Note 337 — CHAP. IX.

Poggii Historia Flor. p. 339.—Muratori Annali, tom. ix. p. 185.—Lorenzo Valla, in his Antidotus, charges Poggio with the infamous villany of forging the commission, by virtue of which Vitelleschi was arrested; and asserts, that he was protected from the punishment due to his crime, by the power of the statesmen who had bribed him to commit so atrocious a deed. It is not, however, very probable, that any interest could have screened from punishment a secretary who stood convicted of so heinous an offence as counterfeiting the signature of a sovereign prince, for the purpose of committing murder: still less, that a subordinate officer who had taken such a wicked liberty, should have been continued in his place.—Laurentii Vallæ Antidotus in Poggium, p. 109.