Reginald Pole: In Two Parts. Part One

THE ROAD TO CANTERBURY.

OF all the picturesque lives of the eminently picturesque sixteenth century, none excels in the range of its chances and changes that of the man who aspired by turns to the throne of England and the papal tiara, and who was successively accused of making Vittoria Colonna a heretic and of earning for Queen Mary her unflattering epithet. Yet the story of Reginald Pole has been almost neglected. A contemporary Italian Life by Beccatelli was translated into Latin in 1563, and this work is confessedly the basis of the two later biographies, — that of Phillips, whose English Life was printed in Oxford about the middle of the last century, and Dean Hook’s in his series of Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, in our own day. Cardinal Quirini devoted much of his time to collecting and editing Pole’s correspondence, published in five bulky quartos at Brescia in 1754, and these contain almost all of his letters which we possess in print. Hardly half a dozen among them are written quite without constraint, while not one is addressed to his own people. That he kept up a full and free correspondence with his mother and brothers we know; that all trace of it can have vanished seems hardly credible. If ever these English letters are found, they can scarcely fail to shed fresh light on the complex reign of Henry VIII. ; but meanwhile Quirini’s collection serves to show us the man, and to introduce us to the ever changing but always interesting company of his intimate associates.

First let us refresh our memories by reviewing the highly distinguished fainily connections of Reginald Pole, that we may better understand how it was that his words and actions came to be invested with such extraordinary importance.

Henry VIII., as we all know, ascended the throne of England, without opposition, in 1509. The chances of battle and the summary methods of Tower Hill had removed most of the young king’s rivals out of his pathway, but there was one woman still at hand who might have set up a very pretty claim to the crown. This was Margaret, sole daughter and ultimate heiress of George, the “ false, fleeting, perjured ” Duke of Clarence, younger brother of King Edward IV. Henry was quite aware that his own best pretensions lay in right of his mother, Edward IV.’s daughter, but her legitimacy was more than questionable ; while there was no doubt whatever of the validity of Clarence’s marriage with Isabel, the daughter and heiress of Warwick the King-maker. The extreme plausibility of this claim cost Margaret’s brother his life, and had presumably influenced the selection of a husband for her. Sir Richard Pole ¹ was a sort of cousin to Henry VII. (their mothers having been half-sisters), and he was deeply attached to the king and grateful for favors received. He died a comparatively young man, and left to the care of his extremely able wife five children : a daughter, who married the son and heir of the Duke of Buckingham, of Henry VIII’s day, and thus became ancestress to half the English peerage of our own, and four sons, of whom Reginald Pole was probably the youngest. He was born in March, 1500, and was therefore about a month younger than the great German emperor, whom he was to survive barely eight weeks. At the age of seven he was put to school at West Sheen, with the Carthusian monks, who had a house of much repute in that place ; whereby the child remained close to the palace at Richmond, where the court frequently resided, and to his mother who was in attendance on Katharine of Aragon. At twelve, “having laid,” as Phillips quaintly says, “ a foundation of grammatical precepts,” he was removed to the University of Oxford and entered at Magdalen College. He was here at the time of the birth of the Princess Mary (1516), who became the especial charge OF his mother.

Almost all the reminiscences we have of his Oxford days are contained in two letters of Sir Thomas More. One is addressed to the chancellor’s accomplished daughter Margaret, telling how many compliments upon her Latin style he had received from Reginald Pole, “juvenis ut nobilissimus, ita in ormni literarum genere doctissimns, nec rirtute minus quatu eruditione conspicuns.”² The other letter is of an earlier date, and is addressed jointly to Pole himself and to Dr. John Clement, formerly tutor in More’s family, and now professor of Greek in the university : —

“ Thanks, my dear Clement, for having kept up sufficient interest in the health of me and mine to care to advise us from a distance what articles of diet to avoid. And to you, dearest Pole. I am doubly grateful, first for having deigned to write out the advice of so distinguished a doctor, and then for having entreated and obtained that his prescription might be made up by your mother, the best and noblest of women, and fully worthy of such a son as you,—thus proving yourself no less generous in deed than in word. I therefore commend the works and faith of both together, and I embrace you one by one. ’

The boy seems at this time to have been equally in favor with the English king and his Spanish queen, but their plans for his future advancement took by no means the same shape. Henry had marked him out for a great churchman ; Katharine, with the complete concurrence, we may be sure, of the Countess of Salisbury,³ destined him to be the husband of the Princess Mary, being impelled to desire the marriage not only by her affection for Reginald, but by her earnest desire to make some atonement for the death of the boy’s uncle, the Earl of Warwick, who had been beheaded to render her own crown more secure. But a good many years must elapse before it would be possible to carry out this project, and meanwhile Reginald gratefully accepted — though without taking holy orders — the church preferments conferred upon him by the king. Two deaneries and two prebendal stalls furnished him with a very handsome income, and he set out in 1519 to complete his education at Padua.

He took care that his establishment there should not disgrace his royal cousin and patron, and cut so great a figure at the university that he got the nickname of “the nobleman from England.” Two of the protégés to whom he gave a home at Padua deserve a word of special mention : Lupset, a clever young Englishman, whose name we shall meet again, and an even more brilliant and very charming student from Flanders, known by the Latinized name Longolius.

Pole’s collected correspondence begins with two letters from the latter, — the first humorously bewailing the summer solitude of Padua in the long vacation, and entreating Pole to return, The next, which was also the poor youth s last, may be given in full: —

“Though racked with pain, and breathing with such difficulty that I can scarce hope to recover, my great and unalterable love for you urges me somehow or other to surmount this anguish long enough to pay my last debt of a letter.

“ The day after I wrote I was seized with a sharp attack of fever, from which I have suffered more in these three days than ever in all my life before. It seems as if I must have had a sort of presentiment, when I said, before you left, that if anything happened to me upon the journey I was meditating, I wanted my whole library to go to you. Our last day together was nearer than we thought, as you see. I beseech you, therefore, by that friendship which I think has almost reached its term, to cherish my memory after I am gone, both tenderly and piously, as befits the close union there has been between us. Take care of your own health, and give my truest love to Pace. Padua, August 25 (1522).”

