Reginald Pole was a grandson of George, Duke of Clarence, and so a cousin of Henry VIII, who paid for his education at Oxford and Padua. Henry hoped Pole would support his divorce and offered him the sees of York or Winchester. Pole refused, left England, and in 1536 sent the king his treatise On the Unity of the Church, a fierce denunciation of the royal supremacy. In it he set the papacy at the center of Christian peace:

There was never a greater matter entreated, of more importance to the wealth of the realm and the whole church than this [the re-establishment of papal authority]. And this same that you go about to take away, the authority of one head in the church, was a more principal and groundless cause of the loss of the Orient … than ever was the Turk’s sword.¹ Reginald Poleon the papal supremacy, as quoted by Merle d’Aubigné

Paul III made Pole a cardinal in December 1536. Henry took revenge on his family; his brother was executed in 1539 and his aged mother, Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, in 1541. Pole was one of the three legates who opened the Council of Trent in 1545, and he came within a vote of being elected pope in 1549.

When Mary became queen, Pole returned as legate. On November 30, 1554, he absolved the realm and received England back into the Roman obedience. He was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury on March 22, 1556, the day after Thomas Cranmer was burned at Oxford, and the persecution continued under his authority.³ Ironically, Paul IV suspected Pole himself of heresy and recalled his legatine powers in 1557. Pole died on November 17, 1558, a few hours after Queen Mary.

Catholic Opponents