Reginald Pole: In Two Parts. Part Two

THE CAEDINAL ARCHBISHOP.

THE formal reconciliation of England with the Holy Sec was the first, business undertaken by Reginald Pole in his character of cardinal legate. For the few days immediately following his own official reception he held frequent and anxious conferences with his royal cousins and with Bishop Gardiner, the chancellor of the kingdom, until at last the important ceremonial was minutely arranged. The result was a scene replete both with Roman splendor and with Spanish dignity, — the English element being less conspicuous, — and by far the best description we have of it is that of an Italian, probably one of Pole’s suite, who was also the anonymous author of a small treatise on The Most Happy Return of the Kingdom of England to the Catholic Union, and the Obedience of the Holy See : —

“ On the morning of Thursday, the 29th of November, 1554, Parliament met at the usual place, which is an old royal palace, about a quarter of a mile from the one where the kings now dwell. You must know that Parliament consists of two grades of persons, nobles and commons ; the former comprising the temporal lords and the prelates of the Church, the latter consisting of two delegates from each county of the kingdom. The nobles meet, consult, and decide among themselves, and the commons do the same ; but nothing is valid except what is determined by both these halls (which are Called indifferently ‘ houses ’ and ‘ chambers’) and subsequently confirmed by the king. The proposal was therefore made in both Houses to return to Catholic unity, and submit to the Pope, who is head of the same on earth; and the vote was taken separately, and carried with wonderful unanimity and enthusiasm. For out of a total of four hundred and forty votes there were only two commoners who dissented, one of whom did not vote at all, while the other pleaded a scruple of conscience on account of an oath which he had formerly taken never under any circumstances to submit to the Pope. This raised a general laugh, and the result was that on the following day even these two, perceiving the unanimity of the rest, gave in their adhesion to the act, of reunion. But to illustrate the promptitude of their assent, let; me tell you wliat happened. The measure having been brought forward, as I have said, both in the Upper and Lower House, and carried separately in each, neither know what the other had resolved ; and so while the Upper House sent to announce its decision to the Lower, the Lower was doing the same by the Upper, and the two messengers met midway, — a most signal proof that the spirit of God was at work in both places at the same time, bringing the two into conformity. ... So then yesterday, being the last day of the month “ (November), “and the holy and happy feast of St. Andrew, which his Majesty the king holds in special reverence as the anniversary of the Order of the Golden Fleece, the said king caused the mass of the order to he sung at St, Peter’s, Westminster” (the abbey), “ and the Knights of the Garter attended in a body, — nobles and barons to the number of five hundred, all in the richest robes, with collars and jewels galore. After them came the king’s household, and his guards, more than six hundred persons in bran-new liveries of yellow velvet with hands of white and crimson velvet splendidly embroidered. It was more than the king had done at any of the other great functions which had taken place since his entry into the kingdom, but having to celebrate so solemn an act as the reunion of his new realm, he took this course to exhibit the piety of his own spirit. After mass, which was not finished till two P. M., the king returned to the palace and dined : and directly dinner was over, the members of Parliament assembled in the royal palace, while the king sent the Earl of Arundel, Grand Master of the order, with six Knights of the Garter and the same number of bishops, to escort the legate thither. The legate went in state with all the pontifical paraphernalia ; and just inside the portal he was met by the king, and in the third hall by the queen, who keeps rather quiet on account of her pregnancy. These three then proceeded to the great hall, where Parliament was assembled, and seated themselves upon a square dais three steps high, which was spread with tapestry and covered by a magnificent golden canopy, — riches upon riches (riccio sopra riccio). The queen sat in the middle, with the king on her left and the legate on her right, but a little nearer to the king than to the legate. The members of Parliament were arranged in the following order : In front of royalty and upon either side were a great many rows of benches, so arranged as to leave an open square in the centre opposite the tribune. Here sat the nobles in the order of their precedence, ecclesiastics on the right., and lay lords on the left. The rest of the crowd either sat or stood according to custom and the respect due to each individual. I must not omit to notice the great deference shown by the king to the family and person of the cardinal, or his reverence for the apostolic authority as represented by the legate’s insignia. . . . When all had found their places, and the noise had subsided, amid deep attention from the surrounding spectators, monsignore the chancellor quitted his place, and after saluting their Majesties and the legate in exactly the same manner, be stepped upon the dais, and proceeded to set forth in the English tongue the resolution taken by Parliament the day before of returning into the unity of the Church. He then asked the members whether they still adhered to that resolution, ... to which they assented by an unanimous shout. . . . Their Majesties then arose and turned toward the legate, and he arose and turned toward them, and the queen, speaking English, entreated, in her own name and the king’s, for the absolution and reunion of the kingdom, after which all three returned to their seats.”