On the receipt of this affecting letter, Pole, who was somewhere in the neighborhood of Venice, hurried back to Padua, and stayed with his fellow - student till the end came on the 11th of September. It is also probable that he wrote the short life of Longolius which is prefixed to the young scholar’s collected waitings, although its author is merely described upon the title-page as one of his dearest friends.

It was at Padua, also, that Pole first met two of the closest and most famous friends of his entire life, the cardinals Bembo and Flaminio. The latter was at that time professor in the university, while Bembo had come to Padua to recruit his health, which had been undermined by his heavy duties as secretary to Pope Leo X. After he returned to Rome, Pole and he kept up a brisk correspondence, but only a few of Bembo’s letters now remain. They betray — like those of all that set of men — the writer’s burning desire to be Ciceronian, and we can easily fancy how significant they must all have thought the incident related in the following note from Bembo: —

“ I have a story to tell you. When I wrote you, not long ago, begging you to send me back the letters I had written you from Rome, I could not understand why you should have sent them all except the one in which I replied to two of yours together. It appears now that you never had that letter, for the excellent reason that it was never sent! I had signed it, and left orders that it should be sealed and sent off by the first messenger (for the public post was, at that time, notoriously untrustworthy), and neither order was executed, though I supposed both had been so. It had to do, I suppose, with the sharp illness which seized me just then, and had nearly finished me. I should fancy that my librarian, who was frightened out of his senses by that attack of mine, simply forgot to do as I had told him. The letter was thrust, unfolded, just as it was, between two books of Cicero’s Epistles, which I had by me as I wrote, and turning them over yesterday, I found it, and ordered it to be dispatched ; not so much for fear my little document should be wasted as by way of showing you that I had really not been much more remiss than usual in answering your communications. There was no date to the letter, and I put none. Love to Pace.”

This letter was written in August of 1525, and some time in this year Pole also went to Rome. Thanks chiefly to the introductions he took with him from the Bishop of Verona, who was no other than Vittoria Colonna’s friend Giberti, he saw much in private of the members of the Sacred College, but he did not appear openly at the papal court. The relations of Henry VIII. with the pontiff were now beginning to be strained, and either policy or a partial sympathy with the king seems to have prevented Pole — who himself says that he had at this time no thought of taking orders — from openly espousing the papal side.

In the following year, yielding, as we are told, to his mother’s earnest entreaties, he returned to England ; and when we remember the matrimonial projects of the Countess of Salisbury for her son, it seems natural to associate her impatience to have him on the spot with the rumors of Henry’s proposed divorce which were already in the air. Anne Boleyn’s name was not yet prominent in this connection, and she chanced to be absent on a visit to her former mistress, the Duchesse d’Alençon, whom Wolsey had chosen as a wife for Henry when his present marriage should be declared null. During Pole’s absence in Italy the Princess Mary had been betrothed for a while to her cousin, the Emperor Charles V.; but he had broken the engagement, and married a princess of Portugal early in this same year ; and now there began to be a question of depriving Queen Katharine of the custody of her ten-year-old daughter.

All these exciting topics were no doubt discussed in private by the mother and her son, but, on the whole, we can hardly wonder that, though he had received the heartiest of welcomes from both king and queen, Reginald Pole found his position an embarrassing one. “ Notwithstanding,” says Phillips, the privilege of such a situation and the sunshine of royal favor which still encompassed him, he resolved to withdraw from it. The court was become a scene of intrigue to which his breast was a stranger. He was a constant witness to the wanderings of a prince to whom he had the highest obligations, and whom he loved with all the sincerity of a loyal and thankful heart. Nor would his integrity and gratitude allow him to interest himself less in the ease and honor of the queen, who was now treated with coldness and disregard. However, that this retreat might not give offense or draw on him his prince’s disregard, he alleged a desire of prosecuting his studies where he would meet with fewer avocations, and obtained his Majesty’s consent to go to the Carthusians at Sheen, where he had passed several years of his youth, and where there was a very handsome house and everything suited to his purpose within the inclosure of the monastery.”

The house in question had been built by Dr. Colet, with all the modern improvements of the day, as a retreat for himself and certain chosen friends (of whom Erasmus — who calls it magnificœ, œdes — was one), and it had been standing vacant since the doctor’s untimely death, a few years before.

Here, then, Reginald Pole established himself quietly, but we may be sure very comfortably, though not one letter of his dated from Sheen has been preserved. In 1529 he obtained permission to study at the University of Paris ; but if he hoped in this way to get clear of the conflict which was agitating England, he was mistaken. One of Henry’s devices, as we know, was to try to get from some of the leading universities an opinion favorable to the divorce of Katharine, and he requested his cousin Reginald to attend to this little matter for him in Paris. It was a disagreeable commission, certainly, and we have Pole’s word for it, given some six or seven years later,⁴ that he replied to the king excusing himself on the ground of inexperience, and begging him to appoint an abler commissioner. On the other hand, we have the evidence of a holograph letter of his to Henry VIII. to show that he remained the nominal colleague of the Mr. Fox who was sent over in response to his request. Hook compares these two documents, the Latin treatise and the English letter, and declares himself unable to reconcile their statements. As a matter of fact, these are not contradictory, although they do certainly, at first sight, convey very different impressions concerning Pole’s own view of the divorce. The real disingenuousness lies in the letter to the king, taken by Fox along with the decision of the university, which is written in a spirit of perfect cordiality, though Pole carefully avoids committing himself upon the main question.

“ And whereas,” he concludes, “ I was informed, first by Mr. Lupset, ⁵ and afterward by Mr. Fox, how it standeth with your Grace’s pleasure, considering my fervent desire therein, that, your matter once achieved and brought to a final conclusion in this university, I should repair to your presence, your Grace could not grant me at this time a petition more comfortable unto me. And so, making what convenient speed I may, my trust is shortly to wait upon your Highness,”

Pole’s opinion of the divorce may be inferred, but whoever wanted to keep a head on his shoulders had to walk softly before King Harry, and then and always Pole loved his life. He returned to England, made a brief appearance at court, then retired once more to Sheen, and resumed those theological studies which he now preferred to the pursuit of philosophy.

