ative of Canterbury was to be annulled. In the name of the nobility of England a third protestation was composed against the double loss that was apprehended in the revocation of him who both came from the side of the Pope and restored to the Cantuarian style the former title of legatus natus. A fourth memorial, probably of like tenor, was sent by the archbishops and bishops of the realm.* X

The behaviour of Pole himself under this impending insult was not at first without dignity. A bold or vindictive man might have taken the Pope at his word, and flung down his legation without seeking to know why it was to be revoked. A less justificatory man might have waited until the sentence had been officially pronounced: a man not dedicated to popery by a life of sacrifice, or a provident statesman might have seen in the caprice of a tyrant the opportunity of asserting again the independence of the English realm and church, accepting the papal abrogation of the papal authority, and striking an internal peace upon the maintenance of the counter-revolution in religion on the one hand, and on the other upon the stoppage of the persecution. But there was no stroke in Pole: and his disgrace, instead of being a memorable epoch, is a forgotten incident, which he who recalls if he can remark in the first place the conduct proper to a wronged and faithful

*The first three of these documents are given by Strype (vi. 474, 476, 480) in his Catalogue of Originals, from the Foxii MSS. He says (vi. 31) that the first was written by Ascham, the second by Haddon, or at least turned into Latin by him. It seems not impossible that the second was altogether by Haddon, and never existed in English. It affords a strange view of English freedom in that age that an address should be written to a foreign potentate in the name of the parliament, when no parliament was sitting. But I know of nothing to prove that this address was ever actually sent to the Pope. The same remarks apply in part to the third document, the protestation of the nobility, which may have been from the Council. As to the fourth document, of the bishops, it was sent, and the Pope answered it. See further on.

servant, must then lament the anxiety which broke into prolonged and very mean expostulations. The most thankless of despotisms has worn out many a devoted soul pity will not be denied, if applause cannot be yielded, to the sensitive and now decrepid officer whose last year was clouded by unmerited ignominy. As soon as the King and Queen had despatched their remonstrance to Rome, Pole followed it by letters written to the Pope and to an unascertained dignitary at Rome, who may have been Morone, both dated on the same day. To the latter he wrote that the office which he bore yielded him no private advantage, but constant toil and expense: that for the Pope to revoke the two Legations that were combined in his person would be so scandalous and detrimental to religion, that he thought that it was of Divine guidance that his Holiness had sent him no brief or charge concerning the matter.* To the Pope himself he wrote an epistle full of eloquence: that he had received nothing hitherto from him but what was replete with goodness since the return of the realm to the obedience of the Holy See, and that it would be a sad thing if Satan's malice stayed the course of joy: but that, when all the temples were resounding with praises for the restoration of religion, when prayers were daily offered that the seeds of piety might bear a yet more plenteous harvest, when the Legate himself was urging all and sparing not himself to cultivate the field of the Lord, on a sudden come letters from Rome

* An accident in the superscription of this letter, in the original MS., hinders it from being known to whom it was addressed. Brown, the able editor of the Venetian Calendar, conjectures that it was to Archbishop Sauli: but himself refers to evidence that shows it could not have been so. Archbishop Sauli was in prison, where the Pope had put him: and could not have been the man whom Pole besought "to be a good and efficacious means of relieving Christendom from such disturbance." Ven. Cal. p. 1115. It may have been Morone, the "Viceprotector of England": who, however, was trembling in his own shoes.

to say that the Pope has abrogated the whole Legation, both the authority of the Legate a latere and the privilege of the Legate born, which is annexed to Canterbury; and that nothing was left in the kingdom for carrying on the work of restoring religion beyond the ordinary power of the bishops. "O the grief of the Queen, more than I can write! O the Privy Council, they that are here, the first men in both orders, how they came to me with visages of sorrow, enquiring whether it were true, whether I knew it for the truth! And when I said that I had no intelligence beyond the letters of private persons, nothing direct from your Sanctity, how they then exclaimed that if you knew the state of this kingdom, so late recovered from heresy and schism, so full of abuses yet remaining, and how insufficient the power of the bishops for the requisite work, you would never abolish the Legate! So spake the ecclesiastical prelates, the others assenting: then all lamented about the native legacy subverted, an ancient privilege of the kingdom, granted by former pontiffs, so long ago, belonging to each and all, after the pledge given by the Legate at the reconciliation that all former privileges should be restored, without any fault committed, than which nothing could be more pernicious, especially at this moment, taking away the rudder in a storm, making all other benefits of the Apostolic See seem precarious! So they in sum: to whom I answered that their grief gave the measure of their piety and of the value which they set on a privilege that they had once rejected that they must have returned fully who wished to retain wholly and that what they conjectured of your Holiness must needs be right. They departed: but private men have spoken to me deploring this terrible danger, and the better the man the greater the grief. I but little more. As to the Legation de latere,

