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 IV. 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 IV, 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 favors 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, _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 III, 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 and
executed in the opening of 1539, while the Countess of Salisbury was
attainted in parliament and sent to the Tower.

Almost as terrible an act of bloodshed closed the year. The abbots of
Glastonbury, Reading, and Colchester, men who