Memoir of John Aubrey, F.R.S.; embracing his autobiographical sketches, a brief review of his personal and literary merits, and an account of his works, with extracts from his correspondence, anecdotes of some of his contemporaries, and of the times in which he lived / By John Britton ... Published by the Wiltshire Topographical Society [with its 5th Annual Report, 1845].
- John Britton
- Date:
- 1845
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Memoir of John Aubrey, F.R.S.; embracing his autobiographical sketches, a brief review of his personal and literary merits, and an account of his works, with extracts from his correspondence, anecdotes of some of his contemporaries, and of the times in which he lived / By John Britton ... Published by the Wiltshire Topographical Society [with its 5th Annual Report, 1845]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![John Aubrey, the youngest son of Dr. William Aubrey, and grandfather of the subject of this memoir, is mentioned in the private Diary of Dr. Dee (p. 52), pub- lished by the Camden Society. On his father’s death he was left to the guardianship of Archbishop Whitgift, and, when about 18 years of age,* he married Rachel Danvers, a member of a Wiltshire noble family, and settled at Burleton, near Stretton, in Herefordshire. There, in 1603, his son Richard was born, who was married in his twenty-second year, in the parish church of Kington St. Michael, to Deborah, the only child of Isaac Lyte, of Easton-Pierse, in the same parish, she being then 15 years and six months old ;} and on the 12th of the succeeding month of March (1625-6) - their son, Jonn AuBREY, the future antiquary and topographer, was born, at Easton-Pierse. His baptism, on the day of his birth, is duly recorded in the register of his native parish ; and he informs us that Alderman Whitson of Bristol, who had married his grandfather's widow, was his godfather.{ In his Description of the North Division of Wiltshire Aubrey thus mentions the place of his birth :—“ When my [great-]grand- father Thomas Lyte sold the mannor howse, with the lands near it, he built the howse on the browe of the hill above the brooke facing the south-east, from whence there is a lovely prospect. Here,in my grandfather’s chamber (where in an ill hour I first drew my breath, 2 [Saturn] directly opposing my ascendant), in the chimney, are these two escutcheons, [1. Gules, a chev. between three swans argent, a mullet sable for difference; 2. An eagle displayed sable, legged gules, on its breast a ’ crescent or.| Over the first shield is ‘Isaac Lyte, natus 1576;’ over the second ‘Israel Lyte.’ It was built the same year my g“father was born.” In his Designatio de Easton Pierse, Aubrey gives some views of the house thus mentioned, from one of which the engraving in the title-page of the present work has been copied. It is evident from the passage here quoted that the farm-house known by the appellation of Lower Easton-Pierse was the place of Aubrey’s nativity. Within * Life of Dr. W. Aubrey above referred to. ¢ Ibid. and Aubrey’s Collection of Genitures, and other MSS. at Oxford. t Lives of Eminent Men, vol. ii. p. 477. § In one of the chamber windows represented in the wood-cut is the mark %, indicating, as Aubrey says, “ My grandfather Lyte’s chamber, wherein I drew my first breath.”](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b33522169_0047.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
