VERGIL, PoLvooRE ( 1470 ?-1555 ?) .
An English ecclesiastic and historian, of Italian lie was born at l'rbino, Italy. lle studied at Bologna and Padua ; at the latter place became secretary to the Duke of Urbino, and there wrote /'rorerbiorrm and lie harem. toribus Verum, two books which went through several editions and translations, and estab lished his fame. He received the appointment of chamberlain to Pope Alexander VI. About 1501 he was sent to England as collector of Peter's pence (of which office he was the last holder). He became naturalized, and with the exception of three visits to the Continent, remained in England almost to the end of his life. lle re ceived successively the rectorship of Church Langton, the archdeaconry of Wells, and pre bends in the cathedrals of Hereford, Lincoln, and Saint Paul's, London. On a charge of libeling Wolsey he was imprisoned in 1515, but was soon released. After a residence of nearly fifty years
in England, he returned to end his days in his native land, with permission to hold his arch deaconry, as also his Hereford prebend. llis principal work, written at the instigation of Henry VII., is Polydori 1 regalia T'rbina t is Angliew 11 Libel XXVI. (1534). which comprises a history of England from the earliest Hines to the end of the reign of Henry VII.; it went through numerous editions, and in 1 844 46 an Old English translation of the first eight books was edited and published for the Camden Society. His De 1 aventoribas Room, translated by John Langley and edited by \V. A. Hammond, with an "Account of the Author and His Works," was published for the Agathynian Club of New York in 1868.