For this day to occur, several things had to be arranged and decided. First
of all, for the Papal Legate to arrive in England, the Act of Attainder against
Reginald Pole had to be removed by Parliament. This was the Act that condemned
his mother Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, and many others to death.
Parliament lifted this sentence of death and Mary invited the Papal Legate to
return from exile on November 20, 1554. He would be the first Papal Legate
present in England since the trial of her mother's marriage in 1529--when
Katherine of Aragon appeared before Cardinal Campeggio and Cardinal Wolsey,
appealed to Henry her husband and left the Court, impervious to pleas to
return. The matter of former Church lands also had to be decided: Henry VIII and
then Edward VI had seized the monasteries and then the chantries and the chantry
schools, destroyed most of them, sold or given the lands to courtiers and others
who benefitted. Were these all to be given back?
The Papal Legate wanted them back, but Mary was more concerned about alienating the Court and nobility her reign had so lately unified against the plots of Northumberland to replace her in the succession with Lady Jane Grey and that of Thomas Wyatt the younger to prevent the Spanish marriage and place her half-sister Elizabeth and young Edward Courtenay on the throne. So the lands and property stayed with their current owners.
On November 28 Cardinal Pole spoke to Parliament and asked them to repeal all the other acts that were obstacles to reunion. On November 29 Parliament did so and then petitioned Queen Mary to intercede with the Papal Legate for absolution and reunion with Rome (two members refused to sign the petition).
Then on St. Andrew's Day Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester and Mary's Chancellor, led the members of both houses of Parliament to kneel before the Papal Legate and Mary, presenting the petition. The petition proclaimed that Parliament was "very sorry and repentant of the schism and disobedience committed in this realm against the See Apostolic" and begged to be returned "into the bosom and unity of Christ's Church."
Cardinal Pole then welcomed "the return of the lost sheep" and granted absolution to the entire kingdom, proclaiming a new Holy Day on November 30: the Feast of Reconciliation. Unfortunately, Cardinal Pole and Mary I would have only three celebrations of this Feast (in 1555, 1556, and 1557)--both died on November 17, 1558, as the Once I Was a Clever Boy blog recounts. This year marks the 455th anniversary of their deaths.
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