In November, 1530, Cardinal Wolsey died in disgrace, and the vacant archbishopric of York was offered by Henry to Pole. It was to be the price of his formal approval of the divorce, and there is no question that he wavered. How much his decision was influenced by that old plan for marrying him to the Princess Mary, who can say ? It may well be that, when all was over and the bolt of the king’s wrath had fallen, it was a certain consolation to him that, while he refrained from taking orders, as to be archbishop of course he must have done, he was still free to marry, should his own interest and the Welfare of England seem to require it. Once indeed he thought he had made up his mind to accept the archbishopric, and informed Fox and his oldest brother, Lord Montague, who with the Duke of Norfolk had been the king’s intermediaries, that he had done so. He was at once summoned to a personal interview with Henry, and the conclusion of the affair may be given in his own words : —

“ The king gave me to understand, on my arrival, that he had been anxiously expecting me ; but when I attempted to set forth the case in a sense favorable to his wishes, not merely did I hesitate and fail to make my meaning clear, but I thank the Divine Goodness my tongue was so tied and my speech so obstructed that not one word could I utter of all that I had intended ; and when I did find my voice, it was to oppose by every argument the cause I had been summoned and expected to defend. There is no need to dwell in this place ⁶ on the astonishment and agitation of the king. I attempted some sort of apology, but he cut me short, and having given me to understand how deeply he was offended, he burst away into his own room, closing the door behind him with a furious clang, and leaving me outside, bathed in tears.’’

The king recovered his temper for this time, however, suffered Pole to put in writing his arguments in favor of making the Pope the ultimate arbiter in the case, and, rather to the surprise of his courtiers, received the treatise graciously. A few months later, moreover, when Pole applied for leave to return and pursue his studies upon the Continent, not only was the royal consent given, but, what is much more significant, the petitioner was allowed still to retain the income of his various benefices.

Pole left England in 1531, and went first to Avignon, but found the climate there so trying that he decided on returning to Italy. On his way he made a long stay with Sadoleto, the excellent Bishop of Carpentras. who became one of Pole’s warmest admirers, writing to Giberti of the elegance of his guest’s manners, his perfect command of Latin and Greek, and the many amiable and brilliant qualities which must always win for him both love and admiration. “ And over and above his talent and his learning and the uprightness of his character, and more wonderful than all these, to my thinking, in a man of so great a race, is the exceeding sweetness and humanity of his disposition.”

With Pole, as with so many of his Stuart cousins, both good and bad, the great secret of personal power seems to have lain in an indefinable charm of manner. “ Whoever liketh him worst,’’ wrote Sir John Mason of him, more than twenty years later, “ I would he might have with him the talk of one half hour. It were a right stony heart that in a small time he could not soften.”

Pole passed the two following years at Padua and Venice, during which period he exchanged with Sadoleto a series of letters — or rather, of tracts — on the comparative value of theological and philosophical studies, in which the bishop was the advocate of the more worldly side. At Padua, Pole lived in the society of as delightful and congenial a circle of friends as the world could then have afforded him. Their favorite rendezvous was at Bozza, a villa belonging to Cardinal Bembo : and here might often be met Gianpietro Caraffa, who later, as Paul IV., was to be one of Pole’s few determined enemies : Giberti. Bishop of Verona *, and the distinguished Venetian, Cardinal Contarini. It was probably one or other of these men who first introduced Pole to two famous women who became his lifelong friends, Giulia Gonzaga and Vittoria Colonna. Both were deeply interested in the great matter of ecclesiastical reform, and so were two men whom Pole learned at this time to love, and who subsequently threw off their allegiance to the Catholic Church. Peter Martyr and Bernardino Ochino ; while another of the Paduan circle was Flaminio, who was at one time so near following their example. During this period, too, Pole’s Italian and Latin biographers, Beccatelli and Dudithius, entered his household as private secretaries, and a young Venetian nobleman, of large fortune and influence, named Priuli, became so deeply attached to him as almost to sink his identity in that of Pole. These two were, moreover, entirely of one mind both as to the crying need of church reform and the inviolable sanctity of the papacy. The question of justification by faith was still an open one, and Pole and the majority of his friends undoubtedly leaned to a much more Protestant interpretation than that which was afterwards fixed and prescribed by the Council of Trent. But allegiance to the Pope as the divinely appointed head of the Church was the central principle of Pole’s being ; and when Henry VIII. flung off that yoke, Reginald, in his turn, and once for all, repudiated the king’s authority.

There is preserved in the Venetian archives a series of letters, beginning in 1534, extending for about three years, and addressed by the ambassadors of Charles V. in Venice and England to their imperial master, which indicate plainly enough that Pole had entered into an actual conspiracy to dethrone Henry, and place himself upon the English throne as Mary’s husband. But the thing could not have been done in any case without material aid from Charles ; and the emperor, true to his crafty nature, encouraged Pole and played with his projects, while taking no decisive step. At the same time. Pole was busy preparing his treatise on Ecclesiastical Unity, which was intended as a kind of ultimatum to Henry ; a final summons to repent and submit to Rome, or accept the consequences of organized rebellion in his own states.

The king, who can have entertained little doubt concerning Reginald’s general attitude, though he may not have understood the full extent of his treachery, evidently thought the time had come for bringing matters to a crisis. He began by forwarding to his cousin a sermon in favor of “ lay supremacy ” lately delivered by Dr. Sampson (soon to become Bishop of Chichester), and composed by the united efforts of the ablest divines of the reforming party, together with certain other treatises in the same sense.

“ The king,”Pole dryly writes Contarini, “ has sent me some books to instruct me in the opinion he wishes me to adopt; ordering me, at the same time, to say exactly what I think!

The sheets of the De Unitate were now being sent for revision to Contarini in Rome, and both he and Priuli thought it injudiciously severe upon Henry, and begged Pole to moderate his expressions, but in vain. There could not well have been a more defiant exposition of a belief in the papal supremacy, but Pole assures his critics that it finally went to England accompanied by a private letter “ full of love and duty.”

