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The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Polydore Virgil (1470?–1550?)
Virgil, Polydore. An historical writer and ecclesiastic; born in Urbino, Italy, about 1470; died about 1550. He was sent about 1502 to England by Pope Alexander VI. to collect the tax called “Peter’s Pence,” and continued to reside there for the greater part of his life. He was successively created archdeacon of Wells; prebendary in the Cathedral of Hereford, Lincoln, and St. Paul’s. His principal works are his ‘History of Inventions’; ‘Historia Anglica,’ a history of England brought down to the end of the reign of Henry VII.; and a treatise against divination, entitled ‘De Prodigiis.’