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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Cardinal Pole
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(Reginald Pole, 1500–58) Papal diplomat who became, in 1556, the last Roman Catholic archbishop of Canterbury. He was abroad when required to comment on *Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon, but he sent a long treatise dismissing the supposed grounds and insisting on submission to papal authority. The result was that Henry executed Pole's elder brother and his mother. Pole remained in Italy, prominent among those trying to reform the church in response to the Protestant challenge, until he was sent as a papal legate to *Mary I. When Cranmer was dismissed from office and burnt, Pole succeeded him as archbishop of Canterbury. He was himself declared a heretic in 1557 by a reactionary new pope, Paul IV. He died in England, stripped of his papal authority, on the same day as Mary (17 Nov. 1558).
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