The Last White Rose by Desmond Seward Read Free Book Online

attend meetings of the council, together with the Master of Horse Sir Nicholas Carew and some gentlemen of the Privy Chamber. Soon a new Succession Act stipulated that the throne must be inherited by Jane Seymour’s children or whoever the king should name in his will. The Act was aimed at the Aragonese–White Rose faction, of whose aims Cromwell and the king were by now well aware.
    The fact remained, however, that Queen Jane was still childless. The Lady Mary’s submission to her father did nothing to lessen her popularity, but only increased the pity that people feltfor a young princess so cruelly and unjustly bullied into renouncing her inheritance. She remained a rallying point for supporters of the old religion, who at that date included most English men and women. Everybody was delighted when Queen Jane at last prevailed, and in December 1536 Mary was summoned to court although her right to succeed to the throne would not be restored until 1544. They looked forward more than ever to the day when she would replace Henry as their sovereign. Ironically, a Tudor had become the White Rose families’ greatest asset.
    24. 1535–6: The Lady Mary and the White Rose
     
1 . LP Hen VIII , op. cit ., vol. XIV (i), 200

2 . The best study of this character change is S. Lipscomb, 1536: The Year that Changed Henry VIII , London, Lion Hudson, 2009.

3 . G.R. Elton, The Tudor Constitution: Documents and Commentary , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1960, no. 30, p. 62.

4 . For the spy network run by Cromwell, see G.R. Elton, Policy and Police , Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1972.

5. R.B. Merriman, Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell , 2 vols, Oxford, 1902, vol. 1, no. 113.
6 . LP Hen VIII , op. cit ., vol. IX, 776.

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Summer 1535: A New White Rose?
     
‘I am sure [the Lady Mary] will never consent to marry anyone in this country, save perhaps Master Reginald Pole, now at Venice, or the son of Lord Montague.’
    
     
Eustache Chapuys on the Lady Mary, 8 July 1536 1
     
    Reginald Pole (called ‘Reynold’ by his family) had been born in 1500, the third son of Sir Richard Pole and Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, and therefore a nephew of the Earl of Warwick. His elder brother, created Lord Montague by Henry VIII, was married with children, which was why the White Rose party placed their hopes in an unmarried younger son as a husband for the Lady Mary: Montague would certainly have made no difficulty about renouncing his own claims to the throne. In any case, Reginald was a most suitable choice for a king consort. His abilities had long been recognized, in particular by Henry VIII.

    At a very early age Reginald decided to enter the Church. He attended the small Carthusian school at Sheen, and possibly one run by Benedictines at Canterbury, before going up to Magdalen College, Oxford when he was thirteen, where he was given a taste for humanist learning by such brilliant tutors as Thomas Linacre and William Latimer, who later ensured that he became a friend of Sir Thomas More. The king took genuine interest in his progress, paying £ 12 a year towards his education – the only member of the nobility whom he ever favoured in this way. At eighteen the highly promising young man was ordained as a deacon, Henry granting him the deanery of Wimborne Minster and a prebend of Salisbury Cathedral, which provided him with further income.
    When Reginald was twenty-one, the king encouraged him to go to Italy and pursue his studies, subsidizing them lavishly. He spent six years at Padua, one of the most distinguished universities in Europe (known by its students as the ‘Bo’), installing himself in Palazzo Roccabonella. Here he was taught Greek, reading Plato and Aristotle, besides acquiring a mastery of elegant Ciceronian Latin from the great Pietro Bembo. During his time at the university, Reginald became known to Erasmus, still reckoned the leading intellectual of the day, who corresponded with