Notes 10, 11
41
Reginald Pole and the Reception.^11 Starkey's England, Early English Text Society, 1878, pp. 192 ff.; and see Letters and Papers, Henry VIII., vol. viii, pp. 81—84, and Ibid. vol. viii., pt. i, pp. xxxii—xxxiv. Thomas Starkey was employed in the endeavour to win Reginald Pole to King Henry's side in the matter of the divorce from Catherine and the consequent breach with Rome. The negotiation failed, but Starkey took the opportunity of laying before Henry a dialogue which he (Starkey) had composed. The interlocutors in this dialogue were Pole and the well-known scholar Thomas Lupset, and Pole was represented as expounding his opinions touching political and ecclesiastical affairs. How far at all points Starkey fairly represented Pole's views may be doubted. Still we have respectable evidence that Pole had talked in the strain of the following passage, and at any rate Starkey thought that in King Henry's eyes he was befriending Pole by making him speak thus.