can say

:

if you choose to remove it from me, it matters not much by whom it is exercised, so it be to the benefit of the Holy See and the church in this kingdom: and I will give cheerful aid to whomsoever your Holiness may appoint. But I implore and beseech you, banish not the office itself: restrain your hand: take no step toward that." *

Pole's temporary exile to Canterbury was now over, and he was back again at the Court, summoned indeed by the King and Queen on pain of displeasure. As for the Pope, he followed up his first stroke by imprisoning Pole's friend, the Viceprotector of England, Cardinal Morone, on suspicion of heresy. ‡ He then held a Consistory, June 14, when he announced that, as it seemed that the whole English nation was roused by the revocation of the legation of Cardinal Pole, he would, in consideration of the incomplete return of religion there, favour that nation by a legacy for some years yet: but that as it seemed to be inconsistent with his authority and the sacred Consistory to appoint again a person whom he had so shortly before deprived, he proposed to create a new cardinal in England, a resident there, and make him Legate. He named for this high dignity the

* Poli Epist. v. 27. Lond., May 25. There is a translation of this letter in the Venetian Calendar, p. 1111, in which there are passages for which is no equivalent in the Latin as given in Quirinus. This might raise the question, if it were worth while to pursue it, how far Pole's epistles may have suffered expurgation at the hands of Quirinus.

"His right reverend lordship's agent here (Penning) told my secretary as a great secret that he had letters from the Cardinal announcing his departure from Canterbury to the Court, having been called by the King and Queen under pain of their disgrace." Navagero to the Doge, Rome, May 31.

Morone's arrest was at the end of May. Ven. Cal. 1128. The Pope's treatment of that celebrated cardinal, whom he set to be tried by four cardinals of the Congregation of the Inquisition, was one of his finest exploits. There are many curious particulars of it in the Venetian and the Foreign Calendar.

old Observant Friar William Peto, who had once so gallantly rebuked Henry the Eighth in the chapel of Greenwich. Him he created Cardinal Presbyter, and Legate of England, and transferred to him all the faculties and powers possessed by Cardinal Pole. Thus he took Pole at his word, relieving him of his burden, but not annulling the English Legation; though on the other hand he receded from his former pretext or determination of having no minister in any of the dominions of King Philip. A week after this he wrote an answer to the letter of the Archbishops and Bishops of England. "We have read your memorial; we acknowledge your zeal and the necessities of your kingdom: and we have in no respect altered or diminished our regard towards your pious Queen, our daughter. But as we have determined to revoke, among others, our dear Reginald of St. Mary in Cosmedin Cardinal Presbyter, it would not suit the gravity of the Holy See to alter our sentence so speedily. However you all know William Peto the Friar Minor, what a good and learned and Catholic and resolute man he is. Him we loved so much from the time when we first saw him here, that we have thought, even from the beginning of our Pontificate, of making him a cardinal. The honour has been deferred, and reserved to this time, not without a Divine purpose: and when we communicated our design of making him a cardinal and substituting him as Legate in the place of Reginald, it is astonishing how consentaneous the Cardinals were. Receive him, and obey him well, if you please."

On the same day he wrote to the

* Acta Consistor. ap. Poli Epist. v. 144: Raynaldi Annales, p. 593. Philips in his Life of Pole (Vol. II.), indignant at the choice of a begging friar to supplant the royal Reginald, has drawn out a comparison between them: which Raynaldus has put into Latin in his Annales.