Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/261

 Audley  century, speaks in the past tense, and what became of it we are not informed, Godwin says that Bishop Audley also gave the organs to St. Mary's Church; but this is doubted by Anthony à Wood. In 1509 he gave a donation of 200 marks to Chichele's chest at Oxford, which had been robbed. It further appears that he was a legatee and executor of King Henry VII, and one of the trustees for the foundation of the Savoy Hospital (Calendar of Henry VIII, i. 776, 3292); that in 1516 he obtained from Henry VIII a license to found and endow two chantries, one in his own cathedral and one in Hereford (ib. ii. 2660) ; and that in 1521 he suppressed the nunnery of Bromehall in his diocese on account of the misconduct of its inmates, for which he received a letter of thanks from the king (ib. iii. 1863). He died at Ramsbury in Wilts on 23 Aug. 1524, and was buried in a chapel erected by himself in his own cathedral of Salisbury in honour of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary.



AUDLEY, ALDITHEL, or ALDITHELEY, HENRY (d. 1246), a royalist baron, was son of Adam de Alditheley, who held Alditheley (Staff.) from the Verdons in 1186 (Pipe Roll 32, 33 Hen. II.). He began his career as constable to Hugh de Lacy (whose first wife was a Verdon) when Earl of Ulster, and, on Hugh's disgrace (1214), attached himself to Ranulph, the great royalist Earl of Chester, and was rewarded by the crown with a forfeited estate (1216-16). He served as sheriff of Shropshire and Staffordshire 1216-1221, as deputy for the Earl of Chester, from whom he obtained large grants of lands (Cart. 11 Hen. III. p. 1, m. 6). On acquiring Heleigh Castle he made it his chief seat, but was entrusted by the crown, as a lord-marcher, with the constableship of several castles on the Welsh borders from 1223 to his death, which took place shortly before 11 Nov. 1246, when his son did homage (Fin. 31 Hen. III. m. 12).

[Dugdale's Baronage (1675), i. 746; Eyton's Shropshire (1858), vii. 183-5.] 

AUDLEY, HUGH (d. 1662), notorious moneylender, amassed a large fortune in the first half of the seventeenth century by frugal living and hard dealings. In 1605 he possessed only 200l., and died in November 1662 worth 400,000l. He held a very lucrative post in the court of wards, and is said to have lost not less than 100,000l. by the dis-establishment of the court at the time of the civil wars. At his elbow he usually had some devotional book, especially when he expected clients, and he was very regular in his attendance at church. The expensive habits of the clergy caused him some anxiety, and he would often sigh for the simplicity of living that prevailed in the days of his youth. He was always willing to advance money to improvident young gallants ; he was, indeed, a most heartless bloodsucker. Occasionally he met with checks and reverses, but his indomitable energy bore him through everything. In the lofty language of his biographer, he lived 'a life of intricacies and misteries, wherein he walked as in a maze, and went on as in a labyrinth with the clue of a resolved mind, which made plaine to him all the rough passages he met with ; he, with a round and solid mind, fashioned his own fate, fixed and unmoveable in the great tumults and stir of business, the hard rocke in the middest of the waves.' He is the subject of an article in D'Israeli's 'Curiosities of Literature.'

[The Way to be Rich according to the Practice of the Great Audley, 1662.] 

AUDLEY, ALDITHEL, or ALDITHELEY, JAMES, knight (d. 1272), a royalist baron, was son and heir of Henry de Audley [q.v.], and, like him, a lord-marcher. In 1257 he accompanied Richard, king of the Romans, to his coronation at Aachen, sailing on 29 April and returning to England in the autumn to take part in the Welsh campaign (1257-1260). In the following year (1258) he was one of the royalist members of the council of fifteen nominated by the Provisions of Oxford, and witnessed, as 'James of Aldithel,' their confirmation by the king (18 Oct.). He also, with his brother-in-law, Peter de Montfort [see ], was appointed commissioner to treat with Llewelyn (18 Aug.), and two years later (44 Hen. III.) he acted as an itinerant justice. On Llewelyn of Wales attacking Mortimer, a royalist marcher, Audley joined Prince Edward at Hereford, 9 Jan. 1263 (Claus. 47 Hen. III. m. 5 dors.) to resist the invasion. But the barons, coming to Llewelyn's assistance, dispersed the royalist forces, and seized on his castles and estates. He is wrongly said by Dugdale and Foss to have been made 'justice of Ireland' in this year, but in December he was one of the royalist sureties in the appeal to Louis of France. At the time of the battle of Lewes (May 1264) he was in