As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Affiliate disclosure.
Historical person
1500–1558
Reginald Pole was an English cardinal of royal Plantagenet descent who opposed Henry VIII’s annulment and rejection of papal authority. Living in exile, he wrote against the king and narrowly escaped efforts to capture or kill him, while members of his family suffered execution in England.
Under Mary I he returned as papal legate, reconciled the kingdom with Rome and became archbishop of Canterbury. He died in 1558 on the same day as the queen. Reginald Pole was born in Staffordshire and died in London.
John Edwards’s Mary I places Reginald Pole beside Mary Tudor in the attempt to reverse the English Reformation. Returning from long exile as papal legate and later Archbishop of Canterbury, Pole helps reconcile the kingdom with Rome, supports the restoration of Catholic institutions and shares the political fortunes of a queen whose religious programme ends with both of their deaths in 1558.
Series
The Tudor Rose Trilogy follows three generations of the dynasty through novels centred on Elizabeth of York, Henry VIII and Mary I. Beginning in the final decades of the Wars of the Roses and ending with Mary’s death in 1558, it traces how family memory, contested legitimacy and…
All books in this series
