463 



AYMAR, JAQUES. 



AYMON. 



t.M 



incorporation, he was one of the first council, and some years after- 

 wards he became vice-president. 



Upon the building of Westminster Bridge, in 1736, Ayloffe was 

 appointed secretary to the commissioners; in 1750 he was made 

 auditor-general of the hospitals of Bridewell and Bethlem ; and upon 

 the establishment of the new State-Paper Office in 1763, when the 

 papers were removed from the old gate at Whitehall to apartments at 

 the Treasury, he was one of the three commissioners appointed for 

 their preservation ; an office which must have assisted him materially 

 in the compilation of a very useful work which he published, in 1772, 

 upon the national records. This work, which forms a large quarto 

 volume, with a very full index, is entitled ' Calendars of the Ancient 

 Charters, and of the Welch and Scottish Rolls now remaining in the 

 Tower of London," with sundry other documents, embracing treaties 

 of peace between the kings of England and Scotland; catalogues of 

 records brought to Berwick from the Royal Treasury at Edinburgh, 

 and of other Scottish records ; transactions of the Scotch parliament 

 from May 15, 1639, to March 8, 1650 ; and memoranda concerning the 

 affairs of Ireland, extracted from the Tower records. The volume, 

 which is illustrated with four plates containing fac-similes of writing 

 of different periods, has an ' Introduction ' of seventy pages, ' giving 

 some account of the state of the Public Records from the Conquest to 

 the present time.' His other writings were chiefly papers for the 

 works of the Society of Antiquaries, some of which were printed sepa- 

 rately. About 1748 he prompted Mr. Kirby, of Ipswich, to make 

 srs of many monuments and buildings in Suffolk, some of which 

 were engraved and published, with a description, while others remained 

 unpublished in the possession of Sir Joseph, who purposed writing a 

 history of the county. About 1764 he drew up proposals for this 

 work, which did not however meet with encouragement, and being 

 disappointed in the supply of materials, Ayloffe abandoned the work. 

 Another work which was announced by him was a translation, with 

 con-iderable additions, especially of articles illustrative of the anti- 

 quities, history, laws, customs, manufactures, commerce, and curiosities, 

 of Great Britain and Ireland, of the ' Encyclopedic' then publishing at 

 Paris, under the direction of Diderot and D'Alembert. But the project 

 was not well received by the public, and the undertaking was dropped. 

 Towards the close of his life Ayloffe wrote descriptions of some monu- 

 ments in Westminster Abbey, of which engravings were made for the 

 Society of Antiquaries ; but he died before three sheets of the work 

 had passed through the press ; it was however continued by Gough, 

 and forms hi* well-known 'Sepulchral Monuments.' Nichols states 



1770 ; and new editions published in the following year, of Hearne's 

 'Curious Discourses,' in 2 vols. Svo, and of the ' Liber Niger Scaccarii,' 

 2 vols. Svo, to the latter of which he added the charters of Kingston- 

 on-Thames, of which place his father was recorder. He died at his 

 residence in Kennington Lane, Lambeth, on the 19th of April, 1781, 

 in his seventy-second year, and was buried, with his father and his 

 only son, at Hendon. 



(Abridged from the Biographical Dictionary of the Society for the 

 Difftunon of Utefu.1 Knowledge.) 



AY.MAR, JAQUES, a peasant of Dauphind, who attracted the atten- 

 tion of all France, towards the close of the 17th century, by his 

 pretended powers of divination, was born at St. Veran, on the 8th of 

 September, 1662. He was bred to the business of a mason, but appears 

 to have soon forsaken it for the more profitable trade of wielding the 

 divining-rod. At first he confined his pretensions within the usual 

 limits, giving his assistance in the discovery of springs, mines, hidden 

 treasures, and obliterated boundaries ; but in course of time he pro- 

 fessed to have found a new and most important use of the magic rod. 

 By its help he not only pointed out where stolen property was hidden, 

 but followed the traces of the thieves until they were lodged in the 

 hands of the officers of justice. In 1688 and 1689 he is recorded to 

 have performed several feats of this nature in and around Grenoble, 

 but it was not until 1692 that his reputation rose to its height. Oil 

 the 5th of July in that year, at Lyon, a vintner and his wife were 

 murdered, and their shop robbed, under such circumstances that the 

 endeavours of the authorities to discover the perpetrators were fruitless. 

 At length Aymar was employed to trace the fugitives, of whom not 

 even the number was known. Provided with his rod, he proceeded 

 down the RhAne, pointing out to the officers every spot at which the 

 murderers, whom he pronounced to be three in number, had rested, 

 and the very vessels out of which they had drunk. Arrived at length 

 at the Camp of Sablon, he declared that the murderers were present ; 

 but, under pretence of the fear of ill-treatment from the soldiers, 

 should he then attempt to trace them more closely, he went back to 

 Lyon. Returning with a better attendance, he proceeded further 

 down the river, and at length stopped before the jail at Beaucaire, 

 which he declared to contain one of the objects of pursuit; and the 

 rod finally selected a hunchbacked young man just confined for a 

 petty th-aft as the criminal. He was taken on the charge of murder, 

 and, although he at first asserted his innocence, he soon confessed that 

 he had planned the robbery, and watched the door of the vintner's 

 hop while the murders were committed by his accomplices, two 

 native* of Provence. Aymar was then despatched in pursuit of the 



! latter, but it was found, by the assistance of the rod, that they had 



taken ship. They were still pursued by sea until within sight of 



Genoa, when it was evident the murderers had escaped out of the 



French territory, and the officers were compelled to put back. Shortly 



| after their return, the hunchback was condemned to be broken alive 



i on the wheel ; a sentence which was carried into effect on the 30th of 



August, 1692. 



