James Audley

James Audley had spent much of his time, as did his father, arbitrating between the English lords and the Welsh and was appointed one of the royalist members of the council of fifteen appointed to advise Henry in accordance with the provisions of Oxford. A year later he witnessed, as James of Altithel, the king's confirmation of the council's powers on the 18th of October 1258, and by the end of 1264 he replaced his brother in law, Peter de Montfort, (no relation to Simon) as Constable of both Bridgnorth and Shrewsbury Castles. 

Audley was a supporter of Henry III and was with the king at the Battle of Northampton and the Battle of Lewes in 1264. He had married Ela, the granddaughter of William Longspree, the acknowledge illegitimate son of Henry II, but their relationship was not a happy one, and this may have been one reason why my ancestor, Alice Mohun, became Audley's mistress and the mother to his son James.

​In 1237, Alice's first husband had died and it was not until 1245 that she remarried. That year, James Audley had witnessed a Charter issued by Alice’s father confirming the Soke of Mohun in Westminster to Alice and Robert Beauchamp and it maybe that it was in connection with this Alice had met Audley.

Alice gave birth to six children with Beauchamp and James Audley was the father of six children with Ela Longspree, but where Alice and James's son fits in (date wise) I am yet to find out.
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James Audley gave a number of manors and land to Alice but she had to fight to retain them, which after his death she succeeded in doing.

James Audley appears in another of my family histories. His elder sister, Amice Audley, had married into my Whitchurch/Blanchminster family of Shropshire, and he appears in a dispute of the over the warship of the Whitchurch heiresses with John de Warenne the Earl of Surrey.

Below is tomb of the William Longspree, the great grandfather of Alice's son James.