One of Pole’s attendants then read aloud the papal bull and brief whereby lie was appointed legate, and the cardinal preached a short sermon on the sweets of repentance and the privileges of pardon, reminding his distinguished audience how indefinitely the angels’ joy over one repentant sinner must needs be multiplied in the case of a whole great kingdom. At the close of this discourse all knelt, their Majesties setting the example, and the realm of England was absolved in due form. “And while the legate pronounced the words,” continues the animated narrator, “ the queen wept for joy and for devotion, and many of the members did the same. And after it was over they might be seen rapturously embracing one another and exclaiming, ‘ To-day we have been born again.’ ”

It is worth while dwelling for a moment on this dramatic scene, because, when all due allowance has been made for the excitement of the occasion and the effect of an imposing pageant, it undoubtedly goes to show that at the time of Queen Mary’s accession a large proportion of the English people still believed, in their hearts, that the Roman Clmrcli was the one true ark of spiritual safety. Start ing with such an advantage, how easy, one thinks, it: would have been, by the exercise of a little tact and a reasonable humanity, for the Catholic rulers of England to preserve, cement, and render durable and dear to the nation the reunion which had been so pompously proclaimed ! Dîs aliter visum. As for Pole, no one who has followed his history can doubt that his preeminent part in this remarkably futile function was performed both in perfect good faith and with conspicuous good grace. Born in the purple, the playfellow of his future sovereign, he had himself come too near to being both pope and king to be dazzled hv the homage of Philip and Mary ; and, moreover, he had the essentially high-bred faculty of becoming always the more simple and self-possessed, the greater the part he had to play. Personally a man of quiet and even abstemious habits, he had large ideas concerning the befitting dignity of his establishment ; and whether or no, as Hook and Fronde insist, his dream was to rival Cardinal Wolsey, we gather from that most interesting book, St Type’s Memorials, that the requirements for the cardinal’s household, submitted to the queen before his arrival by his “ steward or some other of his officers,” were not modest. There is in Strype’s Catalogue of Originals — pièces justificatives — a document declaring that the most rev’d and illustrious father,” beside his private revenue and the allowance he received from the Pope, could not possibly spend more than 1000 Italian crowns a month, — computing the regular members of his household at one hundred and thirty, and the average number of his guests at thirty more. The anonymous author of this estimate then proceeds minutely to apportion 1160 crowns monthly, allowing so much for fish, flesh, and fowl, so much for wine and condiments, and for the food and harness of forty horses and mules ; concluding with the comprehensive entry, “ For small charities, ferries, drugs and such like things, fifteen crowns. ’ Moreover. Pole was to be granted 2900 crowns to “ mount ” his establishment, and 1000 crowns yearly for keeping it up and renewing his ecclesiastical vestments.

“ This extraordinary charge,” says Strype, “ the enjoyment of the cardinal’s presence would cost the queen. And well it might be borne, seeing he was to bring such mighty blessings with him I

Let it he said to poor Mary’s honor that it was borne well and ungrudgingly. She crippled her private resources by her pious restitution of all the Church lands confiscated to the Crown under Henry VIII. ; but “to qualify the cardinal the better to live in the port of a cardinal,” she added to his other resources about £800 a year, being the income of her own principal manors and farms in Kent. Knole, the gem of that beautiful county, was already an appanage of the Archbishops of Canterbury, but the queen’s grant included poetic Pensliurst, as well as Chevening Bexley and its woods, and the “ Forest of South Frith, which lyetli a mile south of Tunbridge.” All these estates, the chronicler takes care to add, came back to the Crown under Queen Elizabeth.

But Pole had become thoroughly Italianized during his long exile, and though his blameless life, and in many respects noble character, must at least he held to limit the application of the bitter proverb,

he was out of touch from the first with his insular flock. His huge household was composed largely of foreigners, and he showed a singular want of tact and sympathy with the common people in one of his earliest official acts. Having decided that his general absolution of the kingdom ought to be followed by a special absolution of the clergy, he fixed upon St. Nicholas’ Day for the performance of this office; and on the vigil of the same, “ at evensong time,” says Strype, “ came a commandment that St. Nicholas should not go abroad nor about.”

There had prevailed in the parishes of England from time immemorial a very foolish, fond old way of celebrating the feast of the children’s saint, whose own glad childhood was reputed to have been a miracle of holiness. A boy was chosen from among the choristers, dressed up in pontifical robes, and provided with a little mitre and staff, and from St. Nicholas’ Day to Holy Innocents (December 6 to 28), at night, this child was called a bishop, and was permitted to read the holy offices and walk in procession, distributing blessings which were especially valued by the humble folk who thronged his footsteps. This mummery, for which the Bishop of London had as usual given permission, plainly struck Pole as both frivolous and blasphemous, and he seized the opportunity to forbid it. But he was by no means universally obeyed, for "so much were the citizens taken with the mock St. Nicholas, that is, a boy-bishop, that there went about these St. Nicholases in divers parishes, as in St. Andrew’s Holborn, and in St, Nicholas Clave’s in Bread-street,”

