Reginald Pole occupation Catholic priest
Cardinal Pole
On 22 December 1536, Pole, already a deacon, was created a cardinal over Pole's own objections.  He was the fourth of the five English cardinals of the first half of the sixteenth century. He also became papal legate to England in February 1536/1537.  Pope Paul III put him in charge of organising assistance for the Pilgrimage of Grace (and related movements), an effort to organise a march on London to demand Henry replace his ‘reformist’ advisers with more traditional, Catholic minds; neither Francis I of France nor the Emperor supported this effort, and the English government tried to have Pole assassinated. In 1539, Pole was sent to the Emperor to organise an embargo against England – the sort of countermeasure he had himself warned Henry was possible.The king, with Pole himself out of his reach, took revenge on Pole's family for engaging in treason by word against the king. This later became known as the Exeter Conspiracy. The leading members were arrested, and all their properties seized. The action destroyed the Pole family.  Sir Geoffrey Pole was arrested in August 1538; he had been corresponding with Reginald, and the investigation of Henry Courtenay, Marquess of Exeter (Henry VIII's first cousin and the Countess of Salisbury's second cousin) had turned up his name; he had appealed to Thomas Cromwell, who had him arrested and interrogated. Under interrogation, Sir Geoffrey said that Henry Pole, 1st Baron Montagu, and Exeter had all been parties to his correspondence with Reginald. Montagu, Exeter, and Lady Salisbury were arrested in November 1538, together with Henry Pole and other family members, on charges of treason, although Cromwell had previously written that they had "little offended save that he [Reginald Pole] is of their kin". They were committed to the Tower of London and, with the exception of Geoffrey Pole, they were all eventually executed.
In January 1539, Sir Geoffrey was pardoned, and Montagu and Exeter were tried and executed for treason, while Reginald Pole was attainted in absentia. In May 1539, Montagu, Exeter, Lady Salisbury, and others were also attainted, as her father had been; this meant that they lost their lands – mostly in the South of England, conveniently located to assist any invasion according to the crown – and titles and those still alive in the Tower were also sentenced to death, so could be executed at the King's will. As part of the evidence given in support of the Bill of Attainder, Cromwell produced a tunic bearing the Five Wounds of Christ, symbolising Lady Salisbury's support of traditional Catholicism; the supposed discovery, six months after her house and effects had been searched when she was arrested, is likely to be a fabrication.
Margaret Pole was held in the Tower of London for two and a half years under severe conditions; she, her grandson (Montagu's son), and Exeter's son were held together and supported by the King. In 1540, Cromwell himself fell from favour and was himself executed and attainted. She was finally executed in 1541, protesting her innocence until the last – a highly publicised case which was considered a grave miscarriage of justice both at the time and later. Pole is known to have said that he would "never fear to call himself the son of a martyr". Some 350 years later, in 1886, Margaret was beatified by Pope Leo XIII. Aside from the aforementioned oppositional treatise, King Henry's harshness towards the Pole family might have derived from the fact that Pole's mother, Margaret, was one of the last surviving members of the House of Plantagenet. Under some circumstances, that descent could have made Reginald – until he definitely entered the clergy – a possible contender for the throne itself.
In 1542 he was appointed as one of the three papal legates to preside over the Council of Trent, in 1549 he was appointed by Pope Paul III abbot of Gavello or Canalnuovo, and after the death of Pope Paul III in 1549 Pole, at one point, had 26 out of the 28 votes he needed to become pope himself at the papal conclave of 1549–50. His personal belief in justification by faith over works had caused him problems at Trent and accusations of heresy at the conclave. Thomas Hoby, visiting Rome to be present during the conclave, recorded that Pole failed to be elected "by the Cardinall of Ferrara his meanes the voice of manie cardinalls of the French partie, persuading them that Cardinall Pole was both Imperiall and also a verie Lutheran".
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