A little later, we find him writing to Contarini, from Venice, of the reception of his treatise by the king: “First of all I must tell you that no sooner had the messenger by whom I sent my book delivered it into the hands of the king than he was ordered to return at the top of his speed with letters and commands of which the substance is as follows. The king was not displeased with what I had written, but since, in a good many, or rather in almost all particulars, my view appeared to differ from his own, it would gratify him very much to discuss the matter with me in person. This was his pretext for summoning me back, and he himself wrote me an exceedingly sharp letter to the same effect, not so much inviting as commanding me. without evasion or delay, to repair at once to my country and to his palace, that we might communicate with each other freely upon certain points. Moreover, Cromwell, to whom all England is in subjection, as it was during the lifetime of the late queen,⁷ sent me a letter to the same effect. . . . To all which communications and commands my answer was an open and succinct refusal. Without circumlocution or apology, I declined to return home until the king should have returned to his home, namely, the Church.”

Pole may have had a shadowy hope, now that Anne Boleyn, whom he had always held chiefly responsible for Henry’s schism, was dead and gone, that the king would return to his spiritual allegiance. Politically, he knew that he had laid himself open to a charge of high treason, and that he could not safely set foot upon English soil. He therefore disobeyed the king’s orders, and the king, very naturally, retaliated by cutting off Pole’s English revenues. It is generally supposed that a good many of the bitterest personal reflections upon Henry which occur in the treatise De Unitate ⁸ as we know it were added between the time when the cumbrous manuscript was submitted to the king and its publication in book form a few years later. Courtesy in controversy was certainly not the fashion of the day, but we can hardly imagine the irascible monarch enduring for a moment some of the expressions now to be found in the essay on Unity.

His definite break with the English court had, however, lifted Pole into high favor for the moment with the powers at the Vatican. While he was still corresponding with Henry and his officers he had received a summons from the pontiff to come to Rome, as one of a committee of “ learned men from all nations,” convened there for the purpose of arranging the preliminaries of a general council. Pole hesitated a little. There were various reasons why he would rather not have acted on that committee, but eventually he set forth, accompanied by Cardinal Caraffa, and was joined at Verona by Giberti. Here also he was overtaken by one of Henry’s emissaries, whose advent and errand are described in a letter to Contarini, dated Siena, October 10 (1536) : —

“ The messenger had been commanded to make all possible haste, so that his letters might be delivered to me before I should set out. on my journey. The king appears to have thought that the said letters would stop me, if anything could ; and so I almost think they would have done if divine grace had not held me to my resolution. Not an argument was omitted which might have hindered my departure. The letters themselves were many. First there was one from that Cromwell who is the king’s own master, bristling with all manner of threats, taken down from the king’s own lips. Then came one from Tunstall, Bishop of Durham, which was nothing more nor less than an arraignment of the papal power, in which he attempted, at wearisome length, to prove by the authority of the Scriptures that when the Pope summons me, and the king recalls me. it is the latter who must be obeyed. Thirdly, what moved me more than all the rest, there were letters from my mother and my brother, so pathetically expressed that — not to exaggerate my own fortitude —they did almost shake my resolution. On the one hand, they besought me not to go counter to the king’s wishes ; on the other, they threatened to cast me off entirely if I persisted in my journey. This appeal to my natural affections pierced my heart and seemed irresistible.” But Reginald Pole’s companions braced his courage by reminding him of the promises made to those who forsake their kindred for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. “And so. in the end,” he says,

“ it was they who persuaded me to persevere. or rather, as I think, Christ through them. I therefore sent back the king’s messenger . . . with an answer which showed plainly that I was not to be intimidated by the threats of any mortal man. But to the letter of Tunstall, or rather his tome, arraigning the Pope’s authority. I returned one of similar length, in which I disposed of his arguments one by one.”

On his arrival in Rome, Pole found an apartment prepared for him in the papal palace, and received a hearty welcome from Contarini and his stanch old friend the Bishop of Carpentras. The nine commissioners, of whom Pole was one of the most active, usually held their sittings in the rooms of Contarini, and they seem to have proceeded in their work very amicably ; having drawn up in writing a complete scheme of church reform before the Christmas festivities came to interrupt their labors. But when it was intimated that the pontiff proposed, at the next consistory, to give a further proof of his confidence in the Englishman by making him a member of the Sacred College, Pole was anything but elated at the prospect. It would cut off the last chance of a reconciliation with Henry, beside creating one more impediment to a possible marriage with the Princess Mary; and indeed, if we may believe Beccatelli, it was this last argument which rendered all the Spanish party so warmly favorable to Pole’s elevation. He even went so far as to beg that he might be allowed to decline the offer, but the Pope replied by sending him a barber!

“It so happened that I was present,” remarks Beccatelli, “ when the Pope’s will was made known. Pole was taken quite by surprise, and not a little agitated ; in fact, he plainly betrayed his distress. But he saw that there was no longer any room for hesitation or delay ; and so, as a lamb to the shearer, he submitted to receive the tonsure.” However, he only took deacon’s orders, and did not become a priest for nearly twenty years more.

Pole was overwhelmed with letters of congratulation upon his new honor, but from England there came a growl of displeasure, to which he replied in a letter addressed to Parliament, and written in an unusually condensed and dignified style. Step by step he reviews his life, challenging his critics to point out a single action which can be justly branded as either selfish or disloyal. His fidelity to the Pope he declares to be unalterable, but at the same time protests that it is perfectly consistent with his allegiance to the king. When it comes to denying the doctrine of the papal supremacy, Pole observes that since he has given his life to the study of dogma, while those whom he addresses know next to nothing about it, he conceives himself to be a more competent judge than they. He will gladly, however, accede to their request, and meet their delegates for consultation upon these matters in Flanders. It will be impossible for him, under present circumstances, to meet them as a mere private individual, and he begs that they will take no umbrage at this, but rather cherish the hope that the ruin wrought in England by one cardinal (Wolsey) may now be repaired by another.

