Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Macaulay, Aulay
MACAULAY, AULAY (1758–1819), miscellaneous writer, born in 1758, was the eldest son of John Macaulay, by his second wife. Zachary Macaulay [q. v.] was his brother and Lord Macaulay his nephew. He graduated M.A. at Glasgow in 1778, and while in residence there contributed to ‘Ruddiman's Magazine,’ under the signature ‘Academicus.’ After acting for three years as tutor to the sons of Mr. J. F. Barham at Bedford, he took holy orders, and obtained a curacy at Claybrooke, Leicestershire. He remained there until 1789, when he became rector of Frolesworth, but resigned that living in 1790. He had been admitted in 1785 at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, but his name does not appear in the ‘Graduati Cantabrigienses.’ In 1793 he went on a tour in Holland and Belgium, an account of which he wrote for the ‘Gentleman's Magazine,’ 1793–4; and next year, as travelling tutor to a son of Sir W. Farquhar, he visited the court of the Duke of Brunswick, and gave English lessons to his daughter, afterwards Queen Caroline, gaining the sincere regard of her mother, the Duchess. In 1796, after his return, Macaulay was presented by his brother-in-law, Thomas Babington, M.P. for Leicester, to the living of Rothley. In 1815 he made another tour on the continent (Gent. Mag. 1815–17), and four years later, on 24 Feb. 1819, died of apoplexy, leaving a widow (daughter of John Heyrick, the ‘venerable town clerk of Leicester’ from 1764 to 1791) and eight sons. He was for many years engaged upon a life of Melancthon, but never sent it to press, and had also meditated an editio expurgata of Pope. For Nichols's ‘History of Leicestershire’ he wrote ‘The History and Antiquities of Claybrooke, in the County of Leicester, including the Chapelries of Wibtoft, Little Wigston, and the Hamlets of Bittesby and Ullesthorpe,’ and transcribed an original history of the family of Fielding in the library of Nuneham. He must be distinguished from Aulay Macaulay (1673–1758), father of Kenneth Macaulay [q. v.]
Macaulay also published, besides three separate sermons:
- ‘Essays on various Subjects of Taste and Criticism,’ 1780.
- ‘Two Discourses on Sovereign Power and Liberty of Conscience, translated from the Latin of Professor Noodt of Leyden, with Notes and Illustrations,’ 1781.
His second son, Colin Campbell Macaulay (1799–1853), was educated at Rugby, travelled in Portugal, and in 1831 became partner in a firm of solicitors at Leicester. He was president of the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society in 1847, and again in 1848, and made several valuable contributions to their transactions, including historical papers on Cardinal Wolsey (1849), the Duke of Marlborough (1850), and Queen Elizabeth (1851). He died on 20 Oct. 1853 at Knighton Lodge, Leicester, and was buried at Rothley. By his wife Mary Kendall, eldest daughter of Richard Warner Wood, he left a son and a daughter.
[Gent. Mag. 1819, pt. i. pp. 276–7; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. ix. 82–6, and Lit. Illustr. iii. 752; Trevelyan's Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, i. 8, ii. 435.]