a grandson of Sir John Arundell, the friend of Father Cornelius. When about thirty-five years of age, he was made count of the Holy Roman Empire in 1595 by the Emperor Rudolph II, for his valour in the wars against the Turks in Hungary; on one occasion he captured the enemy's banner with his own hand, whilst forcing the water-tower at Gran or Esztergom. He was a great favourite of Queen Elizabeth, who recommended him to the emperor in an autograph Latin letter, said to be still preserved at Wardour Castle. He was made first Baron Arundell of Wardour by James I in 1605. His eldest son, THOMAS, Second BARON OF WARDOUR (born 1584), was (according to CLARENDON, iv. 125, ed. 1826) amongst the royalists of Cornish extraction who were present at the bloody battle of Lansdowne near Bath on 5 July 1643, where he was wounded. But this statement seems to be erroneous, for his monument in Tisbury Church, Wilts, records that he died at Oxford on 19 May 1643, probably of wounds received in some other engagement during the civil war. Lady Blanche Arundell, whose gallant defence of Wardour Castle against the parliament is a familiar matter of history, was the wife of the second baron.

[See ante, sub Arundells of Lanherne.]
W. H. T.

ASBURY, FRANCIS (1745-1816), Wesleyan bishop, was born 20 or 21 Aug. 1745, at Hamstead Bridge, in the parish of Handsworth, Staffordshire, four miles from Birmingham. He was the only son of Joseph Asbury and Eliza Rogers, both methodists. He began to preach, as a local preacher, at the age of eighteen, and was admitted as an itinerant preacher at the age of twenty-one. In August 1771, when preachers were wanted by the Bristol conference to go to America, Asbury offered himself; he embarked in September, and landed at Philadelphia 27 Oct. 1771. The American methodists, especially after the war of independence, were troubled by the want of the sacraments and of confirmation. Wesley, then in his eighty-second year, with the Revs. Thomas Coke, D.C.L., and James Creighton, ordained at Bristol, in 1784, Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey as presbyters for America; subsequently Wesley, by himself, ordained Coke as superintendent, explaining his views in a mandate dated 10 Sept. 1784. Following its terms, Coke and Asbury were elected joint superintendents by the Baltimore conference at Christmas, 1784. Coke and the two presbyters ordained Asbury deacon and elder on

Christmas day; and superintendent, with the further assistance of the Rev. William Philip_Otterbein, a Lutheran clergyman, on 27 Dec. Coke suggested the use of the title of bishop, and the conference agreed to constitute the Methodist Episcopal Church of the United States of America." The remainder of Asbury's life was spent in organising and extending the church thus formed. Its germ had been planted by the emigration of Philip Embury and Paul and Barbara Heck from Ireland to New York. Its existing constitution dates from 1786, its form of discipline from 1787; its two superintendents have since grown to thirteen bishops. Asbury's Journal' shows him to have been a man of simple and winning character, administrative power, and pithy expression; his piety is both frank and deep. He died unmarried, 31 March 1816.

[Asbury's Journal, N.Y., 1852; Janes's Character and Career of Francis Asbury, N.Y., 1872, with portrait; Larrabee's Asbury and his Coadjutors, Cincinnati, 1854; Strickland's Pioneer Bishop, London, 1860, with portrait; Briggs's Bishop Asbury, London, 1874, with portrait.]

A. G.

ASCHAM, ANTHONY (A. 1553), astrologer, studied at Cambridge, became M.B. in 1540, and in 1553 was presented by Edward VI to the vicarage of Burneston, Yorkshire. He is probably to be identified with Anthony, the brother of Roger Ascham (cf. GRANT'S Vita Aschami in ASCHAM'S Works, ed. Giles, iv. 307). His works are as follows: 1.A Little Herbal,' by Ant. Askam, 1550. 2.Anthonie Ascham his Treatise of Astronomie, declaring what Herbs and all Kinde of Medicines are appropriate, and also under the influence of the Planets, Signs, & Constellations,' 1550. 3. A Treatise of Astronomy, declaring the Leap Year and what is the Cause thereof; and how to know St. Matthis Day for ever, with the marvellous motion of the Sun both in his proper circle, and by the moving that he hath of the 10th, 9th, and 8th sphere,' London, 1552, 8vo. 4. A Prognostication and an Almanack made for the Year of our Lord God, 1550.' 5. 'An Almanacke or Prognostication,' &c., for 1552. 6. The like for 1555. 7. The like for 1557. 8. Treatise made 1547 of the State and Disposition of the World, with the alteration and changing thereof through the highest planets, called Maxima, Major, Media, and Minor, declaring the very time of the day, houre, and minute that God created the Sunne, Moone, and Starres, and the places where they were first set in the Heavens and the beginning of their movings,

and so continued to this day, &c.,' London, 1558.

