[Sidenote: He is educated by Henry for the Church.] [Sidenote: Studies at Paris and Padua.] He was educated under the king's eye, and at the king's expense; he was pensioned and endowed, according to the fashion of the time, while still a boy, with an ecclesiastical benefice; and he was designed, should his inclination permit him, for the highest office in the English church. These general kindnesses he himself gratefully acknowledges; and he professes to have repaid Henry's care with a child's affection. He says that he loved the king for his generosity to himself and his family; that he loved him for his own high and noble qualities, his liberality, his gentleness, his piety, his princely illustrious nature.[36] Nor did he fail to profit by the advantages which were heaped upon him. He studied industriously at Paris and at Padua, acquiring, as he believed, all knowledge which living teachers could impart to him; and he was himself so well satisfied with the result, that at the mature age of thirty-six he could describe himself to Henry as one who, although a young man, "had long been conversant with old men; had long judged the eldest man that lived too young for him to learn wisdom from."[37] Many ambitious youths have experienced the same opinion of themselves; few have ventured on so confident an expression of it. But for his family's sake as much as for his own, the king continued to regard him with favour; and could he have prevailed upon himself to acquiesce in the divorce of Queen Catherine, it is possible that he would have succeeded Warham in the English primacy. [Sidenote: He opposes the divorce.] [Sidenote: Exertions are made to gain him over.] [Sidenote: He wavers, but recovers his firmness]. [Sidenote: And writes a remonstrance.] [Sidenote: He goes abroad with leave of absence, and is exempted from the obligation of the oath of allegiance.] From conviction, however, or from the tendency to contradiction characteristic of a peculiar kind of talent, Pole was unable to adopt an opinion so desirable for his interests. First doubtfully, and afterwards emphatically and positively, he declared his dissent from the resolutions of parliament and convocation. He had witnessed with his own eyes the means by which the sentences had been obtained of the universities abroad. He was satisfied of the injustice of the cause. He assured himself that to proceed in it would be perilous to the realm.