When Reginald Pole left England for the third time in early 1532, Starkey went with him. Because his Dialogue had failed to persuade Pole to continue in Henry VIII's service, Starkey had already decided to abandon Pole's employ. It may be that Starkey acted on that resolution before he left England, but found few openings for fundamental thinkers with no practical experience. Someone may have advised him to equip himself with the tools for such service, or Starkey may have figured out the Henrician cursus honorum for himself. Starkey's Dialogue now became a piece of career planning, reflecting his decision to spend the time between about mid-1532 and the last half of 1534 studying civil law in Avignon and Padua. The increasingly Platonist line of the last part of the Dialogue together with Starkey's more overt interest in Pauline Christianity probably sprang from his effort to follow Pole's religious evolution and to adapt civic humanism to the confines of the court. By the time Starkey completed the work, he already doubted the career of a courtier and had laid out an alternative plan, despite continuing to study the law. Perhaps, as he frequently did, Starkey meant to leave himself options. He had demonstrated his skills as a rhetorician in the service of a largely secular reform, but he could convert those tools to Christian oratory without difficulty. After all, he needed only to move from one aristocratic institution to another, following a time-honoured path for younger sons.