Reginald Pole

“ Even then, the Londoners were not satisfied, erroneously connecting the Bishop’s measures with Spanish policy, and clamouring for the arrival of Reginald Pole, who, in spite of his long exile, was known to be a thorough Englishman at heart, and to have been disinclined to the Queen’s marriage.
But although, when once the alliance was an accomplished fact, the Emperor’s zeal for the salvation of souls appeared suddenly to awake, and although he expressed keen anxiety that the Papal Legate should proceed at once to his mission in England, [478] Pole was still prevented from accomplishing it. ”

“ History has taught us how much his love was worth; for his embraces were sure pledges of ruin and destruction. He did not, however, withdraw Reginald's pension of five hundred crowns, but allowed him to leave England again.
Having emphatically declared his dissent from the resolutions of parliament and convocation, Pole found his position more and more uneasy. He turned his face again to the south, and in 1532 took up his residence for a time at Avignon. During his absence the fatal divorce was completed, and the doom of England as a Catholic country was sealed. ”

“ In this extremity, his thoughts turned to Pole, who owed him everything, and who, he could not believe, would ever openly take part against him. Cuthbert Tonstall, Reginald’s dearest friend, had swallowed the new oath, and accepted the bishopric of Durham; why should Reginald’s conscience be more tender? A messenger was, therefore, posted to Padua, with letters to Pole inviting him to accept the king’s offers of favour, and write in defence of those royal claims which had been accepted as law by the English Parliament and Hierarchy. ”

“ Reginald Pole was now a cardinal. When hopes of peace with England had finally clouded over he was invited to Rome. It was soon after announced taat he was to be raised to high dignity in the Roman Church; and although he was warned that the acceptance of such a position would sanction the worst interpretation of his past proceedings, he contented himself with replying with his usual protestations of good meaning, and on the 20th of December he received a cardinal's hat. ”

“ A last letter was to the Prince Bishop of Liège, claiming his general assistance, and begging him, should it be necessary, to supply the legate with money.
With these missives, and with purposes of a very plain character, Reginald Pole left Rome in February. France was his first object. The events in England of the few last weeks had prepared a different reception for him from that which he expected.
The King had not lost a moment in correcting the misconceptions which the Duke of Norfolk had permitted at Doncaster. The insurgents supposed that they had done good service to the commonwealth ”

“ He was consecrated [35] in the minster on the 23rd of October 1541, by Thomas (Thirlby) , Bishop of Ely, Robert (Blyth) , Bishop of Down, last Abbot of Thorney, Suffragan of Ely, and Thomas (Hallam or Swillington) , Bishop of Philadelphia, Suffragan of Lincoln. Strype has an account of his costly funeral. The two memorials to him in the church had been erected by himself in his lifetime.
David Pole (1556-1559) is generally held to have been a relative (some say a nephew) of Cardinal Reginald Pole. He was Dean of the Arches. ”

“ Many brave adventurers have struggled and died in vain efforts to reach the top of the world. To Reginald Whinney remains the sad distinction of being the only man in the world who has been to the North Pole and back without seeing it! ”

“ POLE, REGINALD (1500–1558) , cardinal and archbishop of Canterbury, was son probably the third of Sir Richard Pole (d. 1505) , by his wife Margaret, who was of the blood royal [see Pole, Margaret] . Born in March 1500 at Stourton Castle in Staffordshire, he was carefully brought up by his mother, and then spent five years at the school of the Charterhouse at Sheen. Henry VIII was much interested in his education, and paid 121. for his maintenance at school in 1512. Soon afterwards he was sent to Oxford, to the house of the Carmelite friars. ”

“ Cardinal Pole, however, was born (in 1500) at Stoverton Castle in Worcestershire, and the fact that he was named Reginald, as borne by the son of Robert, the first ancestor of "Poole" (as shown in the above extract) , as well as by other members of the baronet family, would tend to confirm the supposition of a common ancestry. The reasons for the change in the family bearing suggested by J. G. N. seem highly probable, besides being the usual course adopted by younger sons for difference. I would here suggest another Query: Was Sir Richard, or his son Henry, created Lord Montague? ”

