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Individual:
"That this family of Alditheley, vulgarly called Audley," says Dugdale,
"came to be great and eminent, the ensuing discourse will sufficientlymanifest: 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 ancientand noble family of Verdon, whose chief seat was at Alton Castle in thenorthern part of Staffordshire, I am very inclined to believe; partly byreason that Henry had the inheritance of Alditheley given him by Nicholasde Verdon, who d. in the 16th Henry III [1232], or near that time; andpartly for that he bore for his arms the same ordinary as Vernon did. ..so that probably the ancestor of this Henry first seated himself atAlditheley: for that there hath been an ancient mansion there, the largemoat, northwards from the parish church there (somewhat less than afurlong, and upon the chief part of a fair ascent), do sufficientlymanifest."
Henry de Alditheley, to whom Dugdale alludes above, being in great favour with Ranulph, Earl of Chester and Lincoln (the most powerful subject ofEngland in his time), obtained from that nobleman a grant of Newhall inCheshire with manors in Staffordshire and other parts--and for hisadhesion to King John, in that monarch's struggle with theinsurrectionary barons, a royal grant of the lordship of Storton inWarwickshire, part of the possessions of Roger de Summerville. In thefirst four years of King Henry III [1216-1220], he executed the office ofsheriff 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 deAlditheley was appointed governor of the castles of Carmarthen andCardigan and made sheriff the next year of the counties of Salop andStafford and constable of the castles of Salop and Bridgenorth, whichsheriffalty he held for five years. Upon his retirement from office, hehad a confirmation of all such lands whereof he was then possessed aswell those granted to him by Ranulph, Earl of Chester, and Nicholas deVerdon, as those in Ireland given him by Hugh de Lacy, Earl of Ulster,whose constable he was in that province. He subsequently obtained diversother territorial grants from the crown, but, notwithstanding, whenRichard Mareschall, Earl of Pembroke, rebelled and made an incursion intoWales, the king, Henry III, thought it prudent to secure the persons ofthis Henry and all the other barons-marchers. He was afterwards, however,constituted governor of Shrewsbury in place of John de Lacy, Earl ofLincoln, and, on the death of John, Earl of Chester, governor of thecastle of Chester, and also that of Beeston, then called the "Castle onthe Rock," and soon after made governor of Newcastle-under-Lyne. Thispowerful feudal baron m. Bertred, dau. of Ralph de Meisnil-warin, ofCheshire, and had a son, James, and a dau., Emme, who m. Griffith apMadoc, Lord of Bromefield, a person of great power in Wales. He d. in1236, having founded and endowed the Abbey of Hilton near to his castleat Heleigh, in Staffordshire, for Cistercian monks, and was s. by hisson, James de Alditheley. [Sir Bernard Burke, Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeitedand Extinct Peerages, Burke's Peerage, Ltd., London, England, 1883, p.15, Audley, Barons Audley, of Heleigh]
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