Aylesbury

“ Aylesbury, for such was the name of the brewer, and his wife, lived in happiness and comfort together. He was a man of good family and connections, and consequently of higher breeding than his wife could boast of, but on no occasion had he ever to blush for the partner whom he had chosen.
Her calm, inborn strength, if not dignity, of character, united with an extreme quickness of perception, made her fill her place at her husband's table with as much grace and credit as if she had been born to the station. ”

“ He appears to have lived principally at Aylesbury, from which place two letters from him in the 'Cromwell Correspondence' in the Public Record Office are dated, and in his later years acquired a considerable estate in the county, consisting of the house and site of the Grey Friars at Aylesbury (Pat. 32 Hen. VIII, pt. 8) , and the manors of Ellesborough and Dunrich, forfeited by the attainder of Sir Henry Pole and the Countess of Salisbury. According to an inquisition taken at Aylesbury on 22 Dec. ”

“ Pitt wished it should be so, but Lady Aylesbury declined, on account of the employments she held about the queen, as she was one of the senior ladies of her bedchamber. Lady Aylesbury and the Dowager Lady Ilchester shared this service between them, while the king and queen were stationary at Windsor, but both accompanied their Majesties to Weymouth. The former, as I have already said, was a most agreeable and amiable person. She was the eldest sister of Lord Moira, afterwards Marquis of Hastings, and was perfectly well-bred and natural in her manners, and to myself the kindest of friends. ”

“ I had heard much of the aristocracy of England, and must confess that I was not a little prejudiced against them. On a bright sunshine day, between the hours of twelve and two, I found myself seated in a carriage, my back turned upon Aylesbury, the vehicle whirling rapidly over the smooth macadamised road, and I on my first visit to an English gentleman. Twenty minutes' ride, and a turn to the right, and we were amid the fine old trees of Hartwell Park; one having suspended from its branches, the national banners of several different countries ”

“ The limits of the borough are unaltered, and the returning officers are the constables of the borough. The town is also one of the polling places for this county, which now returns three members. The county gaol is still at Aylesbury, but the Summer Assizes were restored to Buckingham, through the exertions of Lord Cobham and the Grenville family in the year 1758. The only manufacture at Aylesbury is that of lace-making: the weekly market is a very plentiful one for provision, and much business is done here at the annual fairs. ”

“ AYLESBURY, a market-town in the Aylesbury parliamentary division of Buckinghamshire, England, 38 m. N.W. by W. of London; served by the Great Central, Metropolitan and Great Western railways (which use a common station) and by a branch of the London & North-Western railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 9243. It has connexion by a branch with the Grand Junction canal. It lies on a slight eminence in a fertile tract called the Vale of Aylesbury, which extends northward from the foot of the Chiltern Hills. Its streets are mostly narrow and irregular, but picturesque. ”

“ The children of Henry VIII. lived at Hunsdon; and at Hatfield Palace, now the residence of the Marquis of Salisbury, resided Edward VI. and Elizabeth. Cardinal Wolsey had an estate at Cheshunt, near Waltham.
AYLESBURY, BUCKS.
Aylesbury ought perhaps to be considered the county town of Buckingham, since the assizes are held there. The view here given is from one corner of the market square, and it just discloses some quaint old houses with remarkably steep gables{140}
KING’S HEAD INN, AYLESBURY. and high chimneys; the rest of the square is modern. ”

“ At the same time, Aylesbury—the place also of ducks and of dairies—was once notable for an exceedingly fine inn: none other than the great galleried “White Hart,” first modernised in 1814, when its gabled, picturesque front was pulled down and replaced by a commonplace red-brick [Pg 141] front, in the style, or lack of style, then prevalent; and finally cleared away in 1863, to make room for the existing Corn Exchange and Market House.
THE “OLD KING’S HEAD,” AYLESBURY.
Coming into Aylesbury, in quest of inns, one looks at that building with dismay. ”