The prohibition is remarkable as an indication of that essentially Protestant, not to say Puritanical spirit always cropping up in the than who was to he, in part at least, responsible for the slaughter of so many Protestant martyrs. For the rest, many of the earlier acts of Mary’s reign, to which Pole as cardinal legate appended his signature, show a wise and timely moderation. The private citizens who had received Church lands were confirmed in their tenure by a decree of convocation passed on the 24th of December, 1554, and subscribed by the cardinal; and in general, all acts of the time of schism which did not attack directly the supremacy of the Holy See were legalized, even when, as in the case of marriage within the prohibited degrees, they were forbidden for the future. On the other hand, the bill annulling all such laws as did touch the supremacy of Rome was drawn up by Pole himself, and passed both Houses of Parliament without opposition early in January, 1555, The legate had already heard from his fast friend, Cardinal Morone at Rome, how King Philip had sent a private letter to his Holiness Julius III. announcing the submission of England, and he goes on to describe the joy occasioned at the centre of Christendom by the repentance of so considerable a sinner, as well as the plans on foot for a suitable celebration of the great event. In Morone’s next letter, which is dated December 30, lie enlarges upon this theme still further. “ And may it please the Divine Goodness,” he adds, “ after this miracle of the spiritual peace of England, to work us another of temporal peace between Christian princes, which your lordship, by the help of God and the Queen’s most excellent Majesty, may be able greatly to promote.” Pole acted upon the suggestion of his friend, and, leaving the cure of British heresy to complete itself, went over to France in the winter of 1555, and made an earnest but signally unsuccessful effort to bring about a better understanding between Henry II. and the Emperor Charles V.

The latter, meanwhile, had convened a Diet at Aix, in Provence, for the same general purpose, requesting the Pope to send a legate, and Morone was chosen for the office. He found it very dull at Aix, and “ business,” as he tells Pole on the 28th of March, “ proceeding so languidly that I do not think any good can come of it.” But the disquieting news had just come that Pope Julius III. was desperately ill ; “ and this,” says Morone, supersedes everything else.... If we hear that his Holiness is really dead, the Bishop of Aix and I will both go to Rome and do our duty in helping to choose a good Pope ; and may God have mercy upon us, for we deserve rather that he should give us regent in furore, as he did to the descendants of the Israelites ; ” and he adds that he shudders at the recollection of the last conclave.

The souvenir was probably no more agreeable to Pole himself, for it was then, on the 7th of February, 1550, that his own election had appeared all but certain during one midnight hour, until a random joke, exploded by that notorious bon vivant, Cardinal del Monte, amid the sleepy electors, had resulted, to the amazement of everybody, in the timely jester’s own election to the great vacant office. This time the conclave was both more expeditious and more circumspect. The best hopes of the best men in Christendom seemed near their fulfillment, when, on the 11th of April, 1555, Cardinal Cervini, the blameless, high-minded, and devout, assumed the tiara, under his own name of Marcellas. He, it was fondly believed, of all living churchmen, was the one best able to reconcile under a broad and righteous rule both the contending parties inside the Church and the warring potentates without: but, like his young namesake in imperial Rome, he was barely “ shown by the Fates,” and he died on the 3d of May. three weeks and one day after his election.

Two letters were addressed by Pole to the Holy Father during this tragically brief pontificate, of which the first is undated, while the second is subscribed Richmond, May 1, 1555, only two days before the Pope’s untimely death. He begins the former by saying that though he has as yet received no direct and formal announcement of his old friend’s elevation, he cannot doubt the fact which has been communicated by secret dispatches to the queen, as well as in many private letters. “ Nor can I any longer delay expressing to your Holiness the immense joy I have received from these tidings. For it is as if I had already with my own eyes seen accomplished that blessing of blessings, bright with the glory of God. fraught with the salvation of each and all, that reformation of the Church, desired and invoked for so many years in the vows of all pious souls. . . . Happy is it for your Holiness that God should both have given you long since an earnest desire to see the Church reformed, and now the power of accomplishing that end. . . . As for me personally, what rejoices me most of all is the thought that I am now bound by obedience to one with whom J have ever been closely united in zeal and good will. ’T is in fact so very pleasant a reflection that J could wish I were not now your legate a latere, hut your assistant ad latus ” (Pole never could resist a solemn pun of this kind), "serving in your very presence. However, though, this is what I should like best of all, that will ever be acceptable to me in the future which your Holiness may choose to ordain, and I eagerly await your commands, to whose execution I shall, as is meet, bend all my thoughts and energies, both as pertaining to the custody of religion in this kingdom and to the cause of (universal) peace.”

The second letter acknowledges the confirmation by Marcellus of all Pole’s offices and appointments; “and may God preserve your Holiness many years.” it ends, “ to me and to all.” Four weeks later he was writing in the same general sense to another Pope, but with far less warmth and confidence of tone.

For the new pontiff, Paul IV., was in truth no other than Pole’s old enemy, Giaupietro Caraffa, Archbishop of Chieti and Cardinal of Naples, founder of the rigid Theatine order, as well as ardent promoter and formal head of the Inquisition, which it will be remembered had been established in Rome in 1542. To this old man — he was born in 1476 — time had brought no softening touch of charity ; rather it had deepened his prejudices and hardened his heart. His hatreds were many ; he himself may have believed that they were holy, but the two classes of persons who excited his deepest aversion were Spaniards and men tainted with the Protestant heresy. These he would execrate by the hour together, as he sat and sipped the dark, thick southern wine which he loved, and which bore the ominous name of Mangiaguerra. Within a few months of his accession, he denounced and threatened to excommunicate both Charles V. and Philip II., allied himself with France, declared war upon Spain, and even appealed to the heathen Turk for help to carry on hostilities against the “most Catholic ” king.