Pole had in fact received a commission as papal legate, ostensibly to promote peace between the emperor and the king of France, but really to ascertain what aid these monachs would be disposed to lend the Catholic party in England, in the event of their rising and taking the field in favor of papal supremacy.

He set out from Rome on this important mission early in February, 1537, accompanied by Giberti and Priuli, while Contarini sent after him a letter of sage if somewhat over-anxious counsel. “ Be assured,” says the astute Venetian. “ that one of the devil’s deepest wiles for deluding wise and honorable men is persuading them on the one hand to put such trust in God as to neglect all precautions for themselves, and on the other to consider themselves so secure of the divine protection as to stand in no need of the advice of other men. The former error is a presumptuous tempting of Providence, the latter is pure pride. You will do your utmost, I am sure, to avoid both these snares, referring all matters which concern yourself to the sound judgment of the Bishop of Verona, who by God’s own mercy has been permitted to accompany you. I have felt that I must say this because I know, from my friend Ludovico ” (Beccatelli), “ that you have sometimes been inclined to rebel against his authority in matters of diet, — eating fish, and the like. Do nothing which the bishop and Priuli do not approve.”

Pole replies from Bologna, humorously and with perfect good temper : “As for him of Verona whom you recommend me to obey in all things, you know perfectly well that his influence has long been paramount with me, and that I shall be doing nothing new, and submitting to no new shackles, if I do take his advice implicitly. . . . But is not one master enough for me, pray, that you must needs have appointed me a second in the person of our friend Priuli ? I can assure you that when we came to that part of your letter in which you refer me to his authority, he was amazingly set up, assumed the airs of a prince consort, and wanted to enter upon his duties at once. For the sake of his colleague, and on the strength of your letter, I waived my rights and succumbed, whereupon he became most imperious. Not a word of explanation or apology would he accept from me : but at last my horse, which he was riding, discovered the state of the case and the proper remedy, and three days ago gave him a fall that might have been dangerous, but as a matter of fact hurt nothing but his pride, which really needed humbling. Since then his rule has been much milder.”

Again, Pole writes from Piacenza to Contarini, making use, he says, of the first leisure day he had enjoyed since leaving Rome : “ I am alone in the house, the rest having all gone out to see the sights, which I was restrained from doing by the golden chains of which you wot.” He frankly owns, however, that he is in much better health, since, in obedience to the counsels of Giberti and Contarini, he had remitted the severity of his fasts. “ I had feared,” he says simply, “ that what did good to my body would do harm to the souls of others ; but I desire above all things to maintain the dignity of my office.” This demanded not only that he should set an example of blameless conduct, but that he should live with a certain splendor, and he was embarrassed by the loss of his English revenues. He had constantly, during these years, to be asking pecuniary assistance, and Contarini seems always to have furnished or procured it for him.

But the embassy proved a dire failure. Charles and Francis were just now of the opinion that it would be more for their advantage to strike a treaty with Henry than to invade his kingdom ; and Pole, who had been met at Lyons by word that the Catholic rising in England had been easily and completely suppressed, arrived in Paris to find the gates of the palace actually shut in his face. Francis I. was in a very awkward position. It was his duty, as the eldest son of the Church, to receive the legate of the Pope ; but as the ally of the king of England, it behooved him to hand over to justice a contumacious subject of the latter. To inform Pole, in the politest manner, that a military escort would be furnished him as far as the Flemish frontier seemed to Francis the best way out of the dilemma ; while the unfortunate legate was fain to betake himself to Cambrai and claim the unwilling hospitality of the prince bishop there. From the episcopal palace he forwarded his credentials to the regent of the Netherlands at Brussels; but all he obtained, and this only after much delay and shuffling, was an escort to Liège, of which, at least, now that Henry had put a price of fifty thousand crowns upon his head, he stood in obvious need.

At Liège, however, he was received by its bishop and prince with what he himself describes as “ unexampled kindness and generosity,” and in that haven he remained for about three months. His way of life is represented by Priuli, in a letter to Contarini, as very quiet, and strict in the matter of religious observances. “ Only after supper,” he says, “ we usually go boating upon the river for an hour or two, or else stroll in the orchard, discoursing always of such matters as befit these gentlemen. And again and again, I may say daily, while we thank God for his goodness in granting us this pleasant season, we speak of your Eminence and wish that you were here. ‘Surely,’ the lord legate often says, ‘it is God who gives us this interval of repose, but why is Monsignor Contarini not with us ? ‘ ”

But this time of refreshment came quickly to an end, and on the 22d of August Pole said good-by to the hospitable prince bishop, and left Liège for Italy. Stopping often by the way to meet or to visit old friends, lie arrived safely at Rome some time during the autumn, “ where,” says Phillips, “ he gave the Pope a full account of his embassy ; and though the event had not answered expectation, yet, as he had discharged it with every commendation which can make a public character truly valuable, he was received with those testimonies of esteem which should always accompany real though unsuccessful merit; and the legatine commission being now at an end, he returned to the condition of a private cardinal."’

He himself confesses to having gone through a season of deep depression, from which, however, he had quite recovered before the following June, when he accompanied the Pope to a conference with Charles V. and Francis I at Nice. Catholic Europe had been freshly exasperated against Henry VIII. by the ruthless desecration and spoliation of the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury, to whose inestimable riches almost every great personage in Christendom had made some notable contribution, and there was question of a sort of holy alliance which should crush the royal robber once for all, and force him to disgorge his booty.

The emperor was particularly gracious to Pole upon this occasion, and the latter was chosen to go to Toledo and settle the bases of the treaty between the three sovereigns which had been projected at Nice. This time he was ordered to travel incognito, and with the smallest possible suite ; and accordingly, on January 6, 1539, we find him announcing to Contarini his safe arrival at Beccatelli s house in Bologna. He had had good weather for crossing the Apennines, and he says that his health has not suffered from the exposure, though he never felt such cold in his life.

