ading members of the Privy Council a
pre-eminent place in the management of business. He could not avoid
admitting men of both parties even among these; but he had already
found a man whom he could set over the others and trust with the
supreme rule of affairs in complete confidence. This was Cardinal
Pole, who after Cranmer's death received the Archbishopric of
Canterbury, long ago bestowed on him at Rome, and was released from
the duty of again returning to the Roman court. He was descended from
the house of the Yorkist Suffolks, persecuted by the earlier Tudors
with great severity; but how completely did this family difference
recede before the world-wide interests of religion! He served with the
most entire devotion a queen of the house of Lancaster-Tudor who on
her side reposed in him unlimited reliance: she wished to have him
about her for hours every day. Reginald Pole was a man of European and
general ecclesiastical culture; he shared in a tendency existing
within Catholicism itself, which approached very nearly to
Protestantism on one dogmatic question: we also hear that he would
gladly have moderated the persecution;[173] but when it is said, that
the obstinacy of the Protestants hindered him in this, all that can be
implied is, that they held fast to a confession which was now
absolutely condemned by the hierarchic laws, while he was bound and
resolved to carry these laws into effect. His chief care was above all
not to be involved in English party-divisions: he therefore usually
worked with a couple of Italian assistants who shared his sentiments
and his plans. The union of the ecclesiastical and temporal authority
is seen once more in Pole, as it had been in Wolsey: he combined the
powers of a legate with the position of a first minister. His
distinguished birth, his high ecclesiastical rank, the confidence of
the King and Queen, enhanced by completely blameless personal
conduct,[174] procured him an authority in the country which seemed
almost that of the sovereign.

A singular government this, composed of an absent king, who however
had to be consulted in all weighty matters, a cardinal, and a dying
queen who lived exclusively in church ideas. Difficulties could not be
wanting: they arose first in church matters themselves.

We know how much the recognition of the alienation of the church
property, to which Julius III was brought to consent by the Emperor,
contributed to the restoration of church obedie