But with the European politics of this fierce pontiff we have, happily, little to do. What concerns us is that it suited Paul IV., for the moment, to treat Reginald Pole with consideration, and confirm him in his offices of legate and cardinal archbishop. In return, Pole seems to have made a great effort to meet his new master in a manly and open spirit, mentioning in his first letter, as if it were a matter on which they were substantially agreed, “ that work of reform, which, though beset with many difficulties, on account of the depravity of the times, must yet be a most grateful task to the soul that really longs and labors to achieve it; and the more pain it may cost your Holiness, the more richly will accrue to you the blessings of all pious souls.” Reforms of a certain much-needed kind, in monastic abuses for example, and in the gross manners and insolent luxury of many of the Roman clergy, Paul did accomplish, and that sweepingly ; but varieties of opinion were less than ever to he tolerated, and Reginald Pole was under no delusion concerning his own possible danger.

It was during the brief interval of Marcellus’s pontificate that Queen Mary had ostentatiously withdrawn from London to Hampton Court for her confinement. Everything was made ready for the arrival of the imaginary heir, and the very letters were drawn up in which the auspicious event was to be announced to the proper dignitaries, among which was one to Pole : —

“ PHILIP : MARY THE QUEEN.

Most Reverend Father in God, our right trusty and right entirely beloved cousin, We greet you well: And whereas it hath pleased Almighty God of His infinite goodness to add unto the great number of His other benefits bestowed upon us the gladding us with the happy deliverance of a prince, for the which we humbly thank Him : knowing your affections to be such towards ns as whatsoever shall fortunately succeed unto us, the same cannot but he acceptable unto you also ; We have thought good to communicate unto you these happy news of ours, to the intent you may rejoice with us, and praying for us, give God thanks for this His work, accordingly. Given under our signet, at our house of Hampton Court, the——day of——the first and second year of our and my Lord the King’s reign.”

We all know the melancholy end of these pompous preparations. Weeks passed away without the expected event, and by midsummer everybody but Mary herself knew that it would never take place, and that instead the unhappy queen was the victim of mortal disease. All the move, on this account, had Philip’s presence on the Continent become an imperative necessity. The emperor was now fully resolved to abdicate, and it was essential for father and son to consult together upon many things, as well as that Philip should he at hand to assume the reins of government when Charles should let them fall. To calm the transports of Mary’s jealous distress anil tear himself from her side in her melancholy state of health was, however, no easy matter ; and it was not until the last days of August, and after many deceitful promises of a speedy return, that the king, in the words of Strype, “ took his Journey toward Dover with a great Company. And there tarried for a Wind, the ships lying ready for his wafting over Sea.”

Pole was one of those whom Philip commissioned to keep him informed, as the cardinal was so well able to do, of the exact condition of things at the English court; and the correspondence which ensued was a fairly candid one upon both sides. Pole never could divest himself of his long-winded style, nor even describe the monotony of the queen’s forsaken days in any simpler terms than these:—

During the morning, our Most Serene Sovereign performs the part of Mary, prostrating herself in prayer and praise to God. In the afternoon she gloriously fuliills the functions of Martha, spurring up all her counselors to such a degree that no one of them is permitted to be other than incessantly occupied. And so she soothes the pain of your Majesty’s absence, by fancying you in some sort still present at her deliberations.”

Nobody knew better than the cardinal legate with what a rapture of relief the Spanish king and his personal suite turned their hacks on England, or how extremely unlikely it was that they would ever be seen there again. He himself was left the mainstay of the royal cousin who had so nearly been his own bride, and his influence naturally became paramount with her, while a new held seemed opening to his ambition when on the 13th of November. 1555, the chancellor of the kingdom died.

Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, was an ecclesiastic of Wolsey’s school, who had made the same sort of stepping-stone out of Cromwell s fall as the latter had of Wolsey’s own. A prisoner during the greater part of Edward’s reign, he blossomed into authority immediately upon Mary’s accession, and as chancellor of England had had every opportunity, and neglected none, to avenge himself on the Protestant party. It was he who inaugurated the cruel policy which earned for Mary her ghastly sobriquet. But though religious persecution was repugnant to Pole’s kindly nature, he certainly made no sustained effort after Gardiner’s death to smother the fires which had been kindled. He dared not again run the risk of compromising himself with the Church, loyalty to which was. after all, his ruling passion. He remembered the blame he had incurred when at Viterbo for his lenity to the heretics of the patrimony, and that the man who hail then accused him was now sovereign pontiff.