[Tanner, 51; Heming's Chartularius Ecclesiæ Vigornensis, by Hearne, ii. App. 647; Pulteney's Botan. Sketches, i. 50; Ames, ed. Herbert and Dibdin, iii. 284; Hazlitt's Handbook to Popular Literature, p. 15.]

ASCHAM, ANTONY (d. 1650), parliamentarian ambassador at Madrid, was 'born of a genteel family, educated in Eton school, and thence elected into King's College, Cambridge, 1638.' He took the parliament side in the civil war, and was appointed tutor to James, duke of York. In 1648 he published his Discourse of what is lawful during confusions and revolutions of government, a treatise determining within what time allegiance might be transferred from a sovereign to those who had conquered him. It was answered by Dr. Sanderson (whose tract on the subject was formerly printed with Walton's 'Lives'), and republished in 1689 without the author's name. In August 1649 Ascham was the Hamburg agent of the republic, and in the following June he was appointed resident at Madrid, at a salary of 8001. a year. Clarendon (then Sir Edward Hyde and ambassador for Charles II) sneers at his rival's incompetence; but Milton, some years after, recommending Marvell to Bradshaw, thinks it sufficient commendation to say that Mr. Marvell will do as good service as Mr. Ascham.' The dignity of the new resident was jealously guarded by a formal introduction to the Spanish ambassador, and by a special commission under the great seal. At Madrid Hyde was assured that no embassy was in question; it was only that a gentleman had come with letters from the parliament to the king. The letters were never delivered, for the day after his arrival Ascham and his interpreter, De Rivas, were murdered at their inn by John Guillim and William Spark, who, with their four accomplices (Henry and Valentine Progers, John Halsal, and William Arnet), took sanctuary immediately afterwards. The parliament not only demanded their punishment, but ordered that six persons, who had been in arms for the king and had not been admitted to compound, should be at once seized and tried by the high court of justice, an order repeated in November. The Spaniards, to save appearances, took the assassins out of the church, tried, condemned, and restored them to sanctuary, where they were maintained by the contributions of 'persons of quality' till they all had opportunity to escape. Spark, the only protestant among them, was alone recaptured and executed. In 1652 the murderers were excepted from the

act of oblivion, and provision was made for Ascham's relations, and so late as 1655 the topic of the murder is urged in Cromwell's declaration against Spain. The pleadings for the punishment of the murderers, translated from the Spanish, were published in 1651, and are reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany' (iv. 280, ed. Park).

[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iii. 628, 750; Clarendon's Hist.; Thurloe's State Papers; Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 1649–55.]

R. C. B.

ASCHAM, ROGER (1515–1568), author, was born in 1515 at Kirby Wiske, near Northallerton. His family appears to have been of considerable antiquity, and to have taken its name from the villages known as East and West Askham, near York. A Roger de Askham is mentioned as an adherent of Thomas, earl of Lancaster, in 1313, and as receiving pardon for his complicity in the murder of Piers Gaveston (RYMER, Fœdera, iii. 444). Hamond Askham was appointed master of Balliol College, Oxford, in 1397 (WOOD, Antiquities, p. 82). In 1406 William Askham became an alderman of London, and was sheriff in 1398, when Richard Whittington was mayor (RILEY, Memorials of London, 546, 548, 565). The will of another William Askham, dated 7 Nov. 1390, preserved at York, proves the members of the family who remained in Yorkshire to have belonged to the yeoman class. At the date of Roger's birth his father, John Ascham, was house-steward to Lord Scrope, of Bolton, and bore a high reputation for uprightness of life. A mention of him in the will (20 Feb. 1507-8) of Robert Lascelles, a substantial Yorkshire landowner, proves him to have then held the tithes of Newsham, near KirbyWiske, and to have lately sustained heavy losses (cf. Testamenta Eboracensia, published by Surtees Soc. i. 129–30, ii. 28, iv. 271). The maiden name of Roger's mother, Margaret Ascham, has not been preserved; but it has been stated that she was of an important Yorkshire family. Roger was the third son. The eldest son, Thomas, was fellow of St. John's College in 1523 (BAKER, Hist. of St. John's Coll. ed. Mayor, i. 282), and died before 1544 (ASCHAM, Epistles, ed. Giles, No. xxi.). He apparently married, and left three sons, Roger, Thomas, and John, of whom the first was promoted, in 1573, from the office of ordinary yeoman of Elizabeth's chamber to that of yeoman of the bears, and the last was the author of an unprinted pamphlet entitled 'A Discours against the Peace with Spayne, 1603' (Harl. MSS. 168, art. 117; 295, art. 231 b). Anthony, Roger's

second brother, was an astrologer [see ASCHAM, ANTHONY, A. 1553].