“ The two Houses of Parliament continued fighting out the remainder of the Session with the case of the Aylesbury election. Encouraged by the conduct of the Lords and the declaration of Lord Chief Justice Holt—that if any messengers of the Commons dared to enter Westminster Hall to seize any lawyer who had pleaded in favour of the Aylesbury electors, he would commit them to Newgate,—five fresh electors sued the constables, on the ground of their having been impeded in the exercise of their franchise. ”

“ An Act for the enclosure of the common field land of Aylesbury itself was passed in the same year.
Celia Fiennes passed through the same part of Buckinghamshire about eighty years before. From Stony Stratford to Great Horwood, she says, “this country is fruitfull, full of woods, Enclosures, and rich Ground. ”

“ Industries.—The agricultural capacities of the soil vary greatly in different localities. On the lower lands, especially in the Vale of Aylesbury, about the headwaters of the Thame, it is extremely fertile; while on the hills it is usually poor and thin. The proportion of cultivated land is high, being about 83% of the whole. Of this a large and growing portion is in permanent pasture; cattle and sheep being reared in great numbers for the London markets, to which also are sent quantities of ducks, for which the district round Aylesbury is famous. ”

“ The noble peer here noticed was Thomas, the second Earl of Aylesbury. He had rallied around King James upon the event of the Prince of Orange having embarked troops for England. But when King James withdrew himself from Whitehall, in order to embark for France, Lord Aylesbury was one of the twenty-five peers who signed the declaration applying to the Prince of Orange to rescue the country from "popery and slavery." ”

“ He had a weak, fair moustache and dull, blue, babyish eyes; his features were insignificant, but his manner extremely pleasant and hospitable, This was the Duke of Aylesbury, perhaps the largest landowner in Europe, and known only as a horsebreeder until he began to write abrupt little letters about the Budget. He led the French Duke upstairs, talking trivialties in a hearty way, and there presented him to another and more important English oligarch, who got up from a writing-desk with a slightly senile jerk. ”

“ Lady Mary was the only daughter of Charles, third Earl of Aylesbury, by his third wife, Caroline, daughter of John Campbell, Duke of Argyle, who survived him and married, not General Conway, but General Henry Seymour, brother of the first Marquis of Hertford. Lady Mary Bruce married Charles, third Duke of Richmond, and died without issue. Thomas Brudenell took the name and arms of Bruce in addition to his own, and in 1776 was created Earl of Aylesbury, the title having become extinct at the death of his uncle. ”

“ Aylesbury, in the last few years of its existence, has, however, left us something by which we may see, described at first-hand, the life and surroundings of a first-class old coaching and posting inn between 1812 and those middle years of the ’60’s, when a few branch-road coaches were yet left, and the Squire and Agriculture were still prosperous. ”

“ On the 12th of September Cromwell arrived in town; Bulstrode, Whitelock, and three other gentlemen had been sent down to meet him and conduct him to London. They met him near Aylesbury, and they all joined a hawking party by the way. At Aylesbury they passed the night. Oliver was very affable, and presented to each of the commissioners a horse taken in the battle and a couple of Scotch prisoners. ”

“ Charnock, Porter, Goodman, Parkyns and Fenwick were present. The Earl of Aylesbury was there, a man whose attachment to the exiled house was notorious, but who always denied that he had ever thought of effecting a restoration by immoral means. His denial would be entitled to more credit if he had not, by taking the oaths to the government against which he was constantly intriguing, forfeited the right to be considered as a man of conscience and honour. ”

“ Mary Penington herself, with her younger children, went down to her husband at Aylesbury. Guli, with her maid, went to Bristol, to see her former maid, Anne Hersent, who was married to a merchant of that city, whose name was Thomas Biss; and I went to Aylesbury with the children, but not finding the place agreeable to my health, I soon left it, and returning to Chalfont, took a lodging, and was dieted in the house of a friendly man, and after some time went to Bristol to conduct Guli home. ”

“ In 1618 he made a tour in France, which he humorously described in an epistle to his friend Sir Thomas Aylesbury, and in 1619 the death of his father left him a little landed property in the city of London. ”

