ADRIAN IV (d. 1159), Pope, is remarkable as being the only Englishman who ever sat in the chair of St. Peter. His early history is obscure.

The future Pope's name is said to have been Nicholas Breakspear. His father was a poor man, who became a monk in the monastery of St. Albans, and left his son without a protector. The lad made his way to France, maintaining himself by alms. He studied at Arles, and was at length received into the house of the canons regular of St. Rufus near Valence. At first he was in a menial position, but his intelligence and aptitude won him admission into the order. He gradually rose in esteem until he was elected prior and afterwards abbot of St. Rufus. His discipline was too strict for the canons, and they began to murmur against the foreigner whom they had raised to be their master. They carried their complaints to Pope Eugenius III. Once he made peace; the second time he saw that Abbot Nicholas deserved a higher position. He made him cardinal of Albano in 1146, and soon afterwards sent him on an embassy to the Scandinavian kingdoms. There the Cardinal of Albano did much to strengthen the connection of the northern church with Rome. He founded at Drontheim a new archbishopric see for Norway, and showed much skill in conciliating the clergy. When he returned to Rome, in 1154, he was hailed as the Apostle of the North— and, on the death of Pope Anastasius IV, was elected to be his successor. He was enthroned on Christmas Day, 1154, under the name of [H]adrian IV.

Adrian IV is described as a man of mild and kindly bearing, esteemed for his high character and learning, famous as a preacher, and renowned for his fine voice. He accepted the pontificate with a reluctance which was pardonable in the difficulties which beset the office and threatened its authority. Rome was under the strong republican spirit and influence of Arnold of Brescia. William, the Norman king of Sicily, refused to recognize the papal suzerainty over his kingdom. The Greeks were striving to reassert their power in Italy, and threatened the spiritual authority of the pope. Adrian IV was not a man to abate anything of the claims of his office. He was a staunch disciple of the ideas of Hildebrand (Pope Gregory VII), and felt himself bound to assert them. At first he was helpless against his enemies in Italy. The only quarter where he could look for aid was the newly elected emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, who had already set forth the imperial claims over North Italy, and announced his intention of coming to Rome to be crowned. Pope Adrian at once endeavored to accomplish the overthrow of Arnold of Brescia, the leader of anti-papal sentiment in Rome. Disorders ending with the murder of a cardinal led Adrian shortly before Palm Sunday 1155 to take the previously- unheard-of step of putting Rome under the interdict, that is, prohibiting the citizens from participation in most sacraments. The senate thereupon exiled Arnold, and Adrian crowned the Emperor at St. Peter's on the 18th of June 1155, a ceremony which so incensed the Romans that the Pope had to leave the city promptly. The Pope, with the ill-advised co-operation of Frederick Barbarossa, was able to procure the execution of Arnold of Brescia. About this time the pontiff issued his sup- posed Bull or Laudabiliter, sent to the King of England which created one of the great mysteries of history. The premise that Catholic Ireland should be a mere grant to Protestant England has long been a grievance to the staunch upholders of Irish liberty and the Irish religion, and the obvious con- sequence is that the attempts to prove that Adrian IV never authorized King Henry II to conquer the island have been many and varied. The curious thing is that there are extant in the Black Book of the Exchequer three letters of Pope Alexander III, in which it appears plainly that the King’s attack upon Ireland in 1172 was made with the Pope's consent. Against the validity of the letters no attack has ever been made, and thus it is strange that the document attributed to Adrian should have been subjected to so searching a criticism, only because the single mention of the Laudabiliter is in the writings of Gerald of Wales, that somewhat boastful historian. Later evidence for the assumed history was found in the 1317 Remonstance by Irish Princes: Pope Adrian, your predecessor, an Englishman not so much by birth as by feeling and character, did in fact, but unfairly, confer upon that same Henry (whom for his said offence he should rather have been deprived of his own kingdom) this lordship of ours by a certain form of words, the course of justice entirely disregarded and the moral vision of that great pontiff blinded, alas! by his English proclivities. Adrian IV's pontificate was a period of constant struggles, mainly of his own seeking. His object was to maintain the claims of the Roman Church as they had been defined by Gregory VII. In this he showed skill, resoluteness, and decision; but he had for his antagonist the mightiest of the emperors. The pontiff was preparing to put himself at the head of the enemies of Frederick I, and issue an excommunication against him, when he died of an attack of quinsy at Anagni on 1 Sept. 1159. That the illness resembling tonsillitis was a short one is proved by the fact that Adrian’s last bull is dated only a fortnight before his demise. Imperialistic tradition ascribed to divine interposition such an opportune removal of the Pope, who had dared to resist the mighty Barbarossa, and told with awe, how he was choked by a fly which he swallowed in a draught of water [or wine]. This calls for a modern song of Peter, Paul, and Mary, lyric adaptation:

There was an old Pope that swallowed a fly, I don’t know why he swallowed a fly. Perhaps he’ll die…