Reginald Pole

Reginald Pole (12 March 1500 – 17 November 1558) was an English cardinal of the Catholic Church and the last Catholic archbishop of Canterbury, holding the office from 1556 to 1558, during the Counter-Reformation. Early life Pole was born at Stourton Castle, Staffordshire, on 12 March 1500, the third son of Sir Richard Pole and Margaret Pole, 8th Countess of Salisbury. He was named after the now beatified Reginald of Orleans, O.P. His maternal grandparents were George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, and Isabel Neville, Duchess of Clarence; thus he was a great-nephew of kings Edward IV and Richard III and a great-grandson of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick. Pole received his early education at either Sheen Priory, Christ Church or Canterbury. Shortly after he matriculated at Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1512, and at Oxford was taught by William Latimer, his principal tutor, and Thomas Linacre, who may have taught him between 1518 and 1520. In 1512, Henry VIII paid him a pension of £12 and repeated the pension in the following year, which was meant to go towards his education. Pole graduated with a BA degree on 27 June 1515. In February 1518, King Henry VIII granted him the deanery of Wimborne Minster, Dorset; after which he was Prebendary of Salisbury and Dean of Exeter in 1527. On 19 March 1518 he was collated to the prebend of Ruscombe Southbury, Salisbury, only to exchange it on 10 April 1519 for Yetminster secunda. He was also a canon in York, and had several other livings, although he had not been ordained a priest. Assisted by Bishop Edward Foxe, he represented Henry VIII in Paris in 1529, researching general opinions among theologians of the Sorbonne about the annulment of Henry's marriage with Catherine of Aragon. In 1521, Pole went to the University of Padua with a £100 stipend from King Henry VIII. The University of Padua is where he met leading Renaissance figures, including Pietro Bembo, Gianmatteo Giberti (formerly Pope Leo X's datary and chief minister), Jacopo Sadoleto, Gianpietro Carafa (the future Pope Paul IV), Rodolfo Pio, Otto Truchsess, Stanislaus Hosius, Cristoforo Madruzzo, Giovanni Morone, Pier Paolo Vergerio the younger, Peter Martyr Vermigli and Vettor Soranzo. The last three were eventually condemned as heretics by the Catholic Church, with Vermigli—as a well-known Protestant theologian—having a significant share in the Reformation in Pole's native England.