It has always been said that Pole depended upon succeeding Gardiner in the chancellorship, but there seems to be no stronger proof of the iact than may be found in the wordy and exceedingly diplomatic letter which he addressed to Philip shortly after the bishop’s death:

“ Your Majesty’s letter of Nov. 22d arrived yesterday. . . . Let me come first to what is there said of Your Majesty’s exceeding grief at the death of that Lord Chancellor, of whose distinguished services in his high office Your Majesty and the Queen have enjoyed the benefit, and to your request that I would at once inform you whether I myself knew of any one fit to succeed him. Certainly the experience of the last few days has abundantly proved the truth of what I said in my last letter to Your Majesty, — that the office in question cannot long remain vacant without great detriment to the cause of justice and of religion. Would that I could recommend a suitable incumbent for the place as eonfidently as I can affirm the needs of the hour, but I am only able to repeat what I have said before, that it should he a person of great religious earnestness, fearing God rather than man, loving justice, reflecting finally in his ministry the image of those virtues which shine so brightly in Your Majesty’s person, and that too as promptly as the movement of the limb answers to the action of the brain. Who this man may be, I dare not, at so critical a moment, pronounce.

I see many of whom I am disposed to think highly, but of whose lives and conversation J do not know enough, and so I have said to my most gracious queen. She, for the rest, is perhaps in her own person the best judge of this case, thanks to her experience upon this and former occasions, which have afforded her the best possible opportunity of testing the faith and constancy of men, in connection of course with Your Majesty, whom one year’s experience of our customs has made wiser than the use and wont of many years might have rendered others. Any new light which I may receive upon this matter I shall freely impart, as Your Majesty seems to desire. All that I have learned hitherto I have communicated to the Queen, with whom, when I converse, I seem to be speaking to Your Majesty s self, whom I will weary no more at present.”

How Pole could for a moment have expected to receive the great civil appointment is hard to understand. Perhaps he never did seriously expect it, but merely toyed with a dazzling possibility. He would have required such a dispensation from the duty of visiting Rome as was almost never granted to cardinals for any but ecclesiastical business, and Paul IV. was the last man to bestow so signal a favor upon Cardinal Pole. On the contrary, there were hints abroad that he might soon be summoned to the Vatican, and directed to resign his legatine appointment. One of the objects for which it had been conferred — the reconciliation of England to the Holy See — had long since been formally accomplished ; the other— the internal reform of the English Church — was said not to be progressing to the new Pope’s satisfaction. On New Year’s Day. 1550, the appointment of the Archbishop of York (Nicholas Heath) to the vacant chancellorship was duly announced. and Pole’s hopes in that line, if he had any, came finally to an end. The queen did all she could for him : she made him chancellor of both the great universities, and he enjoyed the revenues of the see of Canterbury : but he seems to have had some conscientious scruple about being formally inducted into the office while Granmer, the degraded archbishop, was alive.

To him, in his prison at Oxford, where he had now lain for more than two years, Pole addressed a special letter of exhortation to a second act of repentance, while he wrote concerning him to Philip, only a few weeks before Cranmer finally and bravely suffered: “ He who formerly presided over the Church at Canterbury, whose sentence of condemnation is now expected from Rome, has not shown himself so obstinate ” (as Ridley and Latimer, who had been burned on the 16th of October). “ He says that he would like to speak with me; and if he might indeed be brought back to penitence, the Church would profit greatly by the salvation of that one soul. What hope there may he I expect soon to hear from Father Soto,² and I will at once inform your Majesty. The same Father Soto,” he adds, "assures me that scholastic learning is deplorably neglected at; the university, and that no public lectures of that sort are anywhere given.”

Cranmer perished the 21st of March, 1556, and on the very next day, being Passion Sunday, Pole was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury at Greenwicli, where the court was then residing. “ March 25 being the Annunciation of our blessed Lady,” says Strype, who had ever an eye for a pageant, “ Bow church in London (ecclesiastically in the diocese of Canterbury) was hanged with cloth of gold and with rich arras, and laid with cushions, for the coming of the Lord Cardinal Pole. There did the Bishop of Worcester sing the mass mitred : divers bishops present, as the Bishops of Ely, of London, and Lincoln ; as also the Earl of Pembroke, Sir Edward Hastings, the master of the horse, and divers other Nobles. And after mass was done, they went to dinner together, as it seems with the Bishop of London.”

At this function Pole preached a sermon in English, and himself received the pallium, which was the formal token of his new office; but the enthronement at Canterbury took place by proxy, and the cardinal archbishop seems never to have gone there during the two and a half years of his episcopate. Strype says roundly that “ he never did, in his own person, either ordain or consecrate or visit, but did all by others.” This seems almost incredible, but it is certain that Mary, in her growing despondency about her husband’s return, clung pitifully to her cousin, took counsel with him in all affairs of state, and would scarcely bear him out of her sight. The Lent of that year had been kept by the court with great strictness, and on Holy Thursday Mary washed the feet of a certain number of pensioners (to whose representatives the deputy of Queen Victoria still gives a dole on that day), and on Good Friday she “ touched for the evil.” But Eastertide brought little gladness, for it was marked by the discovery of a conspiracy against the queen’s life, and the rumors of a Scottish invasion. By midsummer the smouldering hostilities between the Pope and Philip II. had flamed into open war, which raged with varying fortune for something more than a year, but ended in a complete victory for the Spanish arms under the able generalship of the notorious Duke of Alva.

