Thomas Ayliffe M.D Snr - Pioneer to South Australia

Could Dr. Thomas Hamilton Ayliffe, M.D. be one of George O'Brien Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont, FRS illegitimate children, and Elisabeth Ilive / Iliffe Wyndham a half sister by another man?

Could they be children of the previous marriage of Dame Margaret Ayloffe and when Sir Joseph Ayloffe, 6th Baronet died, they became without title due to him having no heirs?

Not as believable, some have Thomas 12, now this one is 3 and he recalls all this?

When Thomas Hamilton Ayliffe's (Snr) father fled his home one night, Thomas was only three years old. Thomas often quoted to his children and grandchildren that he was awakened in the dead of night and taken out of bed to kiss and bid his father farewell -- forever, as the event proved. He, recalling the fact with distinctness, remembered that his father wore a glittering dress (uniform or court dress), a plumed hat and that a sword hung at his side with a jewelled hilt, with which he, childlike, played while the father held him on his knee, caressing him and stroking his head, and his mother clinging around her husband weeping. Of his mother - a very beautiful woman - he remembered more, having seen her later; but from the time of his father's departure, in their relations with her, there appears to have been mystery and restraint. Their home was changed from a castle to a cottage buried in trees; his mother wore plain clothes; was called by another name, Mrs. Ilive! He mentions having asked her why they called her so instead of "My Lady", and her replying that he must not speak of this, and looking terrified and weeping when she bade him be silent."
Also from a letter written before 1894 by Cecelia Ayliffe, Thomas' grand-daughter,
When Lord Egremont brought the children back from France to Petworth House, he told them they were to be known by the surname of Ilive. At Petworth House, Elizabeth , the older sister, was first known as Miss Ilive and later Mrs Wyndham, obviously after she had children by Lord Egremont. Later the surname was changed to Iliff. At some time later again, Thomas changed his name legally, by right of purchase to Ayliffe.

Was Cecelia the one who went to court to claim inheritances with forged documents?

George Wyndham, 1st Baron Leconfield

After the death of Lord Egremont, his successor - his eldest son, Colonel George WYNDHAM in 1838 formed the Petworth Emigration Committee, which was responsible in subsidising surplus tenantry to Australia from his Limerick, Clare, Sussex and Devon estates. Although his emigrating tenants were given the choice of going to Canada or Australia, the majority chose Quebec. Although no ships were chartered after 1837 by the Petworth Emigration Committe (as had been the practice of Lord Egremont), small groups and individuals continued to be assisted into the 1850s.

One Devon extended family, for whom a long correspondence exists in the Petworth House Archives, emigrated with assistance to South Australia in 1838. As with many emigrants to Australia, their passages were paid by more than one contributor. Offered passages on the Pestonjee Bomanjee by the South Australian Colonization Commission, which subsidised the intermediate fare of thirty two pounds, ten shillings with a contribution of seventeen pounds (the cost of the steerage passage), Colonel Wyndham paid the remaining fifteen pounds ten shillings per statute adult for Thomas AYLIFFE Senior, his son George AYLIFFE and George's wife and two sons, Thomas Junior and Henry, for whom half-fare each was paid, a total of at least four hundred and thirteen pounds, six shilling and 1 pence was paid by WYNDHAM for two pre-fabricated cottages, farming implements, furniture, food and provisions, medicine, clothing, and stock ('one milch cow, one stallion, one North Devon Bull').

In January 1838 Wyndham, as an investor in the colony with an interest in its potential, had advised that if any of the people on the Petworth estates who were shortly to become unemployed wished to emigrate to South Australia, he would help to establish them there. He was particularly interested in the AYLIFFES. 180 Applicants had applied for assistance to emigrate to Australia, but the estate appears to have maintained contact only with the AYLIFFES. His patronage of the family did not end when they landed in S.A. Although the family had been allocated 40 acres as part of the transaction between Wyndham and the SA Colonization Commissioners, they did not prosper in the colony, and from the earliest letter after their arrival in 1839, until 1861, members of the family sought and received sums of money to tide them over injuries, droughts, and the drain of large families. When George died some twenty years after arrival, Wyndham awarded his widow an annuity for life. In 1861 her son Thomas - a child when they emigrated - wrote thanking Wyndham for his continued kindness to his mother, but concluded by requesting the purchase price of a small farm. Although this correspondence gives the impression that Wyndham extended largesse freely when he stood to gain by a general diminution of dependants, the AYLIFFES were not a typical labouring family but appear to have been distant relatives - on Wyndham's mother's side - who had fallen on hard times. Wyndham's patronage of the family, stretching across three generations, was atypical.

Ref: Robin Haines, Emigration and the Labouring Poor: Australian Recruitment in Britain and Ireland, 1831-60