ADRIAN de Castello (1460?–1521?), called also de Corneto, from his birthplace, a small town in Tuscany, was distinguished both as a statesman and as a reviver of learning. His family was obscure, and the date of his birth is uncertain; but as he speaks of himself in the preface to his treatise ‘De Vera Philosophia’ as having been still a young man on his second visit to England, when sent thither as collector by Innocent VIII, we may assume that he is not likely to have been born before the year 1460. He was first sent by that pope as nuncio to Scotland in 1488, to compose the dissensions between James III and his nobles; but as King James was killed before his arrival, he was recalled. He had, however, reached England, and was very well received by Henry VII, who, by the advice of Archbishop (afterwards Cardinal) Morton, employed him as his agent at Rome on his return. It was apparently next year that he came back to England as collector of the papal tribute called Peter pence. He had also been appointed by Innocent one of the seven papal prothonotaries. On 10 May 1492 he obtained from the king the prebend of Ealdland in St. Paul's Cathedral, and seven days later, from Archbishop Morton, the rectory of St. Dunstan-in-the-East. On 29 June following he received a grant of denisation by letters patent (Gairdner's Letters of Ric. III and Henry VII, vol. ii. p. 373, Rolls Ser.). Innocent VIII died the same year, and Adrian returned to Rome, ‘thrown’ as he himself expresses it, ‘into the mill of affairs by Pope Alexander VI.’ He was made clerk of the papal treasury, while at the same time he was Henry VII's ambassador at Rome. In 1498 he was sent to France with a message of condolence on the death of Charles VIII, but did not go on to England. In a contemporary letter it is hinted that Henry VII was not at this time quite satisfied with the manner in which he had disbursed some moneys in his behalf at Rome. If so, it was but a passing cloud; for though Adrian apparently never revisited England, he was promoted during his absence first (1502) to the bishopric of Hereford, and two years later to that of Bath and Wells. The bull for this second promotion was obtained on 2 Aug. 1504; and on 13 Oct. Henry despatched a commission to Rome to certain persons to take his fealty and give him the temporalities of his see. On the 20th of the same month he was enthroned by proxy and received the spiritualities, his proxy being the accomplished scholar, Polydore Vergil, his sub-collector of Peter pence. Between the dates of these two English preferments he was created by Alexander VI cardinal priest, with the title of St. Chrysogonus. This was on 31 May 1503. It was rather more than two months later that—if the received story may be trusted—Pope Alexander was poisoned at an entertainment given by him, owing to the miscarriage of a plot of the pope's own son Cæsar Borgia, who had intended Adrian to be the victim. There is no doubt that the pope's mortal illness was attributed at the time to a supper in Cardinal Adrian's garden near the Vatican, from which other guests were also sufferers, including Cæsar Borgia, and that Cardinal Adrian himself fell into a violent fever. Pope Alexander survived the banquet more than a week, and we do not hear of any other death resulting from it. But Cardinal Adrian, according to his own account—for the historian Paulus Jovius (Vitæ Illust. Viror. i. 260, ed. Basil, 1578) tells us he heard it directly from himself—was suddenly seized with a burning sensation in the intestines which brought on giddiness and stupor, and was driven to seek relief in a cold bath; and though he in time recovered his health, it was not before his outer skin had peeled off from the whole surface of his body. The strictly contemporary diary of Antonio Giustinian states that Adrian's attack returned on at least three successive days, the first seizure having been, apparently, not on the very day of the banquet, but shortly after. Altogether there is nothing in the recorded symptoms which goes very far to confirm the story of the poisoned flagon.
After the death of Alexander VI Adrian seems to have lost all his influence at the papal court. Under Julius II, in 1509, he quitted Rome for fear of the pope's displeasure, and fled to Venice, from which he afterwards proceeded to Trent, and seems to have remained in that neighbourhood till he heard that Julius was dead (1511). He at once repaired to Rome, and was admitted into the conclave, though it is said to have been already closed before his arrival. But he did not remain on much better terms with the new pope, Leo X, than with his predecessor, and in 1517 he was implicated in the conspiracy of Cardinals Petrucci, De Sauli and Riario, who had suborned a surgeon to
