Biography

Ayloffe was descended from a very ancient family settled originally in Kent and subsequently in Essex, whose origin has been traced to Saxon times. On 14 February 1553-4 he was admitted a student of Lincoln's Inn

Lincoln's Inn

The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is one of four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar. The other three are Middle Temple, Inner Temple and Gray's Inn. Although Lincoln's Inn is able to trace its official records beyond...

, where two other near relatives, bearing the same name, distinguished themselves in the sixteenth century, and in 1560 he was called to the bar. After being appointed "reader" at his inn of court in Lent term, 1571, he was made serjeant-at-law

Serjeant-at-law

The Serjeants-at-Law was an order of barristers at the English bar. The position of Serjeant-at-Law , or Sergeant-Counter, was centuries old; there are writs dating to 1300 which identify them as descended from figures in France prior to the Norman Conquest...

 in 1577, at the same time as Sir Edmund Anderson

Edmund Anderson

Sir Edmund Anderson , Chief Justice of the Common Pleas under Elizabeth I, sat as judge at the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots.-Life:The Anderson family originated in Scotland and then came to Northumberland...

, afterwards the well-known lord chief justice of the Common Pleas. A notice of a banquet in the Middle Temple

Middle Temple

The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, commonly known as Middle Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court exclusively entitled to call their members to the English Bar as barristers; the others being the Inner Temple, Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn...

 hall, given by Ayloffe with other barristers upon whom a similar distinction had just been conferred, to celebrate their promotion, is preserved among the Ashmolean manuscripts at Oxford.

No record is known of Ayloffe's elevation to the bench, but he is found acting as judge in the court of Queen's Bench in 1579, and his judgments are reported by Dyer, Coke, and Savile after that date, which may therefore be regarded as the probable year of his appointment. He was present in 1581 at the trial of Edmund Campion

Edmund Campion

Saint Edmund Campion, S.J. was an English Roman Catholic martyr and Jesuit priest. While conducting an underground ministry in officially Protestant England, Campion was arrested by priest hunters. Convicted of high treason by a kangaroo court, he was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn...

 and other seminary priests, and special attention is called to the part he played on that occasion in a pamphlet published by English Catholics at Pans shortly afterwards, and bearing the title An Epistle of Comfort to the Reverend Priestes and to the Honorable, Worshipful and other of the Laye sort restrayned in Durance for the Catholike Fayth, 12mo. On page 202 it is there stated, on the evidence of eye-witnesses, that while sitting in court after the other judges had retired, and while the jury were considering their verdict, Ayloffe took off his glove and found his hand and ring covered with blood without any apparent cause, and that, in spite of his endeavours to wipe it away, the blood continued to flow as a miraculous sign of the injustice that polluted the judgment-seat. Some letters that passed between Ayloffe and the lord mayor of London with reference to the appointment of his brother as town clerk, are preserved among the city archives for the years 1580 and 1581. Ayloffe died on 8 November 1585.

Family

Ayloffe married Jane, daughter of Sir Eustace Sulyard, by whom he had three sons. The baronetcy of Ayloffe

Ayloffe Baronets

Ayloffe Baronet was created in the Baronetage of England by James I on 25 November 1611. It became extinct on 19 April 1781.#Sir William Ayloffe, 1st Baronet , knighted by James I in 1603, created a baronet in 1612 and sat as a member of parliament for Stockbridge from 1621 to 1622.#Sir Benjamin...

 was conferred by James I

James I of England

James VI and I was King of Scots as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the English and Scottish crowns on 24 March 1603...

 in 1612 upon William

Sir William Ayloffe, 1st Baronet

Sir William Ayloffe of Braxtead Magna, in Essex, was knighted by James I in 1603, created a baronet in 1612 and sat as a member of parliament for Stockbridge from 1621 to 1622.-Biography:...

, the eldest of them, who had been knighted in 1603, continued in the family till 1781. Sir William, the first baronet, was thrice married, and a large family survived him.