Reginald Pole was born on the 12th of March 1500 at Stourton Castle in Staffordshire, the third son of Sir Richard Pole and Margaret Pole, the 8th Countess of Salisbury. His lineage was a tangled web of royal blood that would eventually strangle his family, as he was a great-nephew of kings Edward IV and Richard III and a great-grandson of Richard Neville, the 16th Earl of Warwick. This Plantagenet heritage made him a potential rival to the Tudor throne, a fact that Henry VIII would exploit with brutal efficiency. Pole received his early education at Sheen Priory, Christchurch, or Canterbury before matriculating at Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1512. There, he was taught by William Latimer and Thomas Linacre, and by 1515, he had earned his Bachelor of Arts degree. Henry VIII, his second cousin, had already begun to cultivate the young Pole, paying him a pension of £12 in 1512 and renewing it the following year to fund his education. By 1518, the King had granted him the deanery of Wimborne Minster in Dorset, and he went on to hold several other ecclesiastical positions, including Prebendary of Salisbury and Dean of Exeter in 1527, all before he was even ordained a priest. His early life was a paradox of high privilege and looming danger, as he held titles that would later be used as evidence of treason against his own family.
The Exile Who Refused
In 1521, Pole traveled to the University of Padua with a £100 stipend from Henry VIII, where he immersed himself in the intellectual currents of the Renaissance. He met a who's who of European thinkers, including Pietro Bembo, Gianmatteo Giberti, and Jacopo Sadoleto, but it was his encounter with Rodolfo Pio and Otto Truchsess that would shape his future political stance. By 1527, he had returned to England, holding multiple benefices, yet his relationship with the King was deteriorating. In 1531, Henry VIII offered Pole the Archbishopric of York or the Diocese of Winchester if he would support the annulment of the King's marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Pole refused, and in 1532, he went into self-imposed exile in France and Italy, where he continued his studies in Padua and Paris. The final break came in May 1536, when Pole decisively rejected Henry's policies. He had warned of the dangers of the Boleyn marriage five years earlier and now sent the King a copy of his treatise Pro ecclesiasticae unitatis defensione, a strong denunciation of Henry's position on royal supremacy. Henry's response was swift and brutal. He wrote to Pole's mother, the Countess of Salisbury, reproving her son for his folly, and then turned his attention to the family. The Exeter Conspiracy unfolded, leading to the arrest of Sir Geoffrey Pole, Henry Courtenay, and others. In November 1538, Montagu, Exeter, and Lady Salisbury were arrested and committed to the Tower of London. Despite Cromwell's earlier claim that they had little offended save for their kinship with Reginald, they were all eventually executed. Margaret Pole was held in the Tower for two and a half years under severe conditions and was executed in 1541, a gruesome death botched by an inexperienced executioner. Pole later said he would never fear to call himself the son of a martyr.
On the 22nd of December 1536, Reginald Pole was created a cardinal, the fourth of five English cardinals in the first half of the sixteenth century, over his own objections. He became papal legate to England in February 1536 or 1537, tasked with organizing assistance for the Pilgrimage of Grace, an effort to march on London and demand Henry replace his reformist advisers with traditional Catholic minds. Neither Francis I of France nor the Emperor supported this effort, and the English government tried to have Pole assassinated. In 1539, he was sent to the Emperor to organize an embargo against England, a countermeasure he had himself warned Henry was possible. The King, with Pole out of reach, took revenge on Pole's family, leading to the Exeter Conspiracy and the execution of his mother and other relatives. In 1542, Pole was appointed as one of three papal legates to preside over the Council of Trent. During the 1549, 1550 papal conclave, he had 26 out of 28 votes needed to become pope, but his personal belief in justification by faith alone over works caused him problems. Thomas Hoby recorded that Pole failed to be elected because the Cardinal of Ferrara persuaded the French party that Pole was both Imperial and a veritable Lutheran. This near-election highlighted his immense influence and the deep divisions within the Catholic Church over his theological views.