“ He could not stand the shock of battle, and though a standard-bearer, he surrendered his colors in the hope of saving his life. Pole, on the contrary, suffered persecution for righteousness' sake, and the cruel fate of his mother and his near relatives warned him but too plainly of the end that awaited him if he should ever come within reach of the tyrant. Let us trace his history, though but in outline; for we shall find it full of interesting matter, food for reflection, and lessons of piety. There are many men of less importance and less merit whose lives are better known than his. ”

“ With him died the last descendant in the male line of William Pole, the Hull merchant.
By one of the strange chances of history, another family of the name of Pole, having no kinship with the house of Suffolk, owed, like the Suffolks, their advancement and their fall to a match with a princess of the royal house. Sir Richard Pole, a Buckinghamshire knight, was the son of Geoffrey Pole, a squire whose wife, Edith St John, was sister of the half-blood to the mother of Henry VII. About 1490 or 1491 he married the Lady Margaret, daughter of George, duke of Clarence. ”

“ You and he are rather intimate, are you not?”
“Jest about as friendly as two men can be,” said Pole, “when one's rising in the world an' t'other is eternally at a stand-still or goin' down like a round rock on the side of a mountain. Or maybe I ought to say, when one of 'em has had the pluck to educate hisse'f, an' t'other hardly knows B from a bull's foot. I don't know, captain, why Nelson Floyd's friendly to me. I like him beca'se he is a man from his toe-nails to the end o' the longest hair on his head.” ”

“ You bloody Polak coward!"
and with a speed in comparison to which lightning is snail-like the tower reached twice for the peaches-and-cream cheeks of the prone victim; who set up a tragic bellowing of his own, writhed upon his somewhat dislocated paillasse, raised his elbows shieldingly, and started to get to his feet by way of his trembling knees—to be promptly knocked flat. Such a howling as The Young Pole set up I have rarely heard: he crawled sideways; he got on one knee ”

“ He is what he seems to be—cruel and contemptible. In the whole extent of my poor, unhappy nation there is not one feeling heart which he has not trampled upon; no article of value, no relic, no Church money, he has not appropriated to himself. But a Pole would see in that no cause to treacherously murder his king. A Pole's hand is accustomed to the sword; it knows not the use of a dagger. ”

“ Pole was a man of slender build, of middle stature, and of fair complexion, his beard and hair in youth being of a light brown colour. His eye was bright and cheerful, his countenance frank and open. Several good portraits of him exist, in all of which he appears in the vestments of a cardinal, with a biretta on his head. One picture by Sebastian del Piombo, now at St. Petersburg (once absurdly attributed to Raphael) , is a full-faced portrait, with a large flowing, wavy beard. This must have been painted at Rome in the time of Paul III, when he was in his fullest vigour. ”

“ England was dragged into the war, and Pole was summoned from Canterbury by the king and queen, on pain of their displeasure. Philip and Mary wrote joint letters to the pope for the full restoration of Pole's legateship. Paul said it would be unbecoming his dignity to give back to Pole what he had taken from him ; besides, he wanted all his cardinals at Rome, to consult with him in those difficult times. Still, as Mary wished for a legate in England, he appointed in Pole's place her old confessor, Friar William Peto [q. v.] ”

“ We live by our emotions, the beasts by their appetites—a material distinction. Now, the condition of the Poles was perfectly adapted to the quickening of the emotional parts. Shorten time, you make love a precious ecstasy; restrict liberty, freedom is a lust—none the worse for being lawful. No Pole knows how long he may have to live: Russia or phthisis will have him late or soon. What he pursues, then, must be fleeting—imagine with what rapture he takes it to his breast! ”

“ He has courage, spirit, and strength; but, cursed with instability, that courage, strength, and energy have neither method nor guidance; for the Pole displays a variability resembling that of the winds which blow across that vast plain broken with swamps; and though he has the impetuosity of the snow squalls that wrench and sweep away buildings, like those aerial avalanches he is lost in the first pool and melts into water. Man always assimilates something from the surroundings in which he lives. Perpetually at strife with the Turk, the Pole has imbibed a taste for Oriental splendor ”