Between the passion of her wifely devotion and her loyalty to Holy Church, poor Mary must have been terribly distracted until peace was made ; and it was doubtless under her vehement impulse that the cardinal archbishop composed and dispatched at this time to the militant pontiff two singularly futile and impolitic letters of remonstrance, one in his own name, and the other in that of the queen. After enumerating at pompous length all the obvious reasons why it would seem better for the Pope and the Spanish king not to quarrel, Pole proceeds in bis most prolix, inflated, and exasperating manner: “ Such and so powerful being the reasons in favor of union between yourself and the monarch in question, how is it that union has been destroyed ? Verily, no mere human being could ever have imagined such a severance without aid and counsel from the perpetual enemy of all good men. who has done this thing at this time for the express purpose of disturbing the peace of the Church, through the instrumentality of those very persons from whom more might have been expected for her quiet and tranquillity than from any pontiff or any king who lias reigned for many a year. But our hope is that the prayers of Christ and his servants may avail against the wiles of Satan,”and so on, and so on, and so on.

Towards the close of this curiously inept epistle, the cardinal becomes a trifle more explicit, for he assures the Pope that the blessing due the peacemaker will descend with special fullness upon him “who shall abate most of his own claims, . . . which palm, the noblest of all. I trust God may have reserved for your Holiness, to whom now has been divinely afforded the best possible opportunity for concluding the peace in question ; and that you may avail yourself of this opportunity, I, in common with all pious men, shall ever implore the Divine Goodness, as well as that your Holiness’ self may be preserved in safety to us and to the Church universal.”

The same “ palm ” was energetically waved in the pontiff’s face after a humiliating peace had been concluded with Philip ; and the effect upon a disposition like Paul’s, irritated by the disastrous results of his own state policy, and rendered reckless by the possession of absolute power, may easily be imagined. All bis old antipathy toward this wordy correspondent flamed up afresh, and he resolved to crush him once for all. He took his time, however, about answering the letters, and Pole meanw hile proceeded calmly on his pious and magnificent way. In January, 1557, the court was at Greenwich, and we get a glimpse in Strype of the queen and the cardinal standing “ on high, ... at the park gate,”and watching a parade of the queen’s pensioners, “mustered in bright harness,” and each attended by three followers clad in “ green coats guarded with white. . . . And so they rode to and fro before her Majesty. Then came a Tumbler and played many pretty Feats,” whereat we are glad to know that the queen laughed heartily for once, before dismissing the company with thanks for all “ their Pains.”

The long-promised and long-avoided visit of King Philip came off a few weeks afterwards. There Were formal rejoicings in the streets of London over his arrival, but no real enthusiasm this time among the people : lor it was well understood that he had come for a brief stay only, and with the sole purpose of securing English auxiliaries in his war against France. His request for troops met -with warm resistance in the Privy Council, but was eventually granted. A land force was equipped, the Channel fleet ordered to cooperate, and war proclaimed for the 7th of June.

This gave Paul IV. exactly the opportunity for which he had been waiting. England having broken the peace with his good ally and son the king of France,” diplomatic relations between the contumacious island and the Holy See were declared at an end, and Pole’s legation was withdrawn. A torrent of remonstrance followed. The English minister at the Vatican withstood the surly pontiff in person, while Pole himself, Philip and Mary, the English hishops and clergy, the “ Parliament and Nobility,” ³ all protested by letter to one and the same effect, — that the papal action showed glaring ingratitude for Mary’s great services to the faith, and would recoil with terrible effect upon the Church itself. Meanwhile, Pole simply declined to recognize the fact that the withdrawal of his legation implied his return to Rome. The Holy Office was in a state of intense activity. Of the cardinal’s old intimates, and that liberal party in the Church to which they had belonged, nearly all the few survivors, including Cardinal Morone, were now lodged in the Castle of Sant’Angelo, and lie had no desire to join them there.

“ As regards the legation a latere,” be had written on May 25 to Paul, I will merely say that, in my opinion, it does not greatly matter now by whom its functions are exercised, so only it be to the honor of God and the Holy See. and the profit of the Church in this realm. If, therefore, your Holiness desires to transfer this burden from me to another, there is no occasion for delay ; and I, though quite heavily enough weighted by my archiepiscopal duties, will, if such be your Holiness’ pleasure, zealously, and to the utmost of my ability, assist whomever your Holiness may send hither.” He adds that lie is far from thinking that the time is come to withdraw the legation altogether.

The remonstrance of the joint sovereigns was dignified and temperate, but earnest, and the employment in the Latin text of certain contractions which are peculiarly Spanish gives it the air of having been drawn up by Philip’s own hand. The Parliamentary letter was longer, and the point urged with great force that there was no precedent for withdrawing a papal legate, in the midst of bis mission, for any other cause than incompetence or misbehavior, whereas Pole’s conduct had been irreproachable, and his labors, up to that time, eminently successful. The protest of the “ Nobility ” was to the same effect.

The Pope allowed himself to be persuaded to continue the legation, but he replaced Pole by Peto, while the former was peremptorily summoned to Rome to answer to the charge of heresy and compounding with heretics. A singular accusation enough to be alleged against the man who was practically for some years prime minister to the fanatical Mary : but there is really plenty of evidence that religious persecution was repugnant to Pole’s nature, and now and again we find him decisively interfering on the side of mercy. In the spring of this very year he gave Bonner a sharp reprimand for condemning heretics to the stake on bis own responsibility, and in August he released twenty-two prisoners who bad been sentenced to death by the same ferocious prelate.

