General Notes

Henry of Aldithley, 2nd son of Adam of Aldithley, (who d. bet. 1203 and 1211) by Emma, daughter of Ralf fitz Orm, of Darlaston, Staffs; was b. about 1175; with his father, he was witness to a charter of Harvey Bagot in 1194.  He bought large estates from Eleanor Malbank in 1214; in 1227 he acquired the manors of Edgmund and Newport, and in 1230 that of Ford, all in Salop, and all held by him direct from the Crown, though not by military or knight service.  He was Under Sheriff of Salop and co. Stafford 1217-20, and Sheriff 1227-32; was in command of the Welsh Marches 1223-46.  He built the castle of Heligh, co. Stafford; and Red Castle, Salop.  In 1223 he founded Hulton Abbey.  He was appointed Custodian of Chester and Beeston Castle, 22 June 1237, on the extinction of the the earldom of Chester.  He m. in 1217, Bertred, daughter of Ralf Mainwaring, Seneschal of Chester.  He d. in 1246, shortly bef. Nov.  His widow was living in 1249.  She was buried in Hulton Abbey.  [Complete Peerage I:337 XIV:50]

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"That this family of Alditheley, vulgarly called Audley," says Dugdale, "came to be great and eminent, the ensuing discourse will sufficiently manifest: but that the rise thereof was no higher than King John's time, and that the first who assumed this surname was a branch of that ancient and noble family of Verdon, whose chief seat was at Alton Castle in the northern part of Staffordshire, I am very inclined to believe; partly by reason that Henry had the inheritance of Alditheley given him by Nicholas de Verdon, who d. in the 16th Henry III [1232], or near that time; and partly for that he bore for his arms the same ordinary as Vernon did. . .so that probably the ancestor of this Henry first seated himself at Alditheley: for that there hath been an ancient mansion there, the large moat, northwards from the parish church there (somewhat less than a furlong, and upon the chief part of a fair ascent), do sufficiently manifest."

Henry de Alditheley, to whom Dugdale alludes above, being in great favour with Ranulph, Earl of Chester and Lincoln (the most powerful subject of England in his time), obtained from that nobleman a grant of Newhall in Cheshire with manors in Staffordshire and other parts--and for his adhesion to King John, in that monarch's struggle with the insurrectionary barons, a royal grant of the lordship of Storton in Warwickshire, part of the possessions of Roger de Summerville. In the first four years of King Henry III [1216-1220], he executed the office of sheriff for the counties of Salop and Stafford as deputy for his patron, the great Earl Ranulph. In the 10th of Henry III [1226], this Henry de Alditheley was appointed governor of the castles of Carmarthen and Cardigan and made sheriff the next year of the counties of Salop and Stafford and constable of the castles of Salop and Bridgenorth, which sheriffalty he held for five years. Upon his retirement from office, he had a confirmation of all such lands whereof he was then possessed as well those granted to him by Ranulph, Earl of Chester, and Nicholas de Verdon, as those in Ireland given him by Hugh de Lacy, Earl of Ulster, whose constable he was in that province. He subsequently obtained divers other territorial grants from the crown, but, notwithstanding, when Richard Mareschall, Earl of Pembroke, rebelled and made an incursion into Wales, the king, Henry III, thought it prudent to secure the persons of this Henry and all the other barons-marchers. He was afterwards, however, constituted governor of Shrewsbury in place of John de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, and, on the death of John, Earl of Chester, governor of the castle of Chester, and also that of Beeston, then called the "Castle on the Rock," and soon after made governor of Newcastle-under-Lyne. This powerful feudal baron m. Bertred, dau. of Ralph de Meisnil-warin, of Cheshire, and had a son, James, and a dau., Emme, who m. Griffith ap Madoc, Lord of Bromefield, a person of great power in Wales. He d. in 1236, having founded and endowed the Abbey of Hilton near to his castle at Heleigh, in Staffordshire, for Cistercian monks, and was s. by his son, James de Alditheley. [Sir Bernard Burke, Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited and Extinct Peerages, Burke's Peerage, Ltd., London, England, 1883, p. 15, Audley, Barons Audley, of Heleigh]