Reginald Pole

Pole came to England as legate of Pope Julius III, sent, in the words of Mary’s Parliament, “to call us home again into the right way” (Second Act of Repeal, 1554, in Gee and Hardy, pp. 385–387). At the end of November 1554 the Lords and Commons presented their petition to be reconciled, and Pole pronounced the absolution of the realm from heresy and schism; John Foxe, no friend of his, prints the words (Foxe, Acts and Monuments vol. 6, pp. 568–572).

He was consecrated archbishop of Canterbury at Greenwich on 22 March 1556, the day after Thomas Cranmer was burned (Machyn, Diary 22 March 1556), and held the see through the rest of the burnings described in the Burning of Protestants under Mary I. He died at Lambeth in November 1558. The diarist Henry Machyn puts his death on 19 November, two days after that of Mary I of England (Machyn, Diary 19 November 1558); Foxe says he died the day after the queen (Foxe, Acts and Monuments vol. 8, p. 636).