The Most Illustrious Lord Prospero Colonna, Cardinal-Archdeacon of San Giorgio _in Velum Aureum_, creature (_creatura_) of the Lord Martin P.P. III, undoubtedly would have been elected had the Lord Nicholas P.P. V died at the beginning instead of at the end of a long illness: for, according to the dispatch of Nicholas of Pontremoli, Orator of Duke Francesco Sforza-Visconti of Milan, dated the first of April, 1455, he was then the favourite. Herr Ludwig Pastor, whose valuable history of the Popes is also the latest, most unaccountably urges that the great age of Cardinal Colonna prevented his election. But the accurate Ciacconi raises him to the purple with Cardinal Capranica at the Lord Martin P.P. III’s fourth creation in 1426, he being then still a youth (“_adhuc iuvenis_”); the publication of his elevation being delayed till the fifth consistory of the 8th of November 1430. Supposing him to have been of the age of twenty-one years in 1426—a very liberal assumption in an age when boys became cardinals at thirteen, benedicks at puberty, and fathers at fifteen—he only would have reached the age of fifty in 1455. The disability of senility may therefore be dismissed. In default of Cardinal Prospero, the Most Illustrious Lord Domenico Capranica, Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Croce _in Gerusalemme_, Cardinal-Penitentiary, Bishop of Fermo, and himself a Roman noble of the Ghibelline party, was put forward by the House of Colonna as their second candidate. On the other side, the wealthy business-like Roman Guelf, the Lord Latino Orsini di Bari, Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of San Giovanni e San Paolo _in Monte Celio_, represented the interests of the House of Orsini: who offered, as an alternative for the suffrages of the Sacred College, the Venetian Lord Pietro Barbo, Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of San Marco, and Bishop of Vicenza. The first three scrutinies produced no result; and the cardinals conferred regarding the merits of the candidates, and of the causes that they represented. Much was said on behalf of Cardinal Capranica. He was “Romano di Roma,” his character stood above reproach, his breeding was polite and high. But Cardinal Orsini and his faction, though unable to bring in their own nominee the Cardinal of Venice, were strong enough to out-manœuver the candidate of Colonna: and the electors found themselves at a deadlock.