haziness of the weather. The want of success served the new ministry as an excuse to supersede him, which they did in January 1711. He held no further command till the accession of George I, when he was again appointed commander-in-chief, ranger of Greenwich Park, and governor of Greenwich Hospital. This office he held till his death; and during that time succeeded in establishing the hospital school for the sons of seamen, which, from small beginnings, has been gradually developed into the magnificent institution of the present day. In April 1717 he became one of the lords commissioners of the admiralty, but he resigned the appointment early the next year, when he was advanced to be rear-admiral of the United Kingdom, and at the same time raised to the peerage as Lord Aylmer of Balrath. He died 18 Aug. 1720.
A portrait, half-length, presented by his descendant, the fifth Lord Aylmer, is in the Painted Hall at Greenwich.
[Charnock's Biog. Nav. ii. 35; Brit. Mus. MSS. Add. 28122-4; Official Papers in the Public Record Office.]
AYLOFFE, JOHN (d. 1685), satirist, wrote one of the most drastic and powerful satires against the Stuarts, entitled 'Marvell's Ghost.' It was furtively circulated as a broadside, but was included in Nichols's 'Select Collection of Poems '(iii. 186). The editor calls him 'Captain John Ayloffe,' and says he was educated in Trinity College, Cambridge. This is all he knew. It seems certain that he was the John Ayloffe, Esq., who was executed before the gate of the Inner Temple on 30 Oct. 1685 for his participation in the Rye House plot. He went with the Earl of Argyle into Scotland, where he was taken, and made an attempt to destroy himself by inflicting a terrible wound in his belly. At his execution it came out that he was of the Temple: had been a 'clubber at the King's Head Tavern,' and 'a green-ribbon man.' 'Marvell's Ghost' is as burning and passionate in its invective as any of Marvell's own. He appears to have left a relative behind him in a William Ayloffe, author of a poem on the death of Charles II and accession of James II.
[Brit. Museum Broadsides; Hunter MSS. 24, 490; Dryden Miscell.]
AYLOFFE, Sir JOSEPH (1709–1781), baronet, an eminent antiquary, was the great-grandson of Sir William Ayloffe, first baronet, through his third wife [see Ayloffe, William, ad fin.], and was the son of Joseph Ayloffe, barrister-at-law of Gray's Inn and sometime recorder of Kingston-upon-Thames, who died in 1726. Born about 1709, Ayloffe was educated at Westminster, was admitted a student of Lincoln's Inn in 1724, and spent some time at St. John's College, Oxford, before 1728. In 1730 he succeeded, as sixth in succession, to the family baronetcy on the death of his unmarried cousin, the Rev. Sir John Ayloffe, a descendant of the first family of the original holder of the title. Sir Joseph seems very early in life to have manifested an interest in antiquities, which received at once the recognition of the learned, although for many years he was merely collecting information and published nothing. On 10 Feb. 1731-2 he was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and on 27 May of the same year a fellow of the Royal Society. Seven years later he became a member of the well-known literary club — 'the Gentlemen's Society at Spalding.' But he did not confine himself altogether to antiquarian research. In 1736-7 he was appointed secretary to the commission superintending the erection of Westminster Bridge; in 1750 he was auditor-general of the hospitals of Bethlehem and Bridewell; and in 1763, on the removal of the state archives from Whitehall and the establishment of a State Paper Office at the Treasury, he was nominated one of its three keepers. In 1751 Ayloffe took a prominent part in procuring a charter of incorporation for the Society of Antiquaries, of which he was for many years a vice-president, and at its meetings he very frequently read papers. He died at Kensington on 19 April 1781, and with him the baronetcy became extinct. He married, about 1734, Margaret, daughter of Charles Railton of Carlisle, by whom he had one son, who died of small-pox at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 1766. Both father and son were buried in Hendon churchyard. Sir Joseph was the intimate friend of his colleague at the State Paper Office, Thomas Astle, and of Richard Gough; the latter described Ayloffe as the English Montfaucon.
Ayloffe's published writings belong to his later life, and were never very successful with the general public. In 1751 he circulated proposals for printing by subscription the debates in parliament prior to the Restoration, in eight octavo volumes. But little favour was apparently extended to the scheme; although in 1773 it was advertised that the first volumes would soon be sent to press, none appear to have been published (cf. Rawlinson MSS. in the Bodleian, s. v. 'Ayloffe'). It was also in 1751 that Sir Joseph issued a prospectus inviting subscribers for a translation of Diderot's and D'Alembert's 'Encyclopedie,' with additional or expanded articles on subjects of
