POLE, Reginald, English Roman Catholic prelate: b. Stourton Castle, Staffordshire, 3 March 1500; d. London 17 Nov. 1558. He was the son of Sir Richard Pole, Lord Montacute, by Margaret, daughter of the Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV. He was educated at Oxford, where Linacre and Latimer were among his teachers, entered into deacon's orders and received several benefices from Henry VIII, with whom he was a great favorite. In 1519 he visited Italy, and at Padua acquired the friendship of such men as Erasmus, Bembo and Sadoleto. He returned to England in 1525, but in consequence of the affair of Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon, withdrew to Paris (1529), under the pretext of continuing there his theological studies. In 1536, in compliance with Henry's order that he should give his opinion regarding the divorce, he drew up an elaborate epistle, (Pro Ecclesiastice Umtatis Defensione,' in which he boldly condemned the divorce as un lawful, and the rejection of the papal supremacy as a breach made in the unity of the Church. This act cost him the loss of all his preferment in England, and he endeavored to form a party against Henry, a design which ended in the destruction of his brother, Lord Montacute, and his aged mother, the Countess of Salisbury, whom Henry sent to the scaffold. Pole was declared a traitor by the king, a price was set on his head ant. he lived in exile during the rest of Henry's reign. But papal support was given to him, and he was raised to the dignity of cardinal and employed on some important mis sions. He was one of the three papal legates
to the Council of Trent; and on the death of Pope Paul III, Pole came but little short of election as his successor. On the accession of Mary I his attainder was reversed, and in 1554 he returned to England as legate and plenipotentiary of the papal see, and endeavored to secure lenient measures for the reformers and correction of clerical abuses. On the death of Cranmer, Pole, then for the first time or dained a priest, became archbishop of Canter bury, and was at the same time elected chancel lor of the universities of Oxford and Cam bridge. He undertook to rebuild the churches and to re-establish the ancient discipline, and to a rigorous persecution of Protestants which was instituted he at least assented. His death occurred on the same day as that of Queen Mary, and he was buried in Canterbury Cathe dral. Besides several treatises on questions relating to the Church, he wrote