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AUDLEY, Henry (d.1606), of Knighton, Dorset and Fawley, Hants.
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Biography Detail
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Family and Education
m. by 1572, Cecily, da. of John More†, of Crabbet, Worth, Suss., 2da.1
Offices Held
Receiver of the revenue in the Exchequer for Hants, Wilts., and Glos. c.1595; freeman, Southampton 16 Jan. 1597.2
Biography
Only a few isolated references to Audley have survived. At the time of his death he had ‘long’ held the manor of Knighton, and the inclusion of his name among a group of lawyers asked to contribute to the cost of the Irish wars in 1599 suggests that he must have had some legal education. By the 1590s he was an Exchequer official and was appointed receiver in charge of the revenues of the bishopric of Winchester during a vacancy. His return to Parliament for Whitchurch, a borough owned by the dean and chapter of Winchester, would point to an earlier connexion with the diocese. It is likely that he was the Edward Audley who served on the subsidy committee (24 Feb. 1585) and also the ‘Mr. Audley’ who served on committees concerned with tellers and receivers (10 Mar. 1585), a private bill (16 Mar.) and the preservation of game (17 Mar.). In later years he acquired property in Whitchurch, taking a 90-year lease of a manor there in about 1596, and owning, at the time of his death, a large tenement in the borough. In 1605 he settled most of his lands in Dorset on his wife with remainder to one Thomas Harvey, and in his will, made 6 Nov. 1606, left her his Hampshire property, which was entirely leasehold and included his estate at Fawley. He appointed her sole executrix and made William Pytt of Westminster, William Christmas of Southampton and his brother-in-law, Edward More of Odiham, the overseers. He died six days later, and a brass tablet was erected to his memory in Fawley church. His surviving daughter contested the will, but judgment was given in his widow’s favour, 13 Nov. 1607.3