At Piacenza Pole was joined by Giberti, who thenceforth, as the legate naïvely puts it, “ provided out of his own liberality whatever might be requisite to make the journey more comfortable.” Pole had need of all the comfort and support which the company of the saintly bishop could afford him, for at Piacenza he also received from England the disquieting news that almost every member of his family had been committed to the Tower. There was much worse to come ; his eldest brother, Lord Montague, having been executed on the 9th of January, while the younger. Sir Geoffrey, had purchased his life by turning traitor to his kin. But of these crushing facts Pole remained in ignorance until after his arrival in Spain.

He had, however, no luck as an ambassador, and the Spanish mission failed as deplorably as the French one had done. The ease with which the English Catholics had been put down had proved the real weakness of their party, and completely discredited Pole as a political prophet; and the last faint chance that the orthodox sovereigns might invade England on the Pope’s behalf was now at an end. The fickle emperor turned the cold shoulder upon the cardinal whom he had so lately petted ; his chancellor, Granvelle, advised Pole, with scornful good nature, to get back to Rome while he could ; and Sir Thomas Wyatt, the English ambassador to Spain, patriotically offered to rid Henry of the obnoxious cardinal altogether for the reasonable sum of £10,000. Baffled and mortified at every turn, Pole sought refuge with Sadoleto at Carpentras, where, thanks to the earnest representations of Contarini and other of his fast friends in Rome, he presently received a large sum of money from the Pope, accompanied by comforting assurances that the pontiff, at least, was satisfied with his conduct.

Returning to Rome about the new year, he found Paul III. in the thick of his fight with Ascanio Colonna over the salttax, and the city anything but a safe or agreeable place of residence. He therefore retired to the little town of Capranica, on the borders of the Abruzzi, not far from Palestrina, and there he lived very quietly until he received the dignified appointment of Legate of the Patrimony of St. Peter,⁹ and took up his official residence at Viterbo. Only a few months before, Contarini had been appointed governor of the Bolognese territory, — a conclusive proof, if any were needed, that the views on justification which had recently been pronounced by the Venetian cardinal at the Council of Ratisbon were not then considered unsound. Such as they were, at all events, Pole shared them, and he died under a charge of heresy therefor, although his counsels upon this point to Vittoria Colonna strike one as both wise and wary.

It is during the period of his stay at peaceful Capranica that the name of the Marchesa di Pescara begins to figure frequently in Pole’s correspondence. The letters exchanged between these two have almost all perished, but we still have Pole’s reply to the word of consternation and sympathy addressed to him by Vittoria on his mother’s tragic death. There is no need to dwell here upon the ghastly horror of that May morning when the aged Countess of Salisbury was led out to execution. Pole’s manner of accepting the dreadful tidings is thus described by Beccatelli : —

“ One day when he had received a great number of letters from France and other places, and had requested me to answer them, I perceived, as I was gathering them up, that there was one among them in the English tongue, and suggested that to this I could not reply, because I knew absolutely nothing of the language. ‘ I would,’ he said, ‘ that you could both read and understand it, for it brings me glad tidings.’ Inflamed with curiosity, I eagerly begged to be allowed to share his happiness, and this was his reply : ‘ I have always been sensible of God’s great goodness in having made me the son of a woman no less illustrious for her virtues than for her rank, but now he has granted me a yet more signal grace. My mother has received the crown of martyrdom ; for because she held fast to our Catholic faith, and could by no means be shaken, she has been beheaded by Henry s orders. She was seventy years old, and this is her reward for all the care she had bestowed upon his daughter.’ I was completely overcome, but he continued firmly, ‘ Let us be of good cheer ; she has been added to the number of our patrons and advocates in heaven.’ He then withdrew into the little chapel where he always went to pray, and remained there some time, but when he rejoined us hia face was as cheerful as usual.”

The four tranquil years which Pole passed at Viterbo between the time of his appointment as governor and his summons to attend the Council of Trent were in some respects the happiest of his troubled life. Here he could choose his own society, and his household was composed of congenial spirits. Hard by, in the convent of Sta. Caterina, lived Vittoria Colonna, and she bore her part in many of the serious discussions held by Pole and his two great friends, Flaminio and Carnesecchi. The former died in Pole’s house, a conforming Catholic, ten years later ; the latter perished in the Inquisition. Something has been said in another place of Pole’s influence over the life and faith of Vittoria Colonna ; Flaminio was affected by him in precisely the same way. Yet, save upon the question of papal supremacy, Pole was no hardy dogmatist, and when, in the dark and sanguinary days at hand, he was reproached for having put few men to torture for their opinions during his government of the patrimony, his noble answer was that for this he blessed God.

He had long before set forth his views concerning the best way of dealing with heretics, in a letter addressed to a couple of priests in Liège, earnestly exhorting them to mildness and moderation in such cases. “ I know,” he says, “ that I have often been accused of a reluctance to chastise evil men, which amounts to cruelty toward the good; but I cannot do violence to my nature, least of all with those I love. . . . And though it is undeniable that rebels must sometimes be punished by way of example, . . . yet upon this one point I must ever insist, that even when rebellious they are still sons.”

The Inquisition was now in full blast at Rome, under the especial patronage of Pole’s whilom friend, Cardinal Caraffa, and the breach thus established between the two old associates was destined to go on widening until the death of Pole.

The great and general Council of Trent assembled in 1545. The Pope had been reluctant to summon it; the delegates, remembering the abortive attempt to hold a council in the same place two years before, went thither without enthusiasm. Pole was one of them, and the letters, or reports of the preliminary proceedings of the council, which it devolved upon him to send to the Pope arc singularly lifeless and perfunctory. A strenuous attempt had been made by some of the delegates to have the seat of the council removed, and the inaccessibility of Trent and its disadvantages as a winter residence were forcibly set forth in a memorial signed by the three presiding officers, Cardinals del Monte, Santa Croce, and Pole, and forwarded to Rome by the latter’s secretary, Beccatelli. “ If it is the opinion of your Holiness,” this petition proceeds, “ that his Majesty the Emperor would not object, on a reasonable showing, to have the sessions of this council transferred to some other place, allow us further to allege the narrow accommodations of this town, the lamentations of the prelates, the scarcity and high price of food, . . , the severity of the winter climate, and the excessive coldness of the church, which renders it not merely difficult, but fairly impossible, to hold meetings in it before spring.”

