Old Judge Sir <Edward> Atkins remembred Dr. A. when he was a boy; he lay at his father's house in Glocestershire: he kept his coach, which was rare in those dayes. The Judge told me they then (vulgarly) called it a Quitch. I have his originall picture. He had a delicate, quick, lively and piercing black eie, fresh complexion, and a severe eie browe. The figure in his monument at St. Paules is not like him, it is too big.
Heroum filii noxae: he engrossed all the witt of the family, so that none descended from him can pretend to any. 'Twas pitty that Dr. Fuller had not mentioned him amongst his Worthys in that countie.
When he lay dyeing, he desired them to send for a goodman; they thought he meant Dr. Goodman, deane of St. Paules, but he meant a priest, as I have heard my cosen John Madock say. Capt. Pugh was wont to say that civilians (as most learned an<d> gent.) naturally incline to the church of Rome; and the common lawyers, as more ignorant and clownish, to the church of Geneva.
Wilgiford, his relict, maried ... Browne, of Willey, in com. Surrey.
The inscription on his monument in St. Paul's church:—
Gulielmo Aubreo clara familia in Breconia orto, LL. in Oxonia Doctori, ac Regio Professori, Archiepiscopi Cantuariensis causarum Auditori et Vicario in spiritualibus Generali, Exercitus Regii ad St. Quentin Supremo Juridico, in Limitaneum Walliae Consilium adscito, Cancellariae Magistro, et Reginae Elizabethae à supplicum libellis: Viro exquisita eruditione, singulari prudentia, et moribus suavissimis qui (tribus filiis, et sex filiabus e Wilgiforda uxore susceptis), aeternam in Christo vitam expectans, animam Deo xxiii Julii 1595, aetatis suae 66, placidè reddidit;
Optimo patri Edvardus et Thomas, milites, ac Johannes, armiger, filii moestissimi, posuerunt.
[260]This Dr. W. Aubrey was related to the first William, earl of Pembroke, two wayes (as appeares by comparing the old pedegre at Wilton with that of the Aubreys); by Melin and Philip ap Elider (the Welsh men are all kinne); and it is exceeding probable that the earle was instrumentall in his rise. When the earl of Pembroke was generall at St. Quintins in France, Dr. Aubrey was his judge advocat. In the Doctor's will is mention of a great piece of silver plate, the bequest of the right honble the earle of Pembroke.
... Stephens, the clarke of St. Benets, Paules Wharfe, tells me that Dr. W. Aubrey gave xxs. per annum for ever to that parish.