William Peto, the man whom Paul IV. had selected as Pole’s successor, was a Franciscan monk. In former days he had been the stanchest of Queen Katharine’s defenders ; now, at the age of eighty, he was her royal daughter’s confessor and personal friend. His appointment was announced to the bishops of England in a most mellifluous letter from the Pope, and the messenger who bore his credentials took with him also the scarlet hat. But the old man was not destined to be cardinal. Shattered and enfeebled though she was. Mary gathered herself up, and showed on this occasion all the spirit of her race. The Hope’s messenger was forbidden to cross the Channel, and he was detained at Calais, where he remained until Peto, not long after, died. Technically, the queen and the cardinal could plead that they had never received the Pope’s instructions, and after Peto’s death the matter was allowed to drop. But Pole was never again legate a latere, and he died under the imputation of heresy, which indeed has never been formally removed.

This charge, which his own conscience pronounced so groundless, together with the continued captivity of his dear Morone, weighed heavily upon the mind of Pole, and in March, 1558, he made one more fruitless appeal to Paul. After recapitulating at length his own services to the Church, he reminds the Pope that though the other legates and nuncios whom he had recalled when lie went to war with Philip had all been restored since the peace, none had been appointed to England. He then proceeds elaborately to compare himself with Isaac lying hound upon the altar while the father who loves him lifts the sacrificial knife. But he adds rather dryly that the parable fails in one particular, and that it would he quite superfluous for him to inquire, with the son of the patriarch, “ Where is the lamb for a burnt-offering ? ” “ For when I see your Holiness armed with tire and sword, and the wood made ready which I have carried on my own shoulders, there is no longer any question about the victim. ... If this be the will of God. may the sacrifice smell sweet to him ! But if it be merely a test of faith. I can scarcely doubt that when the moment of slaughter arrives the slayer will be forbidden, as he was in Isaac’s case ; and I trust it may be so, not only with myself, but with Cardinal Morone and others, for your Holiness is just now brandishing the sword against us all.” He even ventures to suggest that God seems likely to send, not one deterring angel, but a legion, including their most gracious Majesties Philip and Mary, Catholic rulers, and defenders of the faith with other pious men.” Finally he drops the tortured figure, closing his letter in a simpler strain, and not without dignity : “ The sum and substance of what I ask is this, that as your Holiness is the vicegerent upon earth of Christ, who was both God and man, you may also imitate his person and his method in the kindly care of your spiritual children.”

The uplifted sword was actually stayed, as we know ; nevertheless the end was very near, both for the queen and the cardinal. Their last days were dark and troubled, and the summons away from earth came to them almost simultaneously. “ The Nation was now.” says Strype, “ all in War, France before and Scotland behind.” The Scots were conquered, though with difficulty, but the results of the senseless French war, undertaken out of pure complaisance to Philip, were most disastrous. — Calais lost, and a heavy increase of debt. A little energy might have saved Calais, but Mary was now past any strong reaction, whether of mind or body. She could only sit and brood heavily on the failure of her hopes. She had regarded her succession to the throne as a divine miracle, and humbly and devoutly had set herself to act as one should to whom a signal mercy has been granted. And what was the end of it all ? England impoverished and alienated, and the faith, which had been so gloriously revived, once more losing ground on all hands. Her adored husband had used her for his private ends, and then cast her off; worst of all, there were not wanting signs that he, like the nation at large, was ready to transfer his homage to her sister. Mary could perfectly well remember the time when her mother had been displaced by Anne Holeyn. and now Anne Boleyn’s daughter, in all the pride of her youth, had somehow emerged from obscurity, and was passing from great house to great house, always with a “ goodly train,” and everywhere followed by the plaudits of the crowd. Who was left her now except Reginald Pole, and in the dull anguish of her decline she sometimes doubted even his fidelity. But there is no evidence that Pole ever did more than offer a ceremonious and perfunctory obeisance to the rising sun. At court he felt himself bound to remain, and he makes his apology for so doing — naturally at enormous length — in a letter to the Archbishop of Toledo, dated Richmond, June 20, 1558.

After the usual polite and stately preamble, “ In your admonitions.” he says, “ concerning my pastoral duties, and in all you say of the manner in which I am discussed and criticised among you, for living in the palace rather than in my own see, I recognize not only your unfailing piety, but the peculiar affection you have ever shown to me. . . . There is no one whose judgment in this matter I could respect more than that of yourself, whom I know to love me with such singleness of heart in Christ, and you know why I stay here. ... If others, not acquainted with the circumstances which constrain me, object to my residence at court. I cannot blame them ; but you, mv most reverend lord and lover in Christ, what do you think ? Ought I to conform to the judgment of others about me ? Are the reasons with which you are acquainted insufficient longer to detain me here ? Yet in your selfsame letter you seem to approve my course, wdien you say that you know I remain at court for the public good.”