“ The whole countryside literally teems with picturesque evidences of the past life and history of England. Ancient landmarks and associations are so numerous that it is difficult to mention a few without seeming to ignore unfairly their equally interesting neighbours. Let us take the London road, which enters the shire from Middlesex and makes for Aylesbury, a meandering road with patches of scenery strongly suggestive of Birket Foster's landscapes. ”

“ Wharton was urgent with his hearers in the upper house to look to the distracted state of Scotland, and to refrain from irritating the dissenters at home. Unpopular as the success of these manœuvres rendered Wharton with the majority in the House of Commons, he was rendered still more obnoxious by the underground influence which he wielded throughout the Aylesbury franchise case. Throughout 1703 and the following year he gave his steady support to Matthew Ashby, the burgess of Aylesbury, against the returning officer, who was also mayor of Aylesbury, William White. ”

“ In witness whereof, to these presents, I have set my seal, this 4th day of May, in the 14th year of the reign of my Sovereign Lady Elizabeth, by the grace of God, of England, France, and Ireland, Queen, &c." Aylesbury was made a borough town by a charter of Queen Mary, in 1554. The Reform Bill has made no alteration in the number of members. The electors are those of the old constituency, consisting of freeholders of the hundred, and house-keepers not receiving alms ”

“ Aylesbury, standing on a hill, in the midst of one of the richest, if not the richest, tracts of pasture lands in England, is very ancient without being venerable. The right of returning two members to Parliament is found periodically profitable to the inhabitants, and these two MP’s with a little lace, constitute its only manufactures. The loss of the coaching trade by the substitution of the railroad, was a great blow to its local prosperity. ”

“ The neighbourhood of Aylesbury, the palaces of the larger territorials, are modern examples of this truth, that the economic power of a district does not reside in its productive capacity, but in its capacity for effective demand. And it is undoubtedly true that if there were anything permanent in modern society we should be witnessing in the wealthier quarters of Paris and London, in the Riviera in the holiday part of Egypt, and in certain centres of provincial luxury in England, in France, and in Western Germany, the foundation of a permanent economic superiority. ”

“ Sir David Bruce, who happened to be at the other end of the room, and seated next to Lady Adelaide, said to her in an under tone, "Lady Aylesbury is so spiteful and malicious, that I am certain she must be nearly related to Euryale, one of the Gorgons, own-sister to Medusa, who was subject neither to old age nor death!" ”

“ Thus holding her, she sat rigidly upright, her strange, still eyes glaring across the room at Inspector Aylesbury. Her whole pose was instinct with challenge, with defiance, and in that moment I identified the illusive memory which the eyes of Madame so often had conjured up in my mind.
Once, years before, I had seen a wounded tigress standing over her cubs, a beautiful, fearless creature, blazing defiance with dying eyes upon those who had destroyed her, the mother-instinct supreme to the last; for as she fell to rise no more she had thrown her paw around the cowering cubs. ”

“ Is better than the commons protestation.
Trust those that at the test their lives will lay,
And know no arts, but to deserve, and pray:
Whilst they, that buy preferment without praying,
Begin with broyles, and finish with betraying.
[85]
SIR THOMAS AYLESBURY, A Londoner born, was second son of William Aylesbury by Anne his wife, daughter of John Poole, esq., and from Westminster School removed to Christ-Church, Oxford, in 1598, where he became a fellow-student with Corbet, and where, on the 9th of June 1605, they took the degree of master of arts together. ”

“ Being now at liberty, I walked over to Aylesbury, with some other Friends, to visit my dear friend Isaac Penington, who was still a prisoner there. With him I found dear John Whitehead, and between sixty and seventy more, being well nigh all the men Friends that were then in the county of Bucks; many of them were taken out of their houses by armed men, and sent to prison, as I had been, for refusing to swear. Most of these were thrust into an old room behind the gaol, which had anciently been a malt-house, but was now so decayed that it was scarce fit for a doghouse ”

“ For a justice of the peace in this county, who was called Sir Dennis Hampson, of Taplow, breaking in with a party of horse upon a little meeting near Wooburn, in his neighbourhood, the 1st of the fifth month, 1683, sent most of the men, to the number of twenty-three, whom he found there, to Aylesbury prison, though most of them were poor men who lived by their labour ”