Research Notes:
In an Oxford DNB article, Morgan states, [1]
Audley [de Audley] family (per. c. 1130–1391), gentry, derived from the north Staffordshire township from which they took their name, and which was the original caput of their lordship and the site of a bailey-less motte. The family held Audley from, and also bore the arms of, the Verdons, lords of Alton, Staffordshire, differenced (gules, fretty or), and may thus have shared, either as kinsmen or followers, in the early twelfth-century redistribution of estates under Henry I which also established the Verdon family in north Staffordshire. Their connection with the Verdons, as members of the Lacy affinity in the conquest of Ireland, and of the affinity of the earls of Chester in England, continued into the thirteenth century.
Liulf de Audley (fl. 1130) is the first known representative of the family, but the early genealogy is insecure. The family acquired other English estates, mostly in the north midlands and south-west, and also lands in Wales and Ireland, through grants, marriage, and purchase, but its members were by practice curial and martial more often than country gentry. Their principal estates contained many tenants but little demesne. Liulf's son Adam de Audley (d. 1203) sat on Staffordshire assizes in the reigns of Richard I and John. His son Adam de Audley (d. 1211) was involved in the colonization of Ireland and in campaigns there, as constable of Ulster under Hugh de Lacy and recipient of grants in Ulster and co. Louth. He was succeeded by his brother Henry Audley (d. 1246) who used the Irish lands, notably the lordship of Dunleer in co. Louth, to set up a younger son. Much of Henry's own career was spent as a vigorous supporter of Ranulf (III), earl of Chester, for whom he was a frequent and prominent witness to charters, including the Cheshire Magna Carta of 1215, and with whose support he received further lands in the honour of Coventry, in Shropshire, and in north Staffordshire, and in 1214 purchased the residual Cheshire lands of the barony of Nantwich from Eleanor Malbank, one of its heirs.
By 1227 the Audley estates lay in a swathe across the east–west boundary of Cheshire, Shropshire, and Staffordshire, from the Welsh border to the Staffordshire moorlands. Henry Audley seems to have reorganized his new lands, establishing a market and burgage tenure at Betley, Staffordshire. The castle at Audley was abandoned in favour of new castles at Heighley, Staffordshire, and Redcastle, Shropshire, and a hall at Newhall near Nantwich in Cheshire. In 1219 he founded the Cistercian house at Hulton, Staffordshire, where he would be buried and which became the patronal house of the Audleys. Henry's son, James Audley (d. 1272), confirmed the family's position among the marcher lords in the thirteenth century. Matthew Paris described him as a 'powerful and wealthy lord on the Welsh border' (Paris, Chron., 5.656). It was in that role, after the end of the Anglo-Norman earldom in Cheshire in 1237, that the Audleys became confirmed royalists.
In an Oxford DNB article, Walker states, [2]
Audley, Henry (d. 1246), baron, was the second son of Adam de Audley (d. 1203), son of Liulf de Audley [see under Audley family]. The Audleys, of Anglo-Saxon ancestry, took their name from their Staffordshire manor of Audley, or Heleigh (Aldithelegh and many variants), granted to Henry's great-grandfather by Nicholas de Verdon in Stephen's reign. Henry's elder brother, Adam de Audley [see under Audley family], was the constable of Hugh de Lacy, earl of Ulster (d. 1242), and Henry may also have served the earl since both brothers received lands in Ulster. Audley had succeeded both his father and his brother by 1212, and in 1217 he married Bertred, daughter of Ralph Mainwaring, county justice of Chester.
… such was his activity in the royal service that he won for the Audleys an influence in border affairs out of proportion to their modest estates. Significantly, his daughter Emma married Gruffudd ap Madog, the powerful lord of Bromfield. On his death in the autumn of 1246 Henry Audley was succeeded by his son James Audley.
In an Oxford DNB article, Lloyd states, [3]
Audley, James (d. 1272), magnate, was the son and heir of Henry Audley and Bertred, daughter of Ralph Mainwaring, county justice of Chester. He had paid homage to Henry III for his father's lands by 19 November 1246. He had one brother, Ralph (d. before 1240), and his sister Alice married Peter de Montfort.
[1] Philip Morgan, "Audley [de Audley] Family," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004, online edition), [Oxford_Dictionary_National_Biography], [OxfordDNB(UM)].
[2] R. F. Walker, "Audley, Henry, (d. 1246), " Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004, online edition), [Oxford_Dictionary_National_Biography], [OxfordDNB(UM)].
[3] Simon Lloyd, "Audley, James, (d. 1272), " Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004, online edition), [Oxford_Dictionary_National_Biography], [OxfordDNB(UM)].