devoted to the interests of his exiled master and mistress. He appears to have held a commission of captain or major in the army, and to have been an intimate friend of Dr. Thomas Cartwright, who was bishop of Chester from 1686 to 1689, and a zealous supporter of the Stuart dynasty (cf. CARTWRIGHT'S Diary, pub. by Camden Soc.). By religion Ashton was a protestant, and late in 1690 he attended a meeting of protestant Jacobites, at which it was resolved to invite Louis XIV to forcibly restore James II. Viscount Preston undertook to visit St. Germains with the papers requisite to obtain support for the conspiracy, and Ashton promised to arrange the journey and bear him company. He and a young friend, Major Elliott, hired a boat at London to convey themselves and Lord Preston to France, but the owner, whose suspicions were roused by their injunctions of secrecy, gave information to the government, and on 31 Dec. 1690, when Preston, Ashton, and Elliott embarked with their treasonable papers about them at the Tower, they were narrowly watched, were arrested off Tilbury, and a few hours later brought back to Whitehall. On Ashton's person alone incriminating documents were found. The three prisoners were brought to trial fortnight later, but each was tried separately. Ashton, who was described in the indictment as 'late of the parish of St. Paul's, Covent Garden,' declared that he was about to visit France to learn from the exiled queen how she proposed to settle certain unpaid debts with her London tradesmen, for many of which he, as her late clerk, was held responsible, and he called witnesses in support of his assertion. All the conspirators were, however, condemned to death, and Ashton, upon whom alone the sentence was executed, was hanged at Tyburn on 28 Jan. 1690-1. Several nonjuring clergymen attended him after his conviction, and were present with him at the gallows, where he behaved with exemplary fortitude. Before his death he handed to the sheriff a paper declaring himself a protestant, and happy in losing his life in James II's service, from whom he had received favours for sixteen years past.' This document, which well exemplified the depth of the sincerity of James's supporters in England, was published in England, France, and Holland, and greatly alarmed the authorities. An answer to it was written anonymously by Dr. Edward Fowler, bishop of Gloucester, who represented Ashton's paper as the manifesto of the Jacobite party, and tried to confute in detail his arguments against the lawfulness of William III's accession to the throne: the bishop's pamphlet evoked a reply in the Loyal Traitor,' an elaborate defence of Ashton by a Jacobite. Ashton's widow, whose maiden name was Rigby, after her husband's death sought refuge at St. Germains with her son, upon whom James II conferred a baronetcy. But her protestantism did not commend itself to the exiled court, and Mrs. Ashton was harshly used on her refusal to become a Roman Catholic. She died in 1694, and her body was sent to England for burial (View of the Court of St. Germains (1696), in Harleian Miscellany, vi. 395). [State Trials, xii. 645 et seq.; Luttrell's Brief Relation of State Affairs, vols. ii. iii.; Burnet's History of my own Time, iv. 121 (Oxford edit.); Macaulay, iii. 723, 727, iv. 16-8; Brit. Mus. Cat.; Ashton's paper is printed in Tindal's Continuation of Rapin's History of England (i. 171), in the State Trials, and in Dr. Fowler's pamphlet.] S. L. L. ASHTON, PETER (A. 1546), translated into English, in 1546, the Turcicarum rerum Commentarius' of Paulus Jovius, under the title of A Shorte Treatise upon the Turkes Chronicles, compyled by Paulus Jovius, byshop of Nucerne, and dedicated to Charles V, Emperour. Drawen out of the Italyen tong in to Latyne by Franciscus Niger Bassianates. And translated out of Latyne into Englysh by Peter Ashton.' In the dedicatory epistle to Sir Rafe Sadler the translator informs us that he has 'studyed rather to use the most playn and famylier English speche the ether Chaucers wordes (which by reason of antiquitie be almost out of use) or els inkhorn termes (as they call them) which the common people for lacke of Latin do not understand.' [Ames's Typographical Antiquities (ed. Dildin), iii. 488-9.] A. H. B. ASHTON, SIR RALPH DE (fl. 14601483), an officer of state under Edward IV, was the half-brother of Sir Thomas de Ashton the alchemist [see ASHTON or ASSHETON, SIR THOMAS DE, f. 1446], and the son of the Ashton mentioned by Froissart [see ASHTON, SIR JOHN DE, A. 1370]. His