[3] He was educated at the English Jesuit College in Rome, and was made a Roman Catholic priest on 17 April 1688.
[2] He left Rome on 15 October 1688 to work with the Jesuits in Wales, but soon converted to Protestantism, and in 1705 published an explanation (apologia) for his surprising conversion in The Recantation of Mr Pollett, A Roman priest.
[4] In 1715, he published the first volume of his Athenae Britannicae, a critical history of pamphlets called Icon Libellorum.
[1] The Libellorum included a letter written in French and a Latin ode to Robert Harley, first Earl of Oxford.
[4] He would visit the house of a potential patron and send in a bundle of his books, with perhaps an ode to the recipient, in the hope of receiving a gift in return.