to England, and explain to him in person certain difficult passages
of his book: but his kinsman was too wary to trust himself in such
hands; and his refusal to obey this summons, which implied a final
renunciation of his country and all his early prospects, was
immediately rewarded by the pope, through the emperor's concurrence,
with a cardinal's hat and the appointment of legate to Flanders. But
alarmed, as well as enraged, at seeing the man whom he regarded as his
bitterest personal enemy placed in a situation so convenient for
carrying on intrigues with the disaffected papists in England, Henry
addressed so strong a remonstrance to the governess of the Netherlands,
as caused her to send the cardinal out of the country before he had
begun to exercise the functions of his legantine office.

From this time, to maintain any intercourse or correspondence with Pole
was treated by the king as either in itself an act of treason, or at
least as conclusive evidence of traitorous intentions. He believed that
the darkest designs were in agitation against his own government and his
son's succession; and the circumstance of the cardinal's still declining
to take any but deacon's orders, notwithstanding his high dignity in the
church, suggested to him the suspicion that his kinsman aimed at the
crown itself, through a marriage with the princess Mary, of whose
legitimacy he had shown himself so strenuous a champion. What foundation
there might be for such an idea it is difficult to determine.

There is an author who relates that the lady Mary was educated with the
cardinal under his mother, and hints that an early attachment had thus
been formed between them[5]: A statement manifestly inaccurate, since
Pole was sixteen years older than the princess; though it is not
improbable that Mary, during some period of her youth, might be placed
under the care of the countess of Salisbury, and permitted to associate
with her son on easy and affectionate terms. It is well known that after
Mary's accession, Charles V. impeded the journey of Pole into England
till her marriage with his son Philip had been actually solemnized; but
this was probably rather from a persuasion of the inexpediency of the
cardinal's sooner opening his legantine commission in England, than from
any fear of his supplanting in Mary's affections his younger rival,
though some have ascribed to the emperor the latter motive.

[Note 5: See Lloyd's Worthies, article _Pole_.]