Sir William Awbrey I of Kew

Family and Education b. 1529, 2nd s. of Thomas Aubrey, MD, of Cantreff by Agnes, da. of Thomas Vaughan. educ. Christ’s Coll. Brecon; Oxf. c.1543, fellow of All Souls 1547, BCL 1549, DCL 1554 or 1555; adv. Doctors’ Commons 1556. m. by 1558, Wilgiford, da. of John Williams of Taynton, Oxon., 3s. 6da.1

Offices Held Principal, New Inn Hall, Oxf. c.1550; (jt. with John Storey, later sole) prof. of civil law, Oxf. 7 Oct. 1553-22 Feb. 1559; judge marshal with army in France 1557; jt. (with William Clerke II) vicar gen., province of Canterbury Jan. 1578; j.p.q. Brec., Carm., Merion., Pemb., other Welsh counties, and Mon., Herefs., Salop, Glos., and member, council in the marches of Wales by 1579; master in Chancery; member of ct. of high commission by 1593; master of requests 20 Jan. 1590.2

Biography Aubrey had a distinguished career at Oxford, and though his great-grandson the antiquary was doubtless correct in thinking it probable that the Earl of Pembroke, his kinsman, was ‘instrumental in his rise’, there is also no doubt that he was of outstanding ability. He left academic life in 1556 and served under Pembroke in the St. Quentin campaign of 1557. During Elizabeth’s reign he became a prominent member of the group of Welsh civil lawyers who played so notable a role in the ecclesiastical, judicial and diplomatic affairs of the period. For some years he was in private practice, ‘an advocate of very good reputation of the civil and canon laws’. In 1561 he was one of the attorneys for the Earl of Hertford before the commission to inquire into the validity of the Earl’s marriage with Lady Catherine Grey. In 1564-5 he went to Bruges as counsel for the Merchant Adventurers’ company during the negotiations for the resumption of trade between England and Flanders. Nicholas Wotton commended him to Cecil for his ‘wit, learning and painfulness’. He was still in Bruges in April 1566.3

Thenceforward he was constantly employed on all manner of commissions and duties; he sat often as judge-delegate in the Admiralty court and, at least after 1577, was active in ecclesiastical affairs. His advice was asked on many important diplomatic and legal points, including the case of the bishop of Ross in 1571. According to his grandson, he was among those favourably inclined to Mary Queen of Scots—indeed, he was accused by his enemies of being in treasonable correspondence with her. These accusations were, no doubt, slanders, and he sat on the commission which tried Mary in 1586. Honours and responsibilities continued to be given him until the end of his life. A favourite of the Queen, who called him her ‘little doctor’, he was also a friend of the Cecils and, according to John Aubrey, popular with the nobles. The bishop of St. David’s, however, regarded him as an ‘insatiable cormorant’ and a malicious enemy.4

It was probably the Earl of Pembroke who secured Aubrey his seats for Carmarthen and Brecon Boroughs. Hindon was owned by the bishop of Winchester, and in 1559 Bishop White had Aubrey and Aubrey’s kinsman, another Welsh civilian, Henry Jones, returned there. His patron at Arundel in 1563 was presumably the 12th Earl of Arundel (a distant relative through the Earl of Pembroke), or the Duke of Norfolk. On 31 Oct. 1566 he was nominated to the joint committee with the Lords to discuss the succession bill. The long gap in Aubrey’s parliamentary career was no doubt due to his Chancery mastership, which involved attendance in the Upper House, and to his office of vicar-general, which gave him a seat in Convocation. When he was again returned to the Commons in 1593, by which time he had become a master of requests, it was for Taunton, a borough subject to ecclesiastical patronage. He was named to two committees during this Parliament dealing with the subsidy (28 Feb., 1 Mar. 1593), and as burgess for Taunton he was nominated to committees concerned with cloth (15 Mar.) and kerseys (23 Mar.).

Aubrey, the seventeenth-century antiquary, has left an account of his great-grandfather, praising his ‘rare skill and science in the law’, and ‘sound judgment and good experience therein’. He describes him as of medium build and ‘somewhat inclining to fatness of visage’, with a grave countenance and a ‘delicate, quick, lively and piercing black eye’. Though living mostly in London or Sydenham, Kent, he remained very much a Welshman, buying up much of the Brecon lands of the elder branch of his family and, with other purchases and grants from the Crown, becoming one of the biggest landowners in the county, able to ride ‘nine miles together in his own land’. He also had lands in Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Kent and Wiltshire and died with an estimated income of £2,500 a year from lands alone. As he put it, ‘God of his goodness hath very plentifully bestowed upon me’. In the years preceding his death he settled many of his estates on his wife and made provision for his two older sons. By his will, dated 22 June 1595, he left further lands and the lease of a Welsh rectory to his youngest son John. His town house he divided between John and his son-in-law Daniel Dunne. He made numerous bequests to his children and servants and to the poor in various parishes, and bequeathed a piece of plate to Doctors’ Commons. He was one of the first men in England to keep a private coach: he bequeathed two coaches to his wife, together with plate, furniture and his house at Sydenham. He died 25 June 1595 and was buried at St. Paul’s 24 July. His chief clerk, his ‘loving and trusty servant’ Hugh Georges, proved the will on 29 July, soon afterwards ran away to Ireland and, as John Aubrey put it, ‘cosened all the legatees’.5

