Aubrey, John
ACHIEVEMENT(S): Biographies
DATE/PLACE OF BIRTH: 12 March 1626, at Easton Percy, Wiltshire, England
DATE/PLACE/AGE AT DEATH: 5/6 June 1697, in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England. Aged 71
DISCIPLINE: Antiquarian and writer
FIELD: Literature
LANGUAGE: English
PARENTS: Richard Aubrey (1603-52) and Deborah Lyte (1610-86), married 1625
SIBLINGS: Three younger siblings died in infancy; two brothers, William(1643-1707) and Thomas (1645-81)
SPOUSE: None
CHILDREN: None
EDUCATION: Rev. Robert Latimer's School at Leigh Delamere, 1634; private
tutors, 1635-38; boarding school at Blandford, 1638-42; Trinity College,
University of Oxford, 1642-43; Middle Temple, London, 1646; Trinity College,
1646-48
MAJOR WORK: 'Brief Lives', 1669-96 (published 1898)
LIFE AND TIMES:
In 1646 Aubrey enrolled as a student of law at the Middle Temple, London, but increasingly spent time at Oxford, a place he had grown to love and where he madehis many friendships - including that with Harvey* - and began his interest in antiquarianism.
He also spent much of his time at home in Wiltshire, and it was in 1648, while out hunting with some friends near Avebury in Wiltshire, that he discovered and drew public attention to the magnificent prehistoric stone circle there. From this point, Aubrey devoted much time to archaeological research.
In 1652 Aubrey inherited the large family estates, along with numerous complicated lawsuits and debts. From this point, despite the many encumbrances on his inheritance, Aubrey lived life extravagantly and to the full, moving constantly between Oxford and London to meet the intellectuals and celebrities of the day.
During the 1650s,his great charm won the friendship of among others, SPetty*, Elias Ashmole, and the architectWren*, and in 1663 his literary and scientific interests gained him membership of the newly formed Royal Society*, where he met all the famous men.
His financial difficulties had already caused him to sell one estate (1662), and by 1671 Aubrey had been compelled to sell off all his remaining land and was effectively ruined, becoming until his death a pensioner in the houses of his wealthy friends, his hosts including Hobbes*.
Meanwhile, in 1667 Aubrey had met the historian and antiquarian Anthony a Wood, who persuaded him to contribute his mass of original observations to Wood’s: ''History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford', published in 1674. After having been granted a royal patent to pursue antiquarian enquiries (1671), in 1673, he also began his "Perambulation" or "Survey" of the county of Surrey, during which he interviewed hundreds of people and made a large number of topographical and historical notes.
In 1680, Aubrey began sending Wood the biographical sketches of famous Englishmen, which were eventually gathered together to form his mostfamous work: 'Brief Lives' (first published 1813). Over the 1680s Aubrey collected some 400 biographical sketches (he described his method as setting "things down tumultuarily, as if tumbled out of a Sack") full of vivid and intimate touches on character, actions, and personal appearance, often freely expressed but with little malice.
His wide acquaintanceship enabled him to write at first hand of many of his contemporaries, while the sketches of men of an earlier generation, such as Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Raleigh, and Bacon, used reports and anecdotes, more or less authentic, which were in current circulation. The longest and most important of these lives, that of Aubrey's friend Thomas Hobbes, was written at length for Blackburne's Latin biography of the philosopher.
His most important contribution to the study of British antiquities, his length and discursive 'Monumenta Britannica', contained the results of Aubrey's lifelong field-work at Avebury and Stonehenge, as well as notes on many other ancient sites, includingWayland's Smithy.
Most important perhaps, his 'Monumenta Britannica' contains a plan of Stonehenge showing a series of depressions immediately inside the enclosing earthwork which finally, during excavations undertaken in 1921-25 by the Society of Antiquaries, were discovered to be holes cut in the chalk to hold timber uprights.
A total of 56 holes were discovered, named the Aubrey Holes in honour of his observation, and are now recognized as belonging to the first phase of the monument construction. Aubrey's manuscript also contains notes on the "druidical" nature of Stonehenge and other prehistoric sites (the original title of the work was to be 'Templa Druidum'), which were developed by the antiquarian William Stukeley in the following century into his claim that Stonehenge and Avebury were ancient cult centres of the Druids.
Although Aubrey planned to have 'Monumenta Britannica' published in 1692, and a prospectus and specimen page issued in 1693, nothing more came of the project, and it remains unpublished.
In 1695 he then decided that his 'History of his Native District of Northern Wiltshire', on which he had been working since 1659, would never be "stitched up" because of his advanced years, so he handed it over for completion to Thomas Tanner, Bishop of St. Asaph in 1695, and it was finally published in two parts as 'The NaturalmHistory of Wiltshire’ (1847) and 'Wiltshire Collections' (1862), full of topographical material. He finally published the one and only work to appear in his lifetime, 'Miscellanies' (1696) which, besides being an entertaining volume of stories, contains much current folklore concerning omens, ghosts, second-sight and other supernatural beliefs.
ASSESSMENT: A major contributor to the development of biography.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: He was a friend of Hooke* andRay*.
He knew Allen*
ONELINER: John Aubrey, biographer and first investigator of Stonehenge
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
DSB, EB, DNB
Tylden-Wright, David, John Aubrey: A Life, London: HarperCollins, 1991