There was, in truth, a great deal of illness among the assembled clergy, and every facility was afforded them for contracting colds and rheumatism. Pole suffered severely in this way, as well as from his constant dread of assassination ; and the fact that a professional cutthroat, known to be in the pay of England, was now and again seen loitering about the streets of Trent seemed to prove that his fears were not unfounded. But when, to crown all, news came that imperial troops were to be sent to Trent and billeted on the ecclesiastics, there was a general outburst of the liveliest remonstrance. A formal petition for removal was presented to the Pope, and the author ¹⁰ of a private letter to Cardinal Maffei, quoted by Quirini, expresses himself with great freedom : “ We have no desire — and I speak for the majority of the prelates — to stay on here and lodge soldiers, and be completely at their mercy ; nor does it help the matter to say that they are merely passing through the country, for they can come back whenever they like, and we shall have no power to prevent them. Our original purpose, as you will have gathered from our joint letter, was to be absent when they should arrive. ... It appears that Cardinal Pole has got leave of absence and is going immediately to Trevilla, while the rest of us, though very likely we stand in as much need of a holiday and change of air as he, are to be detained here about the article of justification until the soldiers are upon us.”

Pole’s enemies have always asserted that he left for the express purpose of avoiding the discussions of the council on the dogma of justification by faith ; but since all the delegates had to do was to register their adherence to the doctrine as formulated in Rome, we can hardly imagine that so loyal a churchman as Pole would have hesitated, or, if he had done so, that he would have retained, as we know he did to the end of his life, the friendship and favor of Paul III. And as a matter of fact, we have Pole’s own explicit statement, in a letter to one of his fellow-cardinals, that he did heartily accept the deliverance of the head of the Church upon this vexed question ; regarding it as broad enough to include and reconcile the seemingly incompatible views of the apostles James and Paul.

From Trevilla, a country-seat of Priuli’s in the neighborhood of Padua, Pole kept up a lively correspondence both with friends at Rome and with his fellow-delegates at Trent. On the 13th of July, 1546, he writes to Cardinals del Monte and Cervini: “ Concerning the state of my health, I can hardly say more than that it is better rather than worse since I left Trent : not that I am ever free from pain, but I certainly suffer less. I have had three nights of quiet sleep since I came here, and the horse - and - carriage exercise I am able to take helps me more than all the rest. Yesterday two doctors came out from Padua to see me, and held a very careful consultation ; and their decision was that I must take the utmost care of myself, for if my malady were to become chronic I might be in danger of paralysis.”

Early in September Pole went to the mud baths of Padua, where there seems to have been a goodly gathering of truants from the council. “ I have endeavored,” he says, “ to impress on all whom I see the duty of returning to Trent; and those who are well appear quite ready to do so, should there be any special or urgent need of their presence.”

For himself, after having taken the regular “ cure,” he found that he was in much the same condition as before, and applied to Rome for further orders. In response he received permission to return there, of which he availed himself with alacrity, making it his business earnestly to advocate with the Pope the advisability of changing the seat of the council, which finally, in the early spring of the ensuing year, was removed to Bologna.

But Reginald Pole was to attend its sittings no more. The death of Henry VIII., in January, 1547, reopened the whole English question at Rome, where, as indeed all over the Continent, an inveterate idea prevailed that it lay with the reigning sovereign to impose what religion he would upon the English people.¹¹ Pole wrote letters in this sense both to the Privy Council and to Edward VI., but neither communication was so much as acknowledged, and the would-he restorer of the faith had still to bide his time.

Meanwhile, shortly after the demise of Henry another death occurred, which affected Pole far otherwise and more sadly, — that of Vittoria Colonna. She had named him an executor of her will, and left him a large legacy, which he subsequently added to the dowry of the niece and namesake of the marchesa, Ascanio’s daughter Vittoria, on her marriage to Don Garcia of Toledo.

The three years or so which intervened between this great bereavement and the death of Paul III. were divided by Pole between his government at Viterbo and Rome. He was at tbe former place when, in November, 1549, the serious illness of the pontiff caused all the members of the Sacred College to be summoned in baste to Rome. The conclave which followed the death of Paul III. was a long and memorable one. Pole’s own candidature gained in favor day by day, until at last the needful two thirds of the voices appeared assured, and his election to the papacy on the first ballot of the following day a foregone conclusion. But late at night the tide turned suddenly, and, after a few moments of intense excitement, Cardinal del Monte was chosen Pope by acclamation.

Whatever Pole may have felt concerning this reverse, his behavior was perfect, and the high-bred self-command which was one of his finest qualities was never more admirably displayed than in his prompt and graceful congratulations to the genial and worldly cardinal who was henceforth to be known as Julius III. Having acquitted himself of this duty, Pole returned tranquilly to the patrimony, and continued to act as its governor until late in 1552, when he resigned his appointment. Death had been busy among his dearest friends : Sadoleto, Bembo, Giberti, and Contarini were nowgone, and Pole, who had succeeded the latter as patron of the Benedictines, craved and received permission to retire to a certain house of their order in the north of Italy. Thanks to a legacy left him by Giberti, he was now once more in easy circumstances ; his chosen retreat was an exquisite spot, and the cardinal’s contentment of spirit during the brief time he was permitted to pass there appears to have been complete.

But it was not here and thus that the checkered career of Reginald Pole was to end. On the 6th of July, 1553, the sickly young occupant of the English throne succumbed to the disease which had so early sapped his vitality, and within a month Pole received his commission as papal legate to the new queen, about whose religion there was no question. He accepted the charge at once, and sent a long letter of congratulation to Mary, who duly acknowledged the receipt of the favor of her “ best cousin Pole,” but at the same time requested that he would delay somewhat his arrival in England.

