POLE, REGINALD. - Born at Stourton Castle (Staffordshire) in March 1500 to Sir Richard (d. 1505), whose mother was a half-sister of Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, and to Margaret Plantagenet, daughter of George Duke of Clarence. In 1513 Henry VIII created his mother Countess of Salisbury (and later entrusted her with the education of Princess Mary) and his eldest son, Henry, Baron Montague; to Reginald, destined for the Church, he favored his studies at Oxford (under W. Latimer), gave him prebends and means
In quoque, POLE, decus patriæ, vindexij Britannæ,
Quem genitrix, frater, morte obita devorant.
MORVS item, atq; æut FISCHERVS flos, et ocellus:
Quos et trancripsit mors violenta polo.
(from XII Cardinalium pictate doctrina rebeque postis maxime illustrium imagines, Amenta 1891, tom. D)
POLE, REGINALD - Portrait. Engraving by Theod. Gallaeus (1598).
to study in Italy, from 1521. In Padua, P. formed friendships with scholars and humanists, among them Bembo and Christophe de Longueil (Longolius); from 1525 he entered into epistolary relations with Erasmus and, through him, with John Laski. He was also in Rome, and in 1527 he returned to England. The question of the royal divorce embarrassed him; he obtained permission to go to Paris, where however he agreed to collect (seconded by Sir Richard Fox) opinions favorable to Henry's wishes, which Francis I also supported. Meanwhile he had been elected dean of Exeter; having returned to England, at Sheen, the see of York, vacant through the death of Wolsey, was offered to him, provided he declare himself; but, after a dramatic conversation with the King, and grieved by the now manifest schism, he preferred to depart again. In Padua and Venice he found old friends and made new ones: I. Sadoleto, G. Contarini, G. Cortese, M. A. Flaminio, G. M. Giberti, Alvise Priuli, L. Beccadelli, later his biographer, and G. P. Carafa himself.
Pressure came from both sides for him to declare himself on the English religious situation; he preferred to act alone and, perhaps hoping still to obtain repentance, sent to the King, in manuscript, the treatise Pro ecclesiasticae unitatis defensione, finished in May 1536. Shortly afterward, summoned to Rome, he was created cardinal deacon of S. Maria in Cosmedin on 22 December, together with Carafa, Del Monte, Sadoleto and others, as well as a member of the commission that drafted the famous Consilium de emendanda Ecclesia (1538). He received further proofs of benevolence and trust from Paul III: legate for England, he went to the Low Countries (but the rebellion he hoped for had been nipped in the bud by Henry); he accompanied the Pope to the colloquy of Nice with Charles V and Francis I, and carried out another mission in Spain. Meanwhile Henry had his brothers arrested, Geoffrey (later pardoned) and Henry (beheaded on 4 November 1538), as well as his mother Margaret (v. above), and sent assassins against him, so that he had to take refuge in Carpentras; he nevertheless returned to Rome in 1540, and, appointed legate of the Patrimony of St. Peter, settled in Viterbo, where around him and Vittoria Colonna gathered the group of the "spirituali," who hoped for reconciliation with the Lutherans (and Contarini consulted P., in view of the Diet of Regensburg), going so far as to accept that doctrine of "double justice," later rejected by the Council of Trent. On the eve of the Council, P. had been designated papal legate in 1542; and he participated in that capacity in its proceedings from December 1545 to June 1546, when his health forced him to withdraw to Priuli's house, and then again to Rome.
He enjoyed great prestige, so that in the Conclave of 1549 he lacked only one vote to be elected, but he did nothing to obtain it. Mary's accession to the throne offered him the opportunity to bring England back to Catholicism. But his return as papal legate was obstructed by Charles V, who feared him as opposed to Mary's marriage to Philip II, until November 1554; ordained priest and consecrated archbishop of Canterbury on 22 March 1556, he was the Queen's principal adviser. English historians observe that, already little skilled or fortunate in diplomatic missions, P. showed scant qualities as a statesman, in that he would not have shown himself sufficiently accommodating in the question of ecclesiastical property — with which the powerful middle class had enriched itself — so as to win its favor, nor would he have known how to restrain the severity of the repression, which provoked resentments. Interesting for many measures — among them the institution of the seminaries — is his work as a reformer.
In Rome, however, he was by then suspect: for some time rumors had circulated about his political conduct, and, more serious, about his excessive forbearance toward the Protestants. Moreover, the conflict between Philip II and Paul IV, also involving England, placed him in a very delicate situation. Deprived of the legation, he was accused before the Inquisition, together with Card. Morone; he was justifying himself in writing when he fell ill and, on 17 November 1558, died.
Works: of the Pro defensione there are editions (differing from the manuscript) of Rome (n.d., but 1553 or 1554), Strasbourg (1555), Ingolstadt? (1587); of the De Concilio, Venice (1562); of the De Summo Pontifice, Ingolstadt ([?] 1569). The correspondence, and the Vita of Beccatelli, in G. Quirini, Collectio epistolarum Reginaldi Poli (5 vols., Brescia 1744-57); moreover: compendium of the proceedings of the Holy Office of Rome from Paul III to Paul IV, in Arch. soc. rom. di st. p., 3 (1879), p. 283 ff.