The Return to England
The death of Edward VI on the 6th of July 1553 and the accession of Mary I to the throne of England hastened Pole's return from exile. He returned as a papal legate to England, which he remained until 1557, with the aim of receiving the kingdom back into the Catholic fold. However, Queen Mary I and Emperor Charles V delayed his arrival until the 20th of November 1554, due to concerns that Pole might oppose Mary's forthcoming marriage to Charles's son, Philip of Spain. It was only after the marriage was safely out of the way that the English parliament finally set about repealing his attainder on the 22nd of November 1554. Pole opened his papal commission and presented his legatine credentials before Philip and Mary and the assembled members of Parliament at the Palace of Whitehall on the 27th of November 1554, delivering a notable oration. Among the dignitaries in attendance was Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester and Lord Chancellor of England, who would steer the restoration of Catholicism through parliament in January 1555. As papal legate, Pole negotiated a papal dispensation allowing the new owners of confiscated former monastic lands to retain these. In return for this concession, Parliament enabled the Revival of the Heresy Acts in January 1555, which revived former measures against heresy, including the letters patent of 1382 of Richard II, the Suppression of Heresy Act 1400 of Henry IV, and the Suppression of Heresy Act 1414 of Henry V.
The Archbishop of Fire
Pole was finally ordained a priest on the 20th of March 1556 and consecrated a bishop two days later, becoming Archbishop of Canterbury, an office he would hold until his death. In 1555 and 1555 or 1556, he also became chancellor of both Oxford and Cambridge universities. As well as his religious duties, he was in effect the Queen's chief minister and adviser. Many former enemies, including Thomas Cranmer, signed recantations affirming their religious belief in transubstantiation and papal supremacy. Despite this, which should have absolved them under Mary's own Revival of the Heresy Acts, the Queen could not forget their responsibility for the annulment of her mother's marriage. In 1555, Queen Mary began permitting the burning of Protestants for heresy, and some 220 men and 60 women were executed before her death in 1558. In the view of some historians, these Marian persecutions contributed to the ultimate victory of the English Reformation, though Pole's involvement in these heresy trials is disputed. Pole was in failing health during the worst period of persecution, and there is some evidence that he favored a more lenient approach. Three condemned heretics from Bonner's diocese were pardoned on an appeal to him; he merely enjoined a penance and gave them absolution. As the reign wore on, an increasing number of people turned against Mary and her government, and some people who had been indifferent to the English Reformation began turning against Catholicism. Writings such as John Foxe's 1568 Book of Martyrs, which emphasized the sufferings of the reformers under Mary, helped shape popular opinion against Catholicism in England for generations.
The Dispute with Paul IV
Despite being a lifelong devout Catholic, Pole had a long-running dispute with Pope Paul IV, dating from before the latter's election as Pope. Elected in 1555, Paul IV had a distaste for Catholic humanism and men like Pole who pushed a softer version of Catholicism to win over Protestants, as well as being fiercely anti-Spanish and against Mary's marriage to Philip II of Spain and heavily against Pole's support for it. Because of this disagreement, Paul first cancelled Pole's legatine authority, and then sought to recall Pole to Rome to face investigation for heresy in his early writings. Mary refused to send Pole to Rome, yet accepted his suspension from office. In the will of Sir Robert Acton dated the 24th of September 1558, Pole is named as one of the Executors, despite the fact that Sir Robert expressed himself in terms consistent with his dying in the Protestant faith. This dispute highlighted the internal tensions within the Catholic Church and the political complexities of Pole's position as he tried to restore Catholicism in England while navigating the treacherous waters of papal politics.
The Final Hours
Pole died in London, during an influenza epidemic, on the 17th of November 1558, at about 7:00 pm, nearly 12 hours after Queen Mary's death. He was buried on the north side of the Corona at Canterbury Cathedral. His death marked the end of an era, as the Marian Restoration of Catholicism collapsed with the accession of Elizabeth I. Pole's legacy was complex, as he was a man who had been a potential rival to the Tudor throne, a cardinal who almost became pope, and an archbishop who tried to restore Catholicism in England through a mix of diplomacy and persecution. His writings, including De Concilio and a treatise on the authority of the pope, as well as his strong condemnation of Machiavelli's book The Prince, which he read in Italy, reflected his deep theological and political convictions. He commented on Machiavelli: I found this type of book to be written by an enemy of the human race. It explains every means whereby religion, justice and any inclination toward virtue could be destroyed. His life was a testament to the turbulent religious and political landscape of 16th-century England, where the stakes were life and death, and the cost of conviction was often the highest price of all.