Tea at Trianon: Reginald Pole Refuses to Return to England

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, July 20, 2021

Reginald Pole Refuses to Return to England

From Jane Wertman:

Reginald Pole was the third son of Countess Margaret Pole – one of the few surviving members of the Plantagenet dynasty after the War of the Roses, and one of only two women in 16th-century England to be a peer in her own right (the other was Anne Boleyn…). As was true of many younger sons, he joined the Church, with much of his education funded by Henry VIII. Pole waffled a bit when Henry asked him to support his divorce from Aragon, but his refusal quickly escalated into real opposition. He published a treatise, Pro ecclesiasticae unitatis defensione, which utterly rejected Henry’s position and denied the authority of the English church. Of course, he was smart enough to do this from a safe distance – he was in Italy, and out of Henry’s grasp. Henry tried to get him to return, but this letter delivers his clear reply.

A brief summary of the consequences of this letter are in order here. Henry’s anger at this letter only spurred Reginald Pole on. Because of his royal blood, he was seen as a possible claimant to the throne – especially if he married the Lady Mary; this became an underlying element of all his machinations. The Pope named him a cardinal in 1536, then in 1537 put him in charge of organizing assistance for the Pilgrimage of Grace (and related rebellions). In 1539, Pole was given the task of trying to organize an embargo against England, which would presumably spur additional rebellions that would place him (and Mary) on the throne. For a while, Henry tried to have him assassinated but was unsuccessful. By 1541, Henry had enough and simply took his revenge on Margaret Pole, whose botched execution was one of the worst examples of Henrician justice (you can read about it in my May 27 blog post). Reginald was relatively quiet after that, though when Mary did come to the throne, she named him Archbishop of Canterbury to replace the disgraced (and reformist) Thomas Cranmer….(Read more.)