In the pantheon of improbable historical figures, Nicholas Breakspear, later known as Pope Adrian IV, stands as a quirk of providence. The only Englishman ever to ascend the Chair of St Peter was not a Norman nobleman or Plantagenet prince but the son of a lowly Hertfordshire clerk.
His election was not merely an ink blot on the parchment of Catholic history, but a subtle acknowledgement that the papacy was no longer the preserve of the Mediterranean dynasties; that Christendom could reach beyond the predictable confines of Rome, France or Spain. In drawing leadership from the misty moors of England, the Church acknowledged for the first time that its half-barbarian outposts, once reduced to missionary territories, were gaining purchase and influence.
