Queen Elizabeth,’ 3 vols. fol. 1827–32, and for these labours he is said not only to have received the sum of 2,739l., but to have actually claimed further remuneration. His exorbitant charges and mode of editing were vigorously assailed by Mr. C. P. Cooper, then secretary to the commission, Sir. N. H. Nicolas, and others. A committee was appointed to inquire into the circumstances, and, after meeting no less than seventeen times, issued a report, of which twenty-five copies were printed for the private use of the board. His demands upon the corporation of Liverpool, to whom he charged between 3,000l. and 4,000l. for searches, formed the subject of a separate inquiry. Owing to his long absence, Bayley's office at the Tower was declared vacant in May 1834. He had been admitted of the Inner Temple in August 1815, but was never called to the bar. During the rest of his life he resided mostly at Cheltenham, but latterly at Paris, where he died 25 March 1869. His wife, Sophia Anne, daughter of the right hon. Colonel Robert Ward, whom he married in September 1824, died before him, on 17 June 1854. By her he left a daughter. As an antiquary Bayley's attainments were of a high order. His ‘History and Antiquities of the Tower of London,’ 2 parts, 4to, 1821–5, ranks among the very best works of its kind for excellence of style, acuteness of judgment, and unfailing accuracy of statement. An abridgment appeared in 1830, 8vo. Bayley announced, but did not publish, a history of London. He had also made considerable progress in a complete parliamentary history of England, and for this he obtained copious abstracts of the returns to parliament, 1702–10, from the original records in the Rolls chapel. This manuscript, together with a valuable collection of charters, letters patent, and other documents illustrative of local history, in three folio volumes, is now deposited in the British Museum. Bayley was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Society; to the former he was elected in 1819, to the latter in 1823.
[Register of Admissions to Inner Temple; Cooper's Observations on the Calendar of the Proceedings in Chancery (1832), pp. 73–82, and Appendix; Nicolas's Letter to Lord Brougham (1832), pp. 27–28, 45–47; Letters of Administration, P. C. C., granted 8 Feb. 1870; Gent. Mag. lxxxi. i. 192, xciv. ii. 272, xcv. ii. 256, (1854) xlii. 202; Burke's Peerage (1884), p. 84; Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee on Record Commission, 1836, and Appendix; Addit. MSS. 15661–4.]
BAYLEY, PETER (1778?–1823), miscellaneous writer and poet, was the son of Peter Bayley, a solicitor at Nantwich, and was born about 1778. In 1790 he entered Rugby school, and in Feb. 1796, at the age of seventeen, Merton College, Oxford. He did not take a degree. He was called to the bar at the Temple, but made no serious effort to pursue his profession. His interest in music and the drama rendered him neglectful of the dictates of prudence. ‘Instead of following the law,’ he, as it was said, ‘allowed the law to follow him,’ until he found himself in prison for debt. Subsequently he turned his attention to literature, and became editor of the ‘Museum,’ a weekly periodical. He died suddenly on his way to the opera, 25 Jan. 1823. Bayley published a volume of poems in 1803, and, besides contributing occasional verses to periodicals, printed for private circulation, at an early period, several specimens of an epic poem founded on the conquest of Wales, which appeared posthumously in 1824 under the title of ‘Idwal.’ In 1820, under the pseudonym of Giorgione di Castel Chiuso, he published a volume of verse, entitled ‘Sketches from St. George's-in-the-Fields,’ containing clever and graphic descriptions of various phases of London life and therefore possessing now considerable antiquarian and social interest. A second series appeared in 1821. A posthumous volume of ‘Poetry’ by Bayley was published in 1824, and on 20 April 1825 a tragedy, ‘Orestes,’ left by him in manuscript, was brought out at Covent Garden with Charles Kemble in the principal part, one of the most successful of Kemble's impersonations.
[Literary Museum for 1823, pp. 77–8; Gent. Mag. xciii. part i. 473; Cumberland's British Theatre, vol. xii.; Rugby School Register, p. 68; Oxford University Register.]
BAYLEY, ROBERT S. (d. 1859), independent minister, was educated at Highbury Theological College, and on quitting that institution was appointed to a pastorate at Louth in Lincolnshire. After some years of labour at that place he removed (1835) to Sheffield to take charge of the Howard Street congregation, where he remained for about ten years. While there he exerted himself actively in the establishment of an educational institution called the People's College, where he was also in the habit of lecturing on a variety of subjects. Here also in 1846 he started a monthly periodical called the ‘People's College Journal.’ It was printed at the college, and intended to advance the interests of popular education. It came to an untimely end in May of the following year. The next scene of Bayley's labours was
