William Aylesbury

Who was William Aylesbury?

William Aylesbury, was an English translator from the Italian.

Aylesbury, although a supporter of Charles I, obtained an office under the Commonwealth, was the son of Sir Thomas Aylesbury; in 1628 he became a gentleman commoner at Christ Church, Oxford, and took his bachelor's degree in 1631, at the early age of sixteen. His sister Frances married Sir Edward Hyde, afterwards Lord Clarendon. Although possessing a large fortune, Aylesbury soon afterwards became, at the invitation of Charles I, governor to the young Duke of Buckingham and his brother, Lord Francis Villiers, and travelled with them through France and Italy. In 1640 Aylesbury was residing at Paris, and in his correspondence with his brother-in-law, Sir Edward Hyde, which is preserved in the Bodleian Library among the 'Clarendon Papers,' bitterly lamented the course of English politics under the Long Parliament. In the middle of May 1641 he returned from Paris to London with the Earl of Leicester, the English ambassador at the French court, with whom he had been apparently living in an official capacity for some months.