“ Great as was his disappointment at the enforced delay, Pole was not the man to resent or resist the obstacles put in his way. He did what he could, to fulfil his secondary mission, which was to promote peace between the King of France and the Emperor; and he conferred diligently with the royal and imperial ministers, on the possibility of a modus vivendi between the two powers. From Brussels he went to Paris and made a favourable impression on Henry II., but failing to bring about the desired object, returned to the Netherlands. ”

“ And in the rebound from this chance perception of man as brute, she had listened to Lawrence Pole, because he seemed to her all that the other was not,—high-souled, poetic, restrained, tender,—all the ideals. ”

“ Pole pointed out the danger of reviving controversies as to the succession, then he attacked the arguments on the king's side, and urged Henry to defer to the pope's judgment (Stype, Cranmer, App. No. 1) . The king took Pole's counsel in good part (Cal. Venetian, v. 244) , and was almost inclined to abandon the divorce. Thomas Cromwell [q. v.] , however, whom Pole regarded as an emissary of Satan, induced him to persevere. With deep dislike Pole saw soon afterwards the concession of royal supremacy wrung from the clergy. ”

“ Pole, a decided Romanist, could not bring his conscience to accept wealth and honours in lieu of what he regarded as the most sacred and most momentous truths. Pole had quitted England and taken up his abode in Rome in 1536, and there received the cardinal's hat. He had spread the infamy of the treatment of Queen Catherine, and the murder of the venerable Fisher and the illustrious More, over the whole of the civilised world. ”

“ Many ambitious youths have experienced the same opinion of themselves; few have ventured on so confident an expression of it. But for his family's sake, as much as for his own, the King continued to regard him with favour; and could he have prevailed upon himself to acquiesce in the divorce of Queen Catherine, it is possible that he would have succeeded Warham in the English primacy.
From conviction, however, or from the tendency to contradiction characteristic of a peculiar kind of talent, Pole was unable to adopt an opinion so desirable for his interests. ”

“ A very important question was frequently debated before the queen and council by these two ecclesiastics; whether the laws lately revived against heretics should be put in execution, or should only be employed to restrain by terror the bold attempts of these zealots. Pole was very sincere in his religious principles; and though his moderation had made him be suspected at Rome of a tendency towards Lutheranism, he was seriously persuaded of the Catholic doctrines, and thought that no consideration of human policy ought ever to come in competition with such important interests. ”

“ The close of the year 1830 found him in Italy, where he received the distressing intelligence of the disastrous events occurring in Warsaw. They made a profound impression on the enthusiastic and patriotic young Pole, but he was thoroughly unable to follow the dictates of his heart. His moral strength would have been sufficient to have supported him through the conflict then so wildly raging in his breast, but he was forced to succumb to physical weakness: the consequent struggle brought upon him an illness which chained him to his bed during a whole year. ”

“ So much of its character as was necessary was laid before Henry, and, on the 14th of June, within a day or two therefore of its receipt, a courier was despatched with replies both from Henry himself, from the Bishop of Durham, Starkey, and Cromwell. If Pole expected to be regarded as a formidable person, his vanity was seriously mortified. The substance of what he had written was seen to be sufficiently venomous, but the writer himself was treated rather as foolish than as wicked, and by the king was regarded with some kind of pity. ”

“ I owe it to the poor devil, Pole, and I'll pay. That has always been my rule. I'll pay. Stand aside!”
“I'll be damned ef I do.” Pole stood his ground firmly. “You must listen to reason. It's deliberate death.”
“Get out of the way, Pole; don't make me mad,” said Floyd. “I'm going down. I'd expect him to pay me, and I shall him.”
“Stop! You are a fool—you are a damned hotheaded simpleton, Nelson Floyd. Listen to me.” Pole caught the revolver and held on to the barrel of it while the young merchant clutched the butt. “Listen to me, I say. Are you goin' back on a helpless little woman? ”