Roger received his earliest education from his father, to whom he refers in his letters as the wisest of men,' and whose advice he frequently sought and acted upon in early manhood. But while still a child he was received into the family of Sir Anthony Wingfield, who 'ever loved and used to have many children brought up in learnynge in his house' together with his own sons (ASCHAM, Torophilus, ed. Arber, p. 140). R. Bond was the name of the tutor employed by Sir Anthony, and under his guidance Roger made rapid progress in English as well as in classical studies. His physical education was not neglected, and Sir Anthony himself taught the boys archery, which was always Ascham's favourite exercise (ibid.). At the age of fifteen (1530) Roger, by the advice and at the expense of his patron, who recognised his promise, proceeded to St. John's College, Cambridge, where the best education of the day was to be obtained. His first tutor was Hugh Fitzherbert, who had become fellow of the college in 1528, but of him little is known (COOPER, Athen. Cantab. i. 64). Ascham appears to have developed his special aptitude for Greek under Robert Pember, another fellow of St. John's (cf. Epist.cxxxiv.). During his undergraduate days he wrote a letter to Pember in Greek, which the tutor described as fit to have been written at Athens. But to John Cheke, afterwards tutor to Edward VI, and to John Redman, afterwards first master of Trinity College both of whom were admitted fellows of St. John's during his first year of residence-Ascham always ascribed the chief advantages he derived from his academic training. With them, and especially with the first, he lived throughout their lives on terms of peculiar intimacy, and in his latest work he praised 'their onely example of excellency in learnyng, of godnes in liuyng, of diligence in studying, of councell in exhorting, of good order in all thyng' (Scholemaster, p. 67). Other friends that he made at St. John's at the same time were George Day and John Christopherson, both afterwards bishops of Chichester, Robert Horne, afterwards bishop of Winchester, Thomas Watson, afterwards bishop of Lincoln, James Pilkington, afterwards bishop of Durham, and John Seton, afterwards well known as the chaplain of Gardiner, bishop of Winchester. Among members of other colleges with whom he became acquainted were Edmund Grindal, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, Walter Haddon, afterwards the eminent civilian, Thomas Wilson, who sub

6

sequently wrote on logic, and Nicholas Ridley, the martyr bishop of London. Besides devoting himself to Greek, which he taught as an undergraduate to students younger than himself, Ascham made himself master of almost all extant Latin literature, paid some attention to mathematics, became an accomplished musician, and acquired singular skill in penmanship. On 18 Feb. 1533-4 he took the degree of B.A., and on 23 March following was admitted to a fellowship at St. John's, which, as he wrote later, was 'the whole foundation... of all the furderance that hitherto else where I have obteyned' (Scholemaster, p. 134). Although Ascham's proficiency well merited a fellowship, his open avowal of the reformed religion imperilled his election. In 1533-4 a public disputation as to the authority of the pope in England took place at Cambridge, and Ascham so violently opposed the catholic champions as to offend many of his friends, among them George Day, a subsequent bishop of Chichester, to whom in later years he apologised for his 'imprudence' (Epist. cxxxvi.). His fellowship was only bestowed on him owing to the goodnes and fatherlie discretion' of Dr. Metcalfe, master of his college, who was himself a catholic, but came from the neighbourhood of Ascham's birthplace (Scholemaster, p. 134). Early in July 1537 Ascham proceeded M.A. In the meantime he had been studying hard and gathering pupils about him, in whom he took an affectionate interest: among them he has made special mention of William Grindal, John Thomson, Edward Raven, and William Ireland, the last three of whom became fellows of St. John's, and to Raven and Ireland Ascham addressed some of his most charming letters in later life (Epistt. ci. cii. civ. cxvi. cxx. cxxx. cxxxiv.). About 1538 Ascham was appointed Greek reader at St. John's, with a good salary. His success was remarkable. In five years, he afterwards asserted, Sophocles and Euripides had become at his college as familiar as Plautus had been previously, and Demosthenes was as much discussed as Cicero in former times (Epist. xii.). Students from other colleges regularly attended his lectures. In 1539 he apparently sought, through the influence of William Buckmaster, vice-chancellor, a mathematical lectureship (Epist. iv.), although he candidly confessed in later life that, compared with the classics, Euclid's pricks and lines' had little educational value (Epist. ii. liv.; cf. Scholemaster, p. 34). The beauty of his handwriting also brought him much employment as the writer of official letters in behalf of the university; but although he said in