The sensation produced by these events throughout France, and 

 especially in the learned world, was similar in its nature to that 

 produced by ' table-turning ' and other ' spiritual ' proceedings in our 

 own day. The facts were admitted, and numerous theories were put 

 forth to explain the marvel. One section of theorists, almost exactly 

 as with recent ' spiritual manifestations,' rejected all attempts at a 

 physical solution of the difficulty, and at once attributed Aymar's 

 performances to the direct agency of Satan. The Abbd Le Brim 

 produced an elaborate treatise on the subject, entitled ' Illusions des 

 Philosophes sur la Baguette." Au immense number of pamphlets on 

 both sides of the question flowed from the press in 1692 and 1693. 



In the meantime Aymar was sent for to Paris, at the instance of the 

 Prince de Conde, who wished to see with his own eyes the wonders 

 of his art. The removal was fatal to his pretensions, for the rod now 

 failed in every trial. It indicated springs where nothing was found, 

 on digging, but dry earth ; pointed out treasures in spots where stones 

 and rubbish only were deposited ; and finally led the prince into great 

 trouble and expense in re-discovering treasures which had been hidden 

 in the garden with the view of testing Aymar's powers, and which his 

 rod had passed over unmoved. At length, all his arts failing him, 

 Aymar acknowledged himself an impostor, and fell back into his 

 original obscurity. 



The affair of the hunchback executed at Lyon was never further 

 elucidated. It is not impossible that he was the innocent victim of a 

 prevailing excitement, in which he himself may have partaken. If 

 guilty, the probability is that Aymar knew of his participation in the 

 crime beforehand, and made use of the knowledge as a ready means 

 to gain credence in the powers of his art. Many of the treatises pub- 

 lished on the occasion of Aymar's performances with the rod betray a 

 degree of credulity which a very few years ago would have seemed 

 almost incredible. 



(Abridged from the Biographical Dictionary of the Society for the 

 Diffusion of Uiefid Knowledge.) 



AYMON, or HAIMON, Count of Ardennes, and his four sons, ' les 

 quatre fils Aymon,' named Alard, or Adalhard, Regnaud, Guiuhard, 

 and Richardet, are conspicuous among that class of half-historical 

 half-fictitious personages whose adventures form the subject of the 

 romances of chivalry which relate to Charlemagne's period, such as 

 the French romantic tales by Adenes, Huou de Villeneuve, and others, 

 and the more elaborate Italian romantic poems of Pulci, Bello, Tasso 

 (in his poem 'Rinaldo'), and above all the splendid epopeVs of Bo- 

 jardo and Ariosto, in which the sons of Aymou, and especially the 

 most illustrious of them, Regnault (Riualdo in Italian), act a prominent 

 part. 



The existence of Aymon, count of Ardennes, is mentioned by Arnold 

 Wion, a Benedictine historian and biographer, in his ' Lignum Vita;,' 

 or ' History of the Order of St. Benedict,' part ii., and by several other 

 historians. Cantimpre, or Thomas Cantipratanus, a Dominican monk 

 and miscellaneous writer of the middle of the 13th century, in his 

 work ' Miraculorum et Exemplorum Memorabilium sui Temporis libri 

 Duo,' edited by J. Colvenerius in 1605, asks, under the head of ' the 

 Folly of Tournaments,' those who piqued themselves on their feats of 

 horsemanship and jousting, " Whether they could ever expect to rival 

 the reputation of the famous horse Bayard, who lived in the time of 

 Charles, and had been dead more than five centuries, but whose memory 

 lived still ?" To this the editor Colvenerius adds this note in the 

 Appendix : " This horse Bayardus is commonly said to have belonged 

 to the four sons of Haimon, in the time of Charlemagne, and is called 

 in Belgian ' Rosbeyaert ;' or in French ' rouge Bayard.' Fabulous tales 

 of this horse are repeated to the present day both in French and in 

 German." Traditions about Bayard and the quatre fils Aymon aro 

 still preserved in Belgium. Several towns, and Mons among the rest, 

 have streets named ' des quatre fils Aymou.' In the county of Namur 

 there is a cliff, called the ' Roche a Bayard,' from which the horse, it 

 is said, leaped into the Maas. In the novel ' Les quatre fils Aymon,' 

 however, the story is that Charlemagne passing through Liege after 

 Rcgnault had set out for the Holy Land, ordered Bayard to be thrown 

 from the bridge into the Maa., with a millstone round his neck ; but 

 Bayard stemmed the current, leaped on shore, and " is said to bo still 

 alive in the forest of Ardennes." Bayard, or Ros-Beyaert in Flemish, 

 figured, and still figures, in some popular processions at Louvaiu, 

 Mechlin, and other parts of Belgium. 



The novel ' Les Quatre fils Aymon' was written by Huon de Ville- 

 neuve, a French poet, who lived under Philippe Auguste, and wrote 

 several chivalric romances concerning Charlemagne and his Paladins. 

 These romances were afterwards turned into prose, and we have 

 numerous editions of the pro<e version of the 'Quatre fils Ayinon.' 

 There is an English translation of the prose version : ' The right 

 Pleasant and Goodly HUturie of the Fouro Sonnet of Aimon,' im- 

 printed at London by Wyukyn de Worde, 1504. 



The name Baiualdus, or Reginalds, appears frequently iu the early 



