Career

Audley was a royalist baron, born about 1175 to Adam de Alditheley, who held Alditheley (Staff) from the Verdons in 1186. He began his career as constable to Hugh de Lacy (whose first wife was a Verdon) when Earl of Ulster, and, on Hugh"s disgrace (1214), attached himself to Ranulph, the great royalist Earl of Chester, and was rewarded by the crown with a forfeited estate (1216). He endowed the nearby Cistercian Abbey of Saint Mary at Hulton in 1223, and donated to it a large amount of land, some of which was an inheritance from his mother and some of which was purchased.

He served as sheriff of Shropshire and Staffordshire 1227 and 1229, as deputy for the Earl of Chester, from whom he obtained large grants of lands.