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603 Author: Roger Virgoe Notes 1.DNB; John Aubrey, ‘Brief Lives’, in Letters written by Eminent Persons from the Bodleian Library (1813), ii(1), pp. 207-221. John Aubrey was William’s grandson; he bases much of his account on a memoir written by Daniel Dunne, who married one of William’s daughters (Lansd. 22, f. 52). 2.CPR, 1553-4, p. 395; C. Coote, Civilians, 41; Nys, Doctors’ Commons, 144; Aubrey, 220; APC, x. 148; xviii. 148; HMC Hatfield, iv. 280-4. 3.APC, xix, 283; CSP For. 1564-5, pp. 201, 471; 1566-8, p. 48; Read, Cecil, 277. 4.APC, vii-xxv, passim; HMC Hatfield, i. 538; ii. 133; iv. 280-4, 364, 510; Aubrey, 212; Corresp. Matthew Parker (Parker Soc.), 267. 5. D’EWes, 127, 478, 481, 501, 507; Aubrey, 207-220; C142/246/99, 247/85; PCC 45 Scott.

See Peter Bartrum, http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/handle/2160/6162/AUBREY%2... (December 18, 2016; Anne Brannen, curator)

THE BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE DIFFUSION OF USEFUL KNOWLEDGE.

London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, Paternoster-bow 1844

, Volume 4, Part 1 By Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge

page 72

AUBREY, or AWBREY, WILLIAM, an eminent English civilian of the sixteenth century, was born at Cantre in Brecknockshire, in 1529 or 1530. His epitaph on the monument (destroyed in the great fire of London) erected in St. Paul's Cathedral to his memory by his sons stated that he was of a good family. It does not appear in what year he entered the University of Oxford; but in 1549 he took his degree of bachelor of law there, and was elected a fellow of All Souls' College. Next year he was chosen principal of New Inn Hall. In 1553 he was appointed regius professor of civil law. This appointment was, in 1554, bestowed upon William Mowse: Wood says, whether in his own right or as a deputy of Aubrey he had been unable to learn: Strype conjectures that Aubrey, not having been found so pliant as Mowse, who was a conformer to the Roman Catholic religion, had been deprived. This conjecture is not very probable, as we find that Aubrey took his degree of doctor of law and was admitted an advocate in the Court of Arches in 1554. He held the office of judge-advocate in the expedition against St. Quintin's. Archbishop Grindal appointed him auditor and vicargeneral in spirituals for the province of Canterbury, offices which he appears to have held till his death. In 1577, during the temporary sequestration of Grindal for refusing to enforce rigorously certain edicts and judgments against the Puritans, Aubrey was one of the civilians named to carry on the visitation in which Grindal was engaged at the time. Queen Elizabeth subsequently appointed Aubrey a member of the council of the marches for Wales, and a master in chancery. He died on the 23rd of July, 1595. Wood, on the authority of a grandson, describes him as a man of distinguished erudition, singular prudence, and agreeable manners. Tanner attributes to him letters on the dominion of the sea, addressed to Dr. Dee, which have not been published. Extracts from his opinion on the best mode of reforming the Court of Arches, also mentioned by Tanner, are given in Strype's "Life of Grindal." A few of his opinions are preserved among the Lansdowne MSS. in the British Museum, and some fragments of his letters have been published by Strype. Dugdale's "History of St. Paul's Cathedral" contains a drawing of the monument and effigy of Aubrey in St. Paul's. Aubrey had by his wife Wilgifford three sons and six daughters. (A. Wood, Hist. et Antiq. Universitatis Oxoniensis; Sir W. Dugdale, History of St. Paul's Cathedral; Tanner, Bibliotheca Britannico - Hibernica; John Strype, Histories of Archbishops Crammer and Grindal.) W. W.

Sir William Awbrey I D.C.L. (b 1529 in Cantreff, Brecknockshire, Wales & d 6/25/1595 in Eng.).William is the third of Thomas Awbrey. Sir William wife was Willigford Millicent Williams (born abt 1532 in Wales) William AWBREY was born about 1530 in , South Wales. He died in Jul 1595 in , England. He was buried on 23 Jul 1595 in St Paul Church, London, England. He married Wilgiford WILLIAMS (bc 1530 in Tainton, Co. Oxford,England) about 1555 in , England. Wilgiford father John WILLIAMS. John was married about 1530.

Supreme Judge of the Royal Army, Vicar General of Canterbury, Master of Requests to Queen Elizabeth, Member of the Council of Marches, Member of Parliament, Master in Chancery. He was one of the commissioners at the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots. Appointed Lord Keeper, but died before hecould receive the office.

England: Canterbury - Wills Proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury 1584-1604 1584 to 1604. County: General Country: England 1595 Awbrey, William, D.C.L., one of the Maisters of Requests to the Queene; St. Bennet, Powleswharf, London; Burleton, co. Hereford; Cantrefe, co. Brecknock, where I was borne 45 Scott

Annals and Antiquities of the Counties and County Families of Wales - Page 104 By Thomas Nicholas - Breconshire- 1991 - 964 pages«/i» Henry VIII William Awbrey Esq of Cantref, Regius Prof of Law At Oxford and L. L. D. One of the Council for the Marches of Wales and one of the Master of Request to Queen Elizabeth.......1545