died 6 May of the same year, and was buried in his church in that city.
[Hugo Candidus, Hist. Ang. Script. ed. Sparke, p. 18; A.-S. Chron. sub an. 963; Florence of Worcester, sub an. 1002; Simeon, 162; Chron. Monast. de Abingdon (Rolls Ser.), i. 405, ii. 262; Will. Malm. de Gestis Pontif. iii. 270; Codex Dipl. ed. Kemble, Hist. Soc. iii. 280, 283, 291, 296.]
ALED, TUDUR (fl, 1480–1525), was a Welsh poet of Llansannan in Denbighshire, his bardic name being derived from the river Aled, which flows through his native place. From his own poems it appears that he was the pupil of his uncle Dafydd ab Edmwnd, and that he was a Franciscan friar. He was the bardic teacher of Gruffydd Hiraethog, a more distinguished poet than himself, and was pencerdd of the first Eisteddfod of Caerwys, held in 1525. Seven elegies and two other poems by Tudur Aled are printed in Rhys Jones's ‘Gorchestion Beirdd Cymru,’ 1773, in which is also given a short biographical notice of the poet. In this notice he is said to be ‘one of the most ardent, gifted, and skilful poets whom Wales has ever produced.’
[Jones's Gorcheston Beirdd Cymru, 1773.]
ALEFOUNDER, JOHN (d. 1795), portrait and miniature painter, studied at the Royal Academy, and gained a silver medal in 1782. He exhibited first, in 1777, an architectural design, following in successive years with work in various kinds. In 1784 he exhibited some theatrical portraits and portrait groups. He left England and realised some fortune by his paintings in India. He died from the effect of the climate of that country.
Bartolozzi engraved after Alefounder ‘Peter the Wild Boy’ in 1784, and a portrait by him of Edwin, the actor, as Lingo in the ‘Pleasant Surprise,’ was engraved in the same year by C. N. Hodges. At the Society of Arts may be seen a portrait by him of John Shipley.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Painters; Edwardes's Anecdotes of Painters; Nagler's Künstler-Lexicon, ed. 1872.]
ALESIUS, ALEXANDER (1500–1565), Lutheran divine (properly Aless, also called Alesse, ab Ales, and Alane), was born at Edinburgh, 23 April 1500. He came of a family which had attained to civic distinctions (‘atavi consules’); but his descent from Alexander Hales is merely a pious conjecture thrown out by his panegyrist Thomasius. Having been educated at the university of St. Andrews, he obtained a canonry there at an early age. Nothing else is known concerning his youthful days except his own story how he was miraculously preserved from rolling over a precipice, which mercy he attributed not to the verses from St. John carried about by him on his person, but to the faith of his parents (Thomasius, citing Alesius's Epistola dedicatoria Commentar. in Joannem). The troubles of his life began after he had reached the age of manhood. Luther's writings must have been introduced into Scotland before the act of 17 July 1525 prohibiting them was passed (M'Crie's Life of Knox, 17); and Alesius describes himself as having gained the applause of the theologians by confuting them with the arguments of Fisher, bishop of Rochester (Thomasius, citing Alesius's Expositio in Psalm. XXXVII.). Accordingly, in 1527 he was chosen to confer with Patrick Hamilton, the young Abbot of Fern, in order to reclaim him from the heretical opinions adopted by him in Germany from ‘Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, Francis Lambert, and other learned men’ (Spotiswoode). But Alesius, instead of convincing Hamilton, was himself sorely shaken by the arguments opposed to his own; and the heroic death of the ‘protomartyr’ of Scottish protestantism in 1528 [see Hamilton, Patrick] had the effect of strongly inclining the Canon of St. Andrews to the cause of the reformation. According to Thomasius, Alesius himself narrates several incidents of Hamilton's martyrdom in his ‘Expositio in Psalm. XXXVII.’ and in his answer to Cochlæus. Other martyrdoms followed in Scotland; and the hand of the church—as it seemed to those who must needs identify a policy with a person, the hand of Archbishop Beaton—was heavy upon ‘those who apprehended otherwise of the truth of things than formerly they did.’ Alesius, who had felt himself moved to deliver defore a provincial synod at St. Andrews a Latin oration against the incontinence of the clergy, gave deep offence to the provost of St. Andrews, who interpreted the reproof as personal to himself. It so happened that the entire chapter had been about to prefer a complaint to King James V against the brutality of the provost, who hereupon appeared with an armed band in the chapter-house, and very nearly made an end of Alesius on the spot. The offending canon was thrown into prison, where the infuriated provost made another attempt upon his life; and soon the other canons were likewise arrested. King James, having heard of the matter, at once commanded their liberation (graciously adding that he would have seen it carried out in person, had it been
