POLYDORO DI VERGILIO was born at Urbino about 1470, and studied at Bologna. His relation, Adrian Castellesi, who, when Cardinal of Corneto, was well known both in England and at Rome,[72] had been sent by Innocent VIII. as legate to Scotland, but remained at London in consequence of the death of James III. at the battle of Stirling. There he was joined by Polydoro, who, on taking priest's orders, had, through his influence, obtained from Alexander VI. the collectorship of an old house-tax in England called _Romescot_, or Peter's pence, originally imposed in Saxon times for the maintenance of English pilgrims to Rome. Aliens being there frequently objects of church preferment, he, in 1503, obtained the rectory of Church Langton in Leicestershire; and, on his patron's appointment in the following year to the see of Bath and Wells, the path of further promotion was opened to him. In 1507 he became prebendary of Lincoln and of Hereford, and archdeacon of Wells, on which he resigned his collectorship. In 1515 he shared an imprisonment in the Tower, brought upon Adrian by the jealousy of Wolsey, whose haughty spirit, disappointed of the purple, attributed the delayed honours to the Bishop's influence. Letters were consequently written by Sadoleto in Leo's name to the English court on behalf of Polydoro, and Wolsey having received the much coveted scarlet hat, there was no further pretext for his detention. The date of his return home is variously stated at 1534 or 1550, and he carried from Henry VIII. a recommendation which procured him letters of nobility from his own sovereign. His literary talents being probably somewhat overrated in Italy, the long residence he made in the hotbed of heresy, without exercising his pen in defence of his Church, appears to have brought the purity of his faith under suspicion. That there was no tangible ground for the imputation may be presumed from his spending the rest of his life unquestioned at Urbino, where he died in 1555, and was buried in the Duomo. [Footnote 72: Many curious unedited particulars regarding him, with reference to the conspiracy against Leo X. in 1517, of which he was suspected, are contained in Sanuto's Diaries, but we have not space to notice them.]