At the Pope’s suggestion, therefore. Pole began traveling northward by slow stages, trusting that by the time he had reached the coast all would be ready for his reception. But again in November Mary wrote him that it would be neither safe nor desirable for him to cross over from the Continent at present, and the queen’s cousin came nearer to betraying irritation in his reply to this cavalier announcement than that amiable and polished churchman often allowed himself to do: —

“ SERENISSIMA, — When I first received your Majesty’s Latin letter, inasmuch as it had been done up in the same packet with the others, and as the person who forwarded them to me from the royal palace made no mention of your Majesty, nothing was less in my thought than that I had had any communication from you at all. But when, having read the other letters,. I came to open this one, I fancied that I recognized your Majesty’s hand in the signature upon the last page. However, since it was written in Latin, and not in our mother tongue, which it is more customary for princes to employ, whether in writing or speaking to members of their own family, and which you yourself had used to me only a few days before, I found myself considerably bewildered. If your Majesty acted on the supposition that, owing to my long exile from my native land, I might have lost the use of the language to which I was born, and even ceased to understand it, you were of course quite right to address me in Latin. This thing does happen, of course, and I must confess that in sustained discourse I have sometimes found myself embarrassed ¹² for the want of a certain word which had escaped my memory. Nor need I say what a great pleasure it is to me to receive and read letters written by your Majesty in any language,” etc.

Pole goes on, however, to say. ceremoniously, but still somewhat dryly, that he thinks it will be safer if, in addition to his Latin reply, lie send her by a special messenger another in the vernacular, and that he hopes he shall be able to make himself intelligible through that medium. Pole evidently suspected, and not, unnaturally, perhaps, that Mary’s hesitation about receiving him might be due to the fact that she was toying with the temptation to assume along with the reins of government the headship of the English Church. He points out with much perspicuity how doubly sacrilegious it would be in her, as a woman, to dream of such a dignity, and closes with prayers for the righteousness, peace, and prosperity of her reign, and by earnestly recommending her to the grace and guidance of the King of kings.

This letter, dated December 1, 1553, was written from the monastery of Dillingen, in Swabia, where Pole spent many months. Charles V., who had no notion of allowing him free access to Mary until the latter’s marriage with Philip was definitely concluded, had pleasantly intimated to him that he had better not carry out his original intention of moving on as far as Brussels. Yet the emperor, like most of those who came in contact with him, had a strong personal liking for Pole, and when the gorgeous wedding ceremony at Winchester had been duly accomplished (July 5, 1554) he became most civil, and placed no further obstacle in the cardinal’s way. Pole, on the other hand, seemed quite to forget his own former pretensions to be Mary’s consort, in his joy at finding himself the chosen instrument for leading England back to her allegiance to Rome. He sent a letter of earnest congratulation to Philip, and something very like intimacy seems to have grown up between the two men, who must both, after all, have felt like aliens in England, and who had doubtless many points of sympathy in their views of insular affairs.

Pole was now summoned to a consultation with the emperor, and he learned that extensive preparations were at last making for his reception in England. The bill of attainder was reversed by Parliament, and a company of English gentlemen, under the direction of Lord Paget and Sir Edward Hastings, was sent to Brussels to escort him home. He took leave of Charles on the 12th of November, and the following morning set out on something like a triumphal progress. He made six stages of the journey to Calais, partly on account of his delicate health, but also because he felt that it beseemed his dignity to move slowly. At Calais — then, it will be remembered, an English port — a royal ship was awaiting him, and, a favorable breeze having miraculously sprung up after days of had weather, his crossing was speedily effected. At Dover letters of welcome were brought him from the king and queen. Philip had even written, in his own hand, and in Spanish, a few lines of poetry, wishing Pole a prosperous journey and safe arrival, and great numbers of courtiers came down to Dover to offer their congratulations on his return ; so that when he started Londonward he had four hundred horsemen in his train, and by the time he reached Rochester the number had doubled. At Gravesend the company embarked on the boat sent to meet them, and the cardinal taking the lead in an open boat with a cross at its prow, they came easily up to London on the rising tide. This was a great marvel in the eyes of a certain Italian in Pole’s suite, to whom we are indebted for a minute narrative of the cardinal’s progress and reception.

“ At the place where you disembark,” says the chronicler, “ on account of the shallow water of the stream, there is a sort of open bridge which goes a fifth part of the way across the river. To the head of this bridge, when he heard of the legate’s arrival, hurried my Lord Bishop of Winchester “ (Stephen Gardiner), “chancellor of the kingdom. . . . The king and queen, also, being advised of his arrival, rose from table ” (the court was then at Westminster Palace), “and the king, coming to the legate, with a marvelous air of dignity, met him just at the first gate of the palace on the river bank, and there greeted and embraced him with many demonstrations of affection and kindness and joy at his coming. The queen, accompanied by all her ladies, received him at the head of the staircase of the first great hall, and she too embraced and kissed him. after the manner of the country, telling him that his return safe and sound to his native land once more gave her as much pleasure as she had felt when first she took possession of her kingdom. ... In the hall they stood and talked together for a quarter of an hour, and the legate presented his credentials to their Majesties. After this, my Lord Paget presented the legate’s household, who kissed their Majesties’ hands, and who were received one at a time, and all most graciously. And this ended, the legate took leave, and went back to the lodging prepared for him in a great palace belonging to the archbishopric of Canterbury, lying over against Westminster on the other side of the river in a place called Lambeth.”

The see of Canterbury had been declared vacant a year before, on Cranmer’s attainder for complicity in Northumberland’s plot for the elevation of Lady Jane Grey to the throne; and Cranmer is thereafter mentioned as the “ late archbishop.'' Pole was not consecrated archbishop till March 22, 1556, after Cranmer s execution. He enjoyed the revenues of the see, however, and may be said virtually to have attained the preferment when, on the 25th of November, 1554, he took up his residence at Lambeth Palace. From this day, at all events, and during the few remaining years of Mary’s reign, he played a great part in the history of England.

Of this period of fruition, long delayed and brief, but crowded with interesting and too often tragical events, abundant memorials also exist in the correspondence of Reginald Pole, but their examination must be reserved for another time.

Harriet Waters Preston. Louise Dodge.