The letter is interesting and plainly sincere, but this is the gist of it all. and we have no room for further quotation. The long summer days wore on sadly at Richmond, and in August an epidemic of low fever broke out in the valley of the Thames, attended by unusual mortality. Late in September, about the time when the news came of the death of the Emperor Charles V., both the queen and the cardinal were attacked by the malady, and little hope was entertained from the first of Mary’s recovery. Parliament met on the not yet classic 5th of November, and on the 7th, in answer to a petition from that body, Mary named Elizabeth her successor, “ laying upon her only two charges : that she should maintain in the kingdom the old religion, and pay all the debts she herself owed.” Two days later came a special messenger in the person of Count Feria from Philip in Brussels, and Mary seemed pleased at the tardy attention, but was past reading the letter from her husband which Feria brought her.

That letter was indeed but half, and the less important half, of the envoy’s business. He came empowered by the king to summon a meeting of the Privy Council, and impart Philip’s entire approval, not to say desire, that Elizabeth should peacefully succeed. He also waited on Elizabeth herself at Hatfield, but was not received with effusion. “ She is an acute, but very vain woman,” was the count’s clever judgment on the haughty young heiress, and seems likely to follow her father’s policy. I am of opinion that she will take the wrong side in religion, for she seems inclined to govern by men who are reputed heretics ; and as for the women about her, I am told that they are all of that party.” He then goes on to describe minutely the terms on which Elizabeth stood with various members of the court circle: “ With the cardinal she is in the worst possible humor. She said he had never sent to pay his respects to her, or said anything to her up to the present moment, and she began to tell me all the annoyances he had caused her. I did my best to improve her disposition towards him without appearing openly to take the cardinal’s part, . . . and advised her not to show herself revengeful to any one.” But Elizabeth was to have no time for vengeance on Pole.

The queen lingered a week longer, and died at her palace of St. James on the 17th of November,⁴ in the early morning. The news was quickly carried over the river to Lambeth where Pole was lying, and indiscreetly communicated to him, and we quote from the touching letter of a member of his Italian suite ⁵ an account of what followed : —

“ My most reverend lord ” (on hearing that the queen was dead) “ remained in silent meditation for a short while, and then said to his intimate friend, the Bishop of St. Asaph,⁶ and to me, who were present, that in the whole course of his life nothing had ever yielded him greater pleasure and contentment than the contemplation of God’s providence as displayed in his own person and in that of others ; and that in the course of the queen’s life and of his own he had ever remarked a great conformity, as she and himself had been harassed during so many years for one and the same cause, and afterwards, when it pleased God to raise her to the throne, he had greatly participated in all the other troubles entailed by that elevation. He also alluded to their relationship, and to the great similarity of their dispositions, and to the great confidence which her Majesty demonstrated in him ; saying that, considering these facts, as also the immense mischief which might result from her death, he could not but feel deep grief thereat, yet, by God’s grace, that same faith and reliance on the Divine Providence which had ever comforted him in all his adversities greatly consoled him in this so grievous and additional infliction. He uttered these words so earnestly that it was evident they came from his very heart, and they even moved him to tears of consolation, at perceiving how our Lord God. for such a wound, received at such a moment, had granted a balm so valid and efficacious, and which might soothe not only himself, but also all who loved him. His most reverend lordship then kept quiet for about a quarter of an hour; but though his spirit was great, the stroke entered into his flesh, and brought on the paroxysm earlier, accompanied with more intense cold than he had hitherto experienced, so that his most reverend lordship said he felt this would he his last. He therefore desired that there might he kept ready near him the hook containing those prayers which are said for the dying. He then had vespers repeated as usual, and the compline, which part of the office yet remained for him to hear; and this was about two hours before sunset. . . . And in fine, it was evident that as in health that sainted soul was ever turned to God, so likewise jn this long and troublous malady did its thoughts maintain that selfsame tendency, and made its passage with such placidness that he seemed rather to sleep than die.”

The cardinal had made his will some days before. Beginning with a dignified confession of the faith of his fathers and a request for the papal benediction, he went on to regulate his account with the College of Cardinals, and then to devise the whole of his personal estate to Priuli, to be divided among his “ poor relations, friends, familiars, and servants,” in accordance with the terms of a separate memorandum. But the report having been industriously circulated by the ultra-Protestant party that Pole had enriched himself enormously at the expense of the Crown, one of the first acts of Elizabeth’s reign was to appoint a commission to inquire into the amount of the estate. Luckily for Priuli the accounts were found in perfect order, and the net value of the property very small. The cardinal’s obsequies were, however, delayed on account of this commission ; and so it came to pass, by one more strange coincidence, that he and his royal cousin were finally interred within the same four-and-twenty hours, December 13-14, 1588. The queen was laid in Westminster Abbey; the cardinal archbishop, by his own request, in the chapel of St. Thomas à Becket in Canterbury Cathedral, with the simplest possible inscription cut in the stone above, “ Deposition Cardinalis Pole.” ⁷ A new era, in some respects the most splendid of her history, had begun for England; but these two fervent champions of the lost cause, united in their lives, and in their deaths not divided, slept well through all the tumult and splendor, “ the drums and tramplings,” of the great period which followed.

Harriet Waters Preston.

Louise Dodge.