Life of Reginald Pole

The Life of Reginald Pole by Martin Haile, 536 pages

George, Duke of Clarence, was the brother of Edward IV and Richard III, the uncle of Edward V.  He was executed for treason by his elder brother, leaving behind two children, Edward and Margaret.  His son, the Plantagenet heir to the English throne, was executed by Henry VII after attempting to escape the Tower of London, his death helping to facilitate the marriage between Catherine of Aragon and the Prince of Wales.  Margaret became a close friend of Catherine, even being named governess to her daughter Mary, and the lives of the princess and Margaret's son Reginald would be inextricably bound together.

Reginald Pole established a reputation for intellectual brilliance early in life, a reputation that only grew with his Italian education and friendships with luminaries including Desiderius Erasmus, Pietro Bembo, Vittoria Colonna, and St Thomas More.  From the safety of the Continent, he responded to Henry VIII's solicitations with a book condemning the King's marriage to Anne Boleyn and his usurpation of the headship of the Church.  His mother and brother, still in England, were put to death for holding the same views, and Pole himself had a bounty placed on his head.  Named a cardinal by Pope Paul III, while dodging Henry's assassins he divided his efforts between fighting for the liberty of the Church in his homeland and fighting for the reform of the Church generally.  These struggles merged after the accession of Mary as Queen of England and the subsequent ordination of Cardinal Pole as Archbishop of Canterbury.  After three years of cooperation, the Cardinal and the Queen died merely 12 hours apart, and the English Counter-Reformation largely died with them.

Martin Haile's biography of Pole is told from a point of view based solidly at Rome.  From this perspective, the ambition and pride of Charles V are seen as an obstacle second only to the tyranny of Henry VIII.  The great advantage of this viewpoint is that it breathes the free air of the Italian Renaissance, contrasted with the "narrow dusty room[s]" of the Reformation.  Haile's writing is as expansive and welcoming as his subject.