William Alexander Ayton (1816-1909), Vicar of Chacombe, Northamptonshire. He had an alchemical laboratory in his cellar and was afraid that his Bishop would learn of its existence[2]
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The Reverend William Alexander Ayton was one of the oldest initiates of the original Golden Dawn, joining (along with his wife Anne) among William Westcott's earliest recruits just a few months after the founding of the Hermetic Order in 1888. As G. H. Frater Virtue Orta Occident Rarius (those rising by virtue rarely decline), Ayton achieved the grade of 5= 6 a year later, at the age of 74. He was at the time still active as a priest, and as the Vicar of Chacombe in Oxfordshire; he had been a freemason for twenty years, and was also associated with the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light. He retired on a pension in 1894 and lived into his 92nd year, dying in 1909 in Hertfordshire.[1]
