The following sketch was written to supply what its author felt persuaded could not fail to interest his fellow Catholics in England; namely, some account of the only English Pope who ever reigned. In it he does not pretend to any novelty of research; but simply to present a connected narrative of such events in the history of Pope Adrian IV. as have hitherto lain broken and concealed in old chronicles, or been slightly touched for the most part in an incidental way by modern writers. In the cou

T HE information, which has come down to us respecting the early life of the only Englishman, who ever sat on the papal throne, is so defective and scanty, as easily to be comprised in a few paragraphs. Nicholas Breakspere was born near St. Albans, most probably about the close of the 11th century. His father was a clergyman, who became a monk in the monastery of that city, while his son was yet a boy. Owing to extreme poverty, Nicholas could not pay for his education, and was obliged to attend

At the moment, Adrian IV. took his seat behind the helm of Peter's bark, the winds and waves raged furiously against her, nor ceased to do so, during the whole time that he steered her course. That time, though short, was yet long enough to prove him a skilful and fearless pilot,—as much so as the very foremost of his predecessors or successors, who have acquired greater fame than he, simply because a more protracted term of office enabled them to carry out to completer results than he could do,

Such were the depraved spirits, and such the ignoble tyranny, which oppressed the Holy See on the demise of Eugenius III.; an oppression which, if its violence seemed to slumber during the short career of Anastasius IV., whose patriarchal age and paternal goodness to the poor in a famine which desolated the country under his pontificate, commanded respect and won all hearts, yet woke up again with fresh vigour on the accession of his successor, the English Pope Adrian IV. Adrian, however, was as

In the mean time, much had still to be negotiated between Frederic and Adrian, before the latter felt satisfied to confer on the former the imperial crown. Adrian was too well acquainted with the character of Barbarossa, not to feel it a paramount duty to require every guarantee, before adding to the power and greatness of a man who, like him, thirsted for universal sway, under which not only the State, but the Church also should bend; and who, in pursuit of his object allowed no barrier, which

While Frederic was yet fighting his way home through Italy, Adrian had to face about and confront another foe in William, the Norman king of Sicily. William had lately succeeded his father Roger, a wise and able monarch, to whom however his son, as so commonly happens, bore no sort of resemblance; but by his incapacity and total subjection under the influence of a profligate favourite of low birth, named Wrajo, soon threw the state, which Roger had left in so prosperous a condition, into the wor

Soon after his accession, Adrian received, among other letters of congratulation, one from Henry II. king of England, who had succeeded to his crown at the same time as the pope. This letter was as follows:— "A sweet breath of air hath breathed in our ears, inasmuch as we learn that the news of your elevation hath scattered like a refulgent aurora, the darkness of the desolation of the Church. The Apostolic See rejoiceth in having obtained such a consolation of her widowhood. All the churches re

It was most likely on occasion of this embassy, that John of Salisbury,—although he mentions other visits paid by him to Adrian,—held the interesting conversation with the English pope, which he reports at length, in his Polycraticus. [1] In that work, he says, he well remembers how, during a sojourn at the papal court in Beneventum, he was treated on the most familiar footing by his Holiness; whose habit it was to gather round him a few select friends, with whom he would freely discuss a variet

The peace, which Adrian had concluded with the king of Sicily, was soon seized by Frederic Barbarossa as the pretext for a new quarrel with the Church. The grounds on which the German despot professed to be aggrieved were as follow: a predecessor of his, Lothair II., had in his Italian war, in the foregoing century, obliged the king of Sicily to own the feudal superiority of Germany over Apulia. Pope Innocent II., who protested against this proceeding as a violation of his rights, could only so

This reconciliation lasted but a short time: for, as Adrian was not a character to tamely submit to any invasion of his rights, he could not long keep on terms with a man like Frederic Barbarossa. Towards the end of 1158, Frederic, after reducing Milan, held a great Diet on the Roncalian Plains, between Cremona and Placentia; at which, not only his German princes and prelates, but many Italian bishops, and nearly all the consuls of the cities of Lombardy, were present. A papal legate also appear