This tale was later taken up as fact by many writers, notably John Foxe in his "Actes and Monuments" of 1563. Diarmaid MacCulloch accepts that the specifics in Bandello's narrative suggest that it is more than an invented account, but James Gairdner, while acknowledging that Cromwell's year of birth is uncertain, points out that he could have been as young as 13 on the day of the battle. While in Italy, he entered service in the household of the Florentine banker Francesco Frescobaldi, who rescued him off the Florentine streets, where he was starving after leaving the French mercenaries. Later, he visited leading mercantile centres in the Low Countries, living among the English merchants and developing a network of contacts while learning several languages. At some point he returned to Italy. The records of the English Hospital in Rome indicate that he stayed there in June 1514, while documents in the Vatican Archives suggest that he was an agent for the Archbishop of York, Cardinal Christopher Bainbridge, and handled English ecclesiastical issues before the Roman Rota.