threat which
marked his power. "If the lords would handle him so, he would give them
such a breakfast as never was made in England, and that the proudest of
them should know."

[Sidenote: The Courtenays and the Poles]

He soon gave a terrible earnest of the way in which he could fulfil his
threat. The opposition to his system gathered above all round two houses
which represented what yet lingered of the Yorkist tradition, the
Courtenays and the Poles. Courtenay, the Marquis of Exeter, was of royal
blood, a grandson through his mother of Edward the Fourth. He was known to
have bitterly denounced the "knaves that ruled about the King"; and his
threats to "give them some day a buffet" were formidable in the mouth of
one whose influence in the western counties was supreme. Margaret, the
Countess of Salisbury, a daughter of the Duke of Clarence by the heiress
of the Earl of Warwick, and a niece of Edward the Fourth, had married Sir
Richard Pole, and became mother of Lord Montacute as of Sir Geoffry and
Reginald Pole. The temper of her house might be guessed from the conduct
of the younger of the three brothers. After refusing the highest favours
from Henry as the price of his approval of the divorce, Reginald Pole had
taken refuge at Rome, where he had bitterly attacked the king in a book on
"The Unity of the Church." "There may be found ways enough in Italy,"
Cromwell wrote to him in significant words, "to rid a treacherous subject.
When Justice can take no place by process of law at home, sometimes she
may be enforced to take new means abroad." But he had left hostages in
Henry's hands. "Pity that the folly of one witless fool," Cromwell wrote
ominously, "should be the ruin of so great a family. Let him follow
ambition as fast as he can, those that little have offended (saving that
he is of their kin), were it not for the great mercy and benignity of the
prince, should and might feel what it is to have such a traitor as their
kinsman." The "great mercy and benignity of the prince" was no longer to
shelter them. In 1538 the Pope, Paul the Third, published a bull of
excommunication and deposition against Henry, and Pole pressed the Emperor
vigorously though ineffectually to carry the bull into execution. His
efforts only brought about, as Cromwell had threatened, the ruin of his
house. His brother Lord Montacute and the Marquis of Exeter, with other
friends of the two great families, were arrested on a charge of treason
a