AUBREY, JOHN (1626-1697), English antiquary, was born at Easton Pierse or Percy, near Malmesbury, Wiltshire, his father being a country gentleman. In 1667 he made the acquain tante of Anthony a Wood at Oxford, and when Wood began to gather materials for his invaluable Athenae Oxonienses, Aubrey offered to collect information for him. From time to time he forwarded memoranda to him, and in 168o he began the "Minutes for Lives," which Wood was to use at his discretion. He left the task of verification largely to Wood. As a hanger-on in great houses he had little time for systematic work, and he wrote the "Lives" in the early morning while his hosts were sleeping off the effects of the dissipation of the night before. The principal charm of his "Minutes" lies in the amusing details he has to recount about his personages, and in the truthfulness that he permits himself in face of established reputations. In 1692 he complained bitterly that Wood had destroyed 4o pages of his ms., probably because of the dangerous freedom of Aubrey's pen. Wood was prosecuted eventually for insinuations against the judicial integrity of the earl of Clarendon. One of the two state ments called in question was certainly founded on information provided by Aubrey. This perhaps explains the estrangement between the two antiquaries and the ungrateful account that Wood gives of the elder man's character. "He was a shiftless person, roving and magotie-headed, and sometimes little better than erased. And being exceedingly credulous, would stuff his many letters sent to A. W. with follies and misinformations, which sometimes would guide him into the paths of In 1673 Aubrey began his "Perambulation" or "Survey" of the county of Surrey, and a "History of his Native District of Northern Wiltshire." In the next year he published his only completed, though certainly not his most valuable work, the Miscellanies, a collection of stories on ghosts and dreams. He died at Oxford and was buried in the church of St. Mary Magdalene.
Beside the works already mentioned, his papers included: "Archi tectonics Sacra," notes on ecclesiastical antiquities; and "Life of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury," which served as the basis of Dr. Blackburn's Latin Life, and also of Wood's account. His survey of Surrey was incorporated in R. Rawlinson's Natural History and Antiquities of Surrey 0719) ; his antiquarian notes on Wiltshire were printed in Wiltshire; the Topographical Collections of John Aubrey, corrected and enlarged by J. E. Jackson (Devizes, 1862) ; part of another ms. on "The Natural History of Wiltshire" was printed by John Britton in 1847 for the Wiltshire Topographical Society ; the Miscellanies were edited in 1890 for the Library of Old Authors; the "Minutes for Lives" were partially edited in 1813. A complete tran script, Brief Lives chiefly of Contemporaries set down by John Aubrey between the Years 5669 and 1696, was edited for the Clarendon Press in 1898 by the Rev. Andrew Clark from the mss. in the Bodleian library, Oxford.
See also John Britton, Memoir of John Aubrey (1845) ; David Masson, in the British Quarterly Review ( July 1856) ; Emile Montegut, Heures de lecture d'un critique (1891) ; and a catalogue of Aubrey's collections in The Life and Times of Anthony Wood . . ., by Andrew Clark (1891-1000, vol. iv. pp. 191-193) , which contains many other references to Aubrey.