In 1712, he issued a specimen of a work on Oxford for which he had collected materials while practising in the chancellor's court; but the scheme was received badly.
In the passage which gave offence[1] he had gone out of his way to say that the funds of the Clarendon Printing House had been misappropriated.
The result was that Ayliffe was expelled from the university, and deprived of all privileges and degrees.
It claims that the real causes of the proceedings were his insinuation that the unwillingness of several colleges to give him an account of their benefactors' funds, his protest against the veto claimed by some heads of colleges, and his political opinions.
Nicholas Amhurst described a public speech delivered just after George I's accession, in which Ayliffe was violently abused.
In 1734 was published the first volume of a New Pandect of the Civil Law, which he had written some years before; there was at the time more interest in the civil law, and Ayliffe designed his book not only for the lawyer, but also for the politician and the diplomat.