Aubrey

Aubrey, John, an eminent antiquary, born of a wealthy Herefordshire family in 1626. He went to Oxford, became later on a student of the Middle Temple, and spent most of his life in London. He joined Harrington's Rota Club, and at the Restoration was elected one of the first members of the Royal Society, but having lost all his property by lawsuits and mismanagement, he had in middle life to depend on the kindness of friends, to whom "Old Aubrey's" conversation was a source of delight. He knew Hobbes, Milton, Dryden, Sam. Butler, Boyle, and all the literary men of his day. Many of the lives in Anthony Wood's Athenae Oxonienses were by his hand, and he supplied material to Dugdale and to Blackburn. His own great work was the Perambulation of Surrey. Many curious facts are treasured in his Miscellanies. His Architectonia Sacra and History of Wiltshire were not published until after his death, which occurred in 1697.