November 30, 1554 • Mary and Cardinal Pole Restored English Catholicism

hen King Henry VIII of England decided to divorce Catherine of Aragon so that he could remarry, in the hope of fathering a son, his action made his daughter, Mary, illegitimate. Her father's treatment of Catherine and herself must have wounded the girl deeply and goes a long way toward explaining her hatred of the Protestant faith and the nickname she eventually earned herself: "Bloody Mary." When the Pope would not consent to a divorce, Henry changed religions.

Henry's divorce of Mary's mother provoked the Pope to excommunicate the king. Henry maneuvered to have himself, not the pope, proclaimed head of the Church of England. This was agreeable to leading men in his realm because when he confiscated Catholic property, he enriched many of them with it. The country became Protestant. Mary, however, remained loyal to her mother and to the Catholic Church. When Henry died and Mary's half-brother Edward became king, Mary continued her Catholic worship.

Another player on the stage at that time was Reginald Pole. He, too, was of royal blood. Opposing King Henry on religious and practical grounds, he argued so persuasively against the divorce that Henry almost changed his mind. However, other counselors won the battle for the king's ear. After that, Reginald lived in deep danger. The king's assassins stalked him across Europe. The king imprisoned and killed Reginald's mother. For his part, Reginald accepted money from the pope which was designated to support a revolt in the north of England. However, Henry squashed this rebellion before Reginald could complete his treasonous design. But Reginald clung to his single-minded desire to restore Catholicism to his homeland.

The pope made Pole a cardinal and his legate to England. However, Pole was not able to exercise his function in Britain until after Mary ascended the throne in l553. She was 37 when she became Queen of England upon the death of her half-brother, Edward.

It seemed that Mary's years of frustration and pain were over and she could reconcile England with the Catholic Church. However, the forces opposed to Rome were strong enough that it was more than a year before she could safely make official submission of the nation to the pope. Meanwhile, Mary married Philip II of Spain, a Catholic monarch.

On this day, November 30, l554, the English Parliament presented a supplication to the king and queen for restoration of the Catholic church. Philip and Mary asked Cardinal Pole, as the pope's representative in England, to absolve the nation from its wrongdoing. Seated, Reginald spoke words of blessing and then rose and absolved them.

Catholicism was again the official religion of England. Many Protestants had already fled to the Continent for safety. Some who remained were imprisoned. During Mary's five-year reign, hundreds were killed for insisting that salvation was to be found only in Christ, not the Church of Rome; and that Scripture, not the pope or Catholic tradition, was the believer's authority. Cardinal Pole, whom Mary had elevated to England's highest church office--Archbishop of Canterbury, went along with this bloodshed. He celebrated his first mass the same day that the former Archbishop, Cranmer (whom Mary particularly hated, because he had given Henry his divorce from Catherine) was burned at the stake.

After Mary's death, Foxe's Book of Martyrs listed 284 burned at the stake, including bishops, women, two boys and even two babies. Nearly 400 more died by imprisonment and starvation. Thus the Queen earned her name "Bloody Mary." However, it should be remembered that she killed far fewer religious and political opponents per year than her tyrannical father, Henry.

The queen and her archbishop both died on the same day, November 17, 1558--the queen at 7 a.m., Reginald Pole at 7 p.m. Queen Elizabeth I (who did her own share of political and religious murder) soon reversed the restoration to Rome, for which Mary and Pole had striven so fiercely.

Bibliography:

1. Adapted from an earlier Christian History Institute story.
2. Hook, Walter Farquhar, 1798-1875. Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury. London, R. Bentley, 1865 - 1884.
3. McKilliam, Annie E. A Chronicle of the Archbishops of Canterbury. London: J. Clarke, 1913.
4. "Pole, Reginald." The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, edited by F. L Cross and E. A. Livingstone. Oxford, 1997.
5. "Pole, Reginald." Dictionary of National Biography, edited by Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee. London: Oxford University Press, 1921 - 1996.
6. Pollard, Albert Frederick. Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformation. London: Putnam's, 1905. Source of the image.

Last updated July, 2007.