In 1538 Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, Sir Edward Neville, Sir Nicholas Carew and others were accused of holding a traitorous correspondence with Cardinal Pole, and were imprisoned in the Tower; as were also the Cardinal’s brothers, Lord Montague and Sir Geoffrey Pole, their mother the Countess of Salisbury, the Marchioness of Exeter, Sir Adrian Fortescue and Sir Thomas Dingley. Reginald Pole, who had never hesitated in his conferences with the King to condemn the divorce, had been entrusted by Henry to go on a mission to the Pope to make peace if possible. Pope Paul IV had made him a Cardinal, to Henry’s indignation, and he was still on the Continent. The Marquis of Exeter was a grandson of Edward IV, and Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, was the daughter of his brother, the Duke of Clarence. The King was roused to fresh anger against them because Charles V and Francis I had laid aside their enmity and become friends, and the Pope, looking to them for assistance, had issued a bull of excommunication against him. Geoffrey Pole saved his life by giving evidence against the plotters. Exeter and Montague were beheaded, December 9, 1538, Carew on March 3 following. Lady Exeter was pardoned, but the Countess of Salisbury was kept in confinement for two years longer, when she was brought to the scaffold on the fatal Green. Froude thinks it was because she was found to be still secretly corresponding with her son the Cardinal against the King, and there were fresh alarms of a rising in the North under Sir John Neville. Froude discredits the story told by Lingard, that the aged Countess refused to lay her head on the block on the ground that she was no traitor, and that the headsman hacked it off as he best could; and Mr. Gairdner evidently does not believe it.