He settled down at Padua, and there lived the quiet life of a scholar until 1535, when the King determined to find out about him. He sought information concerning Pole and his beliefs from one Thomas Starkey, who had long been an intimate of the future Cardinal. In answer to the King’s inquiries Starkey sent back an imaginary dialogue between Pole and his companion Lupset, in which the former was represented as opposed on principle to a royal despotism, but still personally faithful to Henry VIII. The King, however, was not contented with this vague and half-contradictory reply, and caused Starkey to write again to Pole and ask him honestly to express his views about the divorce and the Royal Supremacy[507]. To this Pole responded in May, 1536, with a letter enclosing his famous treatise, ‘De Unitate Ecclesiae,’ which he sent by his faithful servant Michael Throgmorton[508]. This work fulfilled all too perfectly Henry’s request for a candid opinion; so plain were its expressions of disapproval, that even Starkey himself felt obliged to write to the King to say how much he had been shocked by its violence[509]. Henry dissembled his anger, and sent Throgmorton back to Pole with a message urging him to come home in order that he might talk with him more fully. The King took good care to make Throgmorton himself promise to return in any case[510]. Coupled with the King’s message came a letter of reproof from Pole’s mother, which had evidently been written at Henry’s command[511]. This letter aroused Pole’s suspicions and he refused to return, alleging as his excuse the fact that the King enforced with ‘sore severitie’ a law by which any man who would not consent to his supremacy was declared a traitor. It appears from Pole’s reply that Cromwell had also written to him, ‘to styrr hym the more vehemently.’ If the letter of the King’s minister was half as savage and threatening as those which he later wrote, it is no wonder that Pole was alarmed.