Cardinal Pole is a historical romance based around the marriage between King Philip of Spain and Queen Mary Tudor of England. After Mary, the eldest daughter of Henry VIII., sat on the throne, Emperor Charles V was determined to marry her to his son Philip. Things move forward, but Mary remained desperate for the love of Philip, who was eleven years younger than her and was a womanizer.There is more to the novel than the two historical figures. It contains Catholic bishops who took the lead in the oppression of the Protestants and the historical Protestant clergy who suffered. In the background of the central tale romance of the king and queen, the author tried to present his unbiased narrative of the brutal Catholic and Protestant cultural conflicts. English historical novelist, William Ainsworth, chose to write excellently about extremism on both sides.