He had numerous interviews with Francis I., and in 1523 he was permitted, in concert with John Stewart, duke of Albany, the Scottish regent, to arrange an invasion of England, which never carried out. He was with Francis I. at Pavia and killed on the field on the 24th of February 1525.
See Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III. and Henry VII., edited by J. Gairdner (2 vols., “Rolls Series,” 24, 1861); Calendar of Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Re1gn of Henry VIII.; and Sir William Dugdale, The Baronage of England (London, 1675).
POLE, WILLIAM, (1814–1900), English engineer, was born at Birmingham on the 22nd of April 1814. He was a man of many accomplishments. Having spent his earlier years in various engineering occupations in England, he went out to India in 1844 as professor of engineering at Elphinstone College, Bombay, where he had to first organize the course of instruction for native students, but his health obliged him to return to England in 1848. For the next ten years he worked in London under James Simpson and J. M. Rendel, and the high reputation he achieved as a scientific engineer gained his appointment in 1859 to the chair of civil engineering in University College, London. He obtained a considerable amount of official work from the government. He served on the committees which considered the application of armour to ships and fortifications (1861–1864), and the comparative advantages of Whitworth and Armstrong guns (1863–1865). He was secretary to the Royal Commission on Railways (1865–1867), the duke of Richmond’s Commission on London Water (1867–1869), also taking part in the subsequent proceedings for establishing a constant supply, the Royal Commission on the Disposal of London Sewage (1882–1884), and the departmental committee on the science museums at South Kensington in 1885. In 1871 he was employed by the War Office to report on the Martini-Henry rifle, and in the same year was appointed consulting engineer in London to the Japanese government. a position through which he exercised considerable influence on the development of the Japanese railway system. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1861, in recognition of some investigations on colour-blindness. Music was also one of his chief interests. At the age of twenty-two he was appointed organist of St Mark’s, North Audley Street, in open competition, the next selected candidate being Dr E. J. Hopkins (1818–1901), who subsequently was for fifty years organist of the Temple Church. He took the degree of Bachelor of Music at Oxford in 1860, proceeding to his doctor’s degree in 1867, and in 1879 published his Philosophy of Music. He was largely concerned in the institution of musical degrees by the University of London in 1877, and for many years acted as one of the examiners. His mathematical tastes found congenial occupation in the study of whist, and as an exponent of the scientific principles of that game he was even earlier in the field than “Cavendish.” His literary work included treatises on the steam-engine and on iron construction, biographical studies of famous engineers, including Robert Stephenson and I. K. Brunel, Sir William Fairbairn and Sir W. Siemens, several books on musical subjects and on whist, and many papers for reviews and scientific periodicals. He died on the 30th of December 1900. His son, William Pole (1852–), became known as an actor and writer under the stage-name of William Poel, more especially for his studies in Shakespearian drama and his work in connexion with the Elizabethan Stage Society.
POLE (1) (O. Eng. pál, cf. Ger. Pfahl, Du. paal, from Lat. palus, stake), a tapering cylindrical post or stake of some considerable length, used as a support in scaffolding, for telegraph or telephone wires, hops, &c., and as a means for taking jumps (see Pole-Vaulting), and also as a single shaft for a vehicle drawn by two or more horses. As a measure of length a “pole,” also called “rod” or “perch,” is equal to 512 yds. (1612 ft.), as a measure of area it is equal to 3014 sq. yds. (2) (Lat. polus, adapted from Gr. πόλος, pivot, axis). one or other of the extremities of the axis of the earth; the “celestial pole” is one or other of the points in the heavens to which the earth’s axis points; in the northern hemisphere this point is near the star Ursae minoris, better known as the Pole-star or Polaris (see Ursa Major). For the regions lying about the north and south poles of the earth see Polar Regions.
In mathematics the word pole has several meanings. In spherical trigonometry the “pole” of a circle on a sphere is the point where the diameter of the sphere perpendicular to the plane of the circle intersects the sphere. In crystallography (q.v) the “ pole" of a face is the intersection of a line perpendicular to the face with
