Preview: A Bishop Confessor in Elizabeth I's Reign

After our Memorial Day break, I'll be back on the Son Rise Morning Show Monday, June 5 to discuss another of Father Henry Sebastian Bowden's Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors. On at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern: please listen live here and/or listen to the podcast later here as we (Matt Swaim or Anna Mitchell and I) discuss Bowden's comments about Bishop David Poole or Pole of Peterborough, a Confessor (not proclaimed a saint but perhaps a martyr in chains in a cause never begun).

Bishop David Poole had a full academic and ecclesiastical career in the midst of Henry VIII's Great Marital Matters, according to the Dictionary of National Biography, although it's not clear from that source how he responded to Henry VIII's efforts to obtain a decree of nullity of his first marriage and how the king resolved that issue, but he must have taken the Oaths of Succession and Supremacy to hold the various offices listed below. Evidently, the date of his birth is not recorded, because he first

appears as a fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford, in 1520. He devoted himself to civil law, and graduated B.Can.L. on 2 July 1526 and D.Can.L. on 17 Feb. 1527-1528. In 1529 he became an advocate in Doctors' Commons. He was connected with the diocese of Lichfield, where he held many preferments, first under Bishop Geoffrey Blyth, and then under Bishop Rowland Lee. He was made prebendary of Tachbrook in Lichfield Cathedral on 11 April 1531, archdeacon of Salop in April 1536, and archdeacon of Derby on 8 Jan. 1542-3. He had previously received the high appointment of dean of the arches and vicar-general of the archbishop of Canterbury on 14 Nov. 1540.

Bishop Rowland Lee was certainly Henry VIII's man, accepting his appointment as the Bishop of Lichfield in 1534 "taking at his consecration the new oath to the king as head of the English Church and not seeking confirmation from the pope. As bishop he remained in Henry’s personal service, endeavouring to establish the legality of his marriage with Anne". Since 1533, Thomas Cranmer had been the Archbishop of Canterbury and in 1540, Henry VIII had been declared the Supreme Head and Governor of the Church of England by Parliament. When Poole was named an Archdeacon, the suppression of the Monasteries had begun. 

Note there's no information about his activities or offices during the reign of Edward VI at all. The 1900 Dictionary of National Biography picks up his career with this statement:

A conscientious adherent of the Roman catholic (sic) faith, he occupied several positions of importance during Mary's reign. In her first year he acted as vicar-general of the bishop of Lichfield (Richard Sampson) and commissioner for the deprivation of married priests (Strype, Memorials, vol. iii. pt. i. p. 168), and in his capacity of archdeacon he sat on the commission for the deprivation of Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, and the restoration of Bonner and other deprived bishops (ib. p. 36). He stood high in the favour of Cardinal Pole, said to be a relative, who appointed him his vicar-general (ib. p. 476). During the vacancy of the see of Lichfield on Bishop Sampson's death in 1554, he was appointed commissary for the diocese. In the early part of the same year he took part in the condemnation of Hooper and Taylor (ib. pp. 288, 290). On 25 April 1556 he was appointed on the commission to inquire after heretics, and to proceed against them. On the death of John Chambers, the first bishop of the newly formed diocese of Peterborough, the queen sent letters commendatory to Paul IV in Pole's favour. He was consecrated at Chiswick on 15 Aug. 1557 by Nicholas Heath [q. v.], archbishop of York.

Note that he was consecrated on the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and that Queen Mary I and Reginald Cardinal Pole, the Archbishop of Canterbury both died later that year on November 17.

Father Bowden recounts Bishop Poole standing up to Elizabeth I and maintaining his loyalty to the Catholic Church. It's commonly stated that while all the bishops but one (Saint John Fisher, martyr) acceded to Henry VIII's Supremacy, all the bishops appointed during Mary I's reign refused Elizabeth I's Supremacy and Reformation Parliament actions. Owen Oglethorpe of Carlisle did preside at her Coronation but all 20 (twenty) of the Catholic bishops in the House of Lords voted against her Act of Settlement in 1558.

Bowden notes that by the time of Elizabeth I's accession to the throne, Poole was a chronic invalid and received permission not to attend that first Parliament. "Old as he was, he could still bear his witness", Bowden states--Poole would be at least in his 70's if he received his degree before 1520 when he became a Fellow  at All Souls. "He refused to obey Elizabeth's behest" to consecrate Matthew Parker as Archbishop of Canterbury and "he preferred deposition to taking" her Oath of Supremacy. Deprived of his office, he was allowed for a time to live in Staffordshire with a Catholic gentleman, Brian Fowler. Thomas Bentham, Elizabeth I's bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, "represented his presence as injurious to the interests of religion, and he appears to have died in the Fleet [prison] in 1568".

Father Bowden gives this memento the title "Wisdom of the Ancients" and cites Ecclesiasticus/Sirach 8:11-12: "Let not the discourse of the ancients escape thee, for they have learned of their fathers: For of them thou shalt learn understanding, and to give an answer in time of need."

So what lessons do we draw from Bishop Poole's career? While he seems to have gone along with Henry VIII's Supremacy and take-over and remaking of the Church in his image--perhaps he retired from ecclesiastical office during Edward VI's reign?--he seems to have maintained the Catholic Faith and was ready to practice it fully under Mary I and Cardinal Pole. Finally, he was willing to refuse Elizabeth I's Supremacy and remaking of the Church when she came to the throne.

God gave him another opportunity to stand fast for the "Wisdom of the Ancients", the Fathers and Councils of the Church whom St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher and others cited before him. He took it, endured the consequences, and perhaps died as martyr in chains, although that's not certain. His Dictionary of National Biography entry, cited above, says he "was 'courteously treated by all persons among whom he lived, and at last' died 'on one of his farms in a good old age,' in May or June 1568 (Heylyn, Hist. of Reformation, anno 1559; Strype, Annals, vol. i. pt. i. pp. 214, 411)."

There is a stained glass depiction of Bishop Poole in St Mary's, Wellingborough, an Anglo-Catholic parish (refusing women's ordination in the Church of England), designed by Sir Ninian Comper in the Perpendicular Gothic Style.

May he rest in peace.