His long residence abroad after his mother's death was not marked by events of sufficient importance to require very special record. At Rome, the pope granted him a guard, that he might be protected from plots against his life contrived by the revengeful Henry. He corresponded largely with persons of distinction in various countries, and his letters, which were published at Brescia (Brixia) in five volumes quarto, in 1754-57, under the editorship of Cardinal Quirinus, are highly circumstantial, and contain abundant matter of historical interest and closely connected with the lives of Pope Paul III., the Emperor Charles V., the King of Scots, Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth. In 1562, a work of his appeared, entitled, De Concilio Liber; and in the same year, at Rome, edited by P. Manutius, Reformatio Angliæ, ex decretis Reginaldi Poli Cardinalis. Two volumes, quarto. The book on councils was written by Pole as president of the Council of Trent in 1545; and Phillips, in his life of him,[109] speaks of it as
"A treatise which, for perspicuity, good sense, and solid reasoning, is equal to the importance of the occasion on which it was written, and shows at once the reach and ease of the author's genius, and the goodness of his heart. The preface by Manutius is long, and one of the most elegant compositions in the Latin language."
Cardinal Pole's life of exile, therefore, was neither idle nor fruitless. The labors which his hand then wrought remain to this day, and are highly prized by all who love to trace the stream of history to its fountain head. The year after Cromwell's disgrace and death (1541) Pole was appointed Governor of the Province of the Patrimony of St. Peter—the only part of the States of the Church which is now left to the Bishop of Rome. By this kindness on the part of Paul III., the cardinal was relieved of a disagreeable dependence on foreign princes for his daily expenses. His government was marked by wisdom, gentleness, and moderation. He always discouraged severity, though he held firmly the right of the church to punish offenders. His leisure hours were devoted to literature, and in the writings of ancient and modern poets and sages he often forgot, for a time, the miseries of his country, and the dangers which, even in Italy, beset his own person.[110]
Disorders among the clergy, a general corruption of morals, the schism of Luther, and the excesses of Calvin conspired to make a general council the obvious and only remedy that could be applied. Cardinal Pole and two other legates were nominated by Pope Paul III. to preside at the Council of Trent in the year 1542. But the sittings were suspended amid the din of arms, and renewed three years later in the same city. Cardinal Pole then presided again, having on his journey been tracked from place to place by ruffians employed by Henry VIII. to dispatch him at all hazards. Such atrocity, however, did not exasperate Pole unduly, nor cause him to forfeit his character for clemency and moderation. It was, on the contrary, objected to him in Italy, as afterward in England, that he was too lenient. It was even laid to his charge, and made an argument against his being raised to the popedom, that during his administration as governor two persons only had been put to death. He lived, alas! in an age when laws were sanguinary, and human life was comparatively of trifling account.
Cardinal Pole rendered valuable assistance in the early stages of the Council of Trent; but in 1546, he was obliged to discontinue his sittings and retire, first to Padua, and afterward to Rome, in consequence of ill health. The decree of the council concerning justification,[111] as it now stands, was revised and completed by him. It is a monument of luminous and concise statement of scriptural truth, and perfectly reconciles passages at first sight discrepant in the epistles of St. Paul and St. James.
When Henry VIII. was gone to his account, and the young Edward mounted the vacant throne, Cardinal Pole made two unsuccessful efforts to incline the thoughts of that young prince favorably toward the true and ancient religion. But Edward VI. in his tender years was surrounded by persons who made it their business to misrepresent every thing connected with the Catholic Church. The boy-king was thus made the tool and victim of crafty and ambitious men, who reared the structure of their own fortunes out of a pile of sacrilege.
When Paul III. died in November, 1549, Cardinal Pole was at the head of his council, and governor of Viterbo. The larger part of the cardinals were desirous of electing him to the vacant chair; but the number of votes required being two thirds, the choice did not ultimately fall on him. It was not the design of Providence that he should either be pope of Rome or king of England; yet he was very near being the successor of Paul III. on one occasion, and the husband of Mary, Queen of England, on others. During the sitting of the conclave he wrote an essay, which was afterward published, on the duties of the papacy. But the period was not without its trials. Envious detractors arose, and charged him not only with being too lenient in the government of Viterbo, but also with favoring the modern errors. It often happens that when good men avoid severity, their clemency is blamed; when they are gentle and charitable toward heretics, their orthodoxy is impugned.
There was near the lake Benacus, (now Garda,) in the neighborhood of Verona, a spot named Maguzano, where stood, in Cardinal Pole's time, a monastery of Benedictine monks. To this retreat the cardinal turned when, in 1553, he obtained the pope's consent to resign his government of the province of Viterbo. His duties as governor had compelled him frequently to visit Rome, and that city, which should have been the abode of peace and piety, was filled with tumult and discord, in consequence of the dissensions between Julius and Henry II. of France. Many of the cardinal's dearest friends were no more. Contarini, Bembo, Sadolet, Cortesius, Badia, and Giberti, Bishop of Verona, slept the sleep of death, while Flaminius and Victoria Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara, had also gone down to the grave. Cardinal Pole, therefore, was fain to retire beforehand from a transitory world, and seek once more in the shade of the cloister the peace that passes all understanding and the prospect of a heaven near at hand.
But it was with him as with so many others who have betaken themselves to a spiritual retreat, and bidden farewell to the busy world at the very moment when Providence intended to call them into greater publicity and more active service than ever. Edward VI. died on the 6th of July, 1553, the same day of the same month on which his father had stained his hands in the blood of Sir Thomas More. The Princess Mary ascended the throne. She was a zealous Catholic, and if she had only understood the temper of her subjects; if she had not attempted to annihilate a too powerful minority; if she had been content to encourage the ancient faith without persecuting the adherents of the new religion; if she had married an Englishman, or indeed any one but a Spaniard, to whom, on account of his nationality, her people were unalterably averse, she might have prolonged her life and made her reign happy; she might have been one of the greatest sovereigns of her age; she might have established Catholicity in England on a permanent footing; she might have bequeathed to her sister Elizabeth a system of tolerant government, and have taken it out of her power to persecute Catholics in her turn, and to supplant and vitiate entirely the old religion of the land.
No time was lost by the holy father, Julius III., in sending Cardinal Pole to England as legate. Before setting out on his journey, he entered into correspondence with the queen, in order to be certified of her good dispositions, and received from her the warmest assurances of welcome and support.[112] She was, in fact, in the early part of her reign, too eager to announce her future policy, and would have done more wisely if she had followed the counsel of the Emperor Charles V., who warned her "not to declare herself too openly while the issue of affairs was yet uncertain." The successive rebellions of Northumberland in favor of Lady Jane Grey, and that of Sir Thomas Wyatt, ought to have made her be prudent, and avoid above all things pressing matters to extremity. She knew how deeply the nobles and rich men of her realm were implicated in the crime of sacrilege, and how tenaciously they clung to the spoils of abbeys and church lands of which they had become possessed. Scarcely a day passed without some indication of the insecurity of her tenure of power—without some warning of the necessity of ruling with impartiality and moderation.[113]