CHAPTER 63
A war between your Highness [the Pope] and King Philip must produce the gravest danger and harm to the whole Christian Commonwealth … only Satan, could have sown the seeds of this dissension.1
—CARDINAL POLE TO POPE PAUL IV
BY DECLARING WAR ON FRANCE, IT WAS ALMOST INEVITABLE THAT England would be drawn into conflict with Henry II’s ally, Pope Paul IV. For several months Cardinal Pole had sought to prevent military action and bring about a peaceful settlement, but to no avail. Writing to the pope, he explained:
If to all good men this war between your Holiness and King Philip is most painful, by reason of the very many and grievous perils and damages with which it seems to threaten not one realm alone, but the entire Christian commonwealth, to me of necessity it is the more bitter, the more I find myself bound by all the ties of devotion and reverence to your Holiness, and by those of love to the King.2
Meanwhile, the pope was aggrieved that Mary had not shown any regret over the war against the papacy, nor had she exerted herself to prevent it. As Cardinal Giovanni Morone, the vice protector of England, reported, he had “been told on good authority” that she had aided Philip with money, which had “greatly exasperated” the pope, who was refusing to dispatch English business.3
On April 9, 1557, as the Privy Council was debating whether to declare war on France, Pope Paul IV had withdrawn his nuncios and legates from Philip’s dominions. Pole was specifically mentioned and deprived of his legatine power, and the See of Canterbury was deprived of its legatine status.4 Mary was horrified. “The grief of the most serene Queen,” Pole wrote in his first anguished protest to Rome, “may be more easily estimated by the Pope, he having had experience of her extreme piety in bringing back this kingdom to obedience to the Church than he, Pole, can write it.”5 In letters to the pope, Mary and the Council stressed how much damage would be done to the realm by the withdrawal of the legate at such a critical stage in the process of Catholic restoration and likened the realm to a convalescing invalid who faced the withdrawal of his physician.6Given Mary’s faith and fidelity to the Holy See, petitions to Rome would, it was believed, succeed in revoking the decree as far as it related to Pole.
On June 12, the Venetian ambassador in Rome, Bernardo Navagero, reported that the Roman Inquisition was investigating Pole as a suspected Lutheran.7 The new pope held deep suspicions about Pole’s religious opinions. In the 1530s, Pole had belonged to a group, the Spirituali, who had hoped for reconciliation with the Lutherans and sought an accommodation with them on the issue of salvation by faith alone. But by the 1550s, Pope Paul IV saw such doctrinal compromises as heresy. On June 14, 1557, Pole was formally recalled to Rome.8 In acknowledgment of Mary’s obedience to Rome and his concern for the restoration of the English Church, Paul IV announced that he would relax his general policy toward England and appoint a new papal legate, the eighty-year-old Franciscan friar William Peto, formerly the confessor of Katherine of Aragon.9
Mary learned the news as she was accompanying Philip to Dover on the eve of his departure.10 She was outraged. When the papal nuncio bearing the official briefs reached Calais in July, he was refused admission into the realm. Mary would ensure that she never received the official notification of Pole’s recall or Peto’s appointment. Pole wanted to go to Rome to clear his name, but Sir Edward Carne, Mary’s ambassador in Rome, warned him that he would be imprisoned by the Inquisition.11 Mary had no intention of letting him go and expressed her amazement that a man who had performed such distinguished services for the Church and whose presence was so essential to the task in hand should be withdrawn. She was confident that the pope would realize that she knew best about affairs in her kingdom and would grant her request, praying that he restore the legation of Cardinal Pole and beseeching him to “pardon her if she professed to know the men who are good for the government of her kingdom better than His Holiness.”12 If any disturbance should take place in England, she protested, it would be for that reason. At the same time, Peto declined the legateship on the grounds of age and infirmity.
By mid-August there was a deadlock. The pope had no intention of giving way and restoring Pole’s legation, even though no charges had been leveled against him, while Mary refused to send Pole to Rome in exchange for Peto. Instead, she dispatched fresh instructions to Carne as to how to react if actual charges of heresy were made against Pole. If Pole were found guilty of heresy, Carne was to declare that Mary would be his “greatest enemy,” but unless or until proof of such a crime could be found, she would take him for a good and Catholic man. Moreover, Mary argued, as an Englishman and archbishop of Canterbury, Pole must be tried in England, as Cranmer had been two years before. If the pope refused the request, Carne was instructed to leave Rome, but only after informing all the cardinals that “the Queen and Council and the whole kingdom of England, will never swerve from their devotion, reverence and obedience to the See Apostolic and to his Holiness’ successors, although for a certain period they were compelled not to obey Pope Paul IV.”13 Charges were not made and diplomatic relations were not broken off, though rumors circulated around the curia that England was about to go into schism once more.
The conclusion of peace between Philip and the pope on September 12, 1557, was greeted with great jubilation in London.14 By one of the articles of the Treaty of Cave between the pope and the Habsburgs, it was agreed that Pole’s legation would be restored, though this never happened. Pole’s position remained unchanged, and he continued, unsuccessfully, to petition the pope for vindication. He talked of the “sword of grief” with which the pope had pierced his soul.15 The man who had absolved England from heresy three and a half years earlier was now a fugitive heretic. Pole could not accept that Paul IV, his former friend, had turned against him. He wrote to the pope, begging him to say he had only been testing Pole’s loyalty “as Christ is wont to place his dearest children in purgatory to try them.”16
Just four years before, Mary had described herself as the Holy See’s “most obedient and affectionate” daughter; his Holiness had no more loving daughter than herself. Now, as the last months of her life drew near, her relations with the pope became significantly strained.17 It was a great irony that upon Mary’s death, the pope would initially express gratification upon the accession of Elizabeth as an improvement on her sister.18