mother was Margaret, daughter of Sir John Byron of Clayton. In his seventeenth year he was one of the pages of honour to Henry VI, and at the same early age he married Margaret, the heiress of the Bartons of Middleton, and b→ came the founder of the family that held the lordship there until the last century, when it passed by the female line to the holders of the Suffield peerage. Ralph Ashton was a man of influence, and in the reign of Ed ward IV he held various offices. He was sheriff of Yorkshire, and for his courage at the battle of Huttonfield he was made a knight banneret. When his commander, the Duke of Gloucester, became Richard III, he rewarded Sir Ralph's adhesion to the Yorkist cause by extensive grants of land. In 1483 he was appointed vice-constable of England and lieutenant of the Tower. The date of his death is unknown, but he is traditionally said to have been shot at Ashton-underLyne, and the yearly ceremony known as the Riding of the Black Lad' is regarded as a commemoration of that event. There is a very full rent-roll or custumal of the manor of Ashton in 1422, in which the various names and obligations of the tenants are set forth. Ralph Ashton is mentioned in a passage which Dr. Hibbert-Ware has explained with much ingenuity, though not with absolute certainty. According to this, corn marigold (Chrysanthemum segetum) grew so extensively in the low wet land about Ashton as to be inimical to the crops, and the lord of the manor had an annual inspection and levied fines on those tenants on whose lands it was seen. This power, delegated to Ralph Ashton and his brother Robert, is said to have been made the pretext of such tyrannical exactions that on one of these visitations the tenants rose in desperation and the 'Black Knight' was slain. Others hold that it was whilst exercising in the northern parts his despotic powers as vice-constable that he excited the terror expressed in the legendary rhyme : Sweet Jesu, for thy mercy's sake And for thy bitter passion, Save us from the axe of the Tower, And from Sir Ralph of Ashton. The effigy of the Black Knight is still paraded through the town of Ashton on Easter Monday. [Hibbert-Ware's Customs of a Manor in the North of England, Edinburgh, 1822, and again by the Chetham Society, vol. lxxiv.; Rymer's Fœdera, xi. 715, xii. 118, 205, 268; Axon's Lancashire Gleanings.] W. E. A. A. ASHTON, SIR ROBERT DE (d. 1385), civil, military, and naval officer under Edward III, was of the great northern family of Ashton or Assheton, of Ashton-underLyne, in the county of Lancaster. The house claims descent from Emma, the daughter of Albert de Gresley, the first baron of Manchester; she married Orm, the son of Ailward, and received from her father as a dowry a portion of the lands he had received from Roger of Poictou. From this union, probably of Norman heiress and Saxon thane, descended Sir John Ashton, who was twice married. The date of the birth of his son Robert is not known, nor are there records of his career until we find him, in 1324, a member of the parliament of Westminster, and afterwards occupying positions of great importance and trust. In 1859 he was governor of 'Guynes' near Calais; in 1362 he was lord treasurer of England; in 1368 he had the custody of the castle of Sandgate near Calais with the lands and revenue thereto belonging; in 1369 he was admiral of the Narrow Seas; in 1372 he was justiciary of Ireland; and in 1373 again lord treasurer of England and king's chamberlain. In 1375 he became chancellor of the exchequer, and held that office until the death of Edward III in 1377, when he was succeeded by Simon de Bureley. The new king did not discard his father's old servant, and in 1380 Ashton was appointed constable of Dover and warden of the Cinque Ports. He died at Dover Castle 9 Jan. 1384-5, and was buried in the church there, to which he had previously presented a large bell. He was twice married. By his first wife, Elizabeth, whose surname is not known, he left a son, Thomas, and a daughter, Eleanor. His second wife was the widow of Lord Matthew de Gorney, and after Ashton's death married Sir John Tiptoft, knt., and died in 1417. Such are the scanty details of the career of a man who, going from a then remote and littleknown district, achieved distinction alike in court and camp, by land and by sea. [Rymer's Fœdera, 3rd edit. 752, 820, 822, 824, 844, 845, 862, 924, 930, 942, 977, 978, 979, 990, 1010, 1052, 1062, 1069, 1076, 1077; Baines's Hist. of Lancashire; Axon's Lancashire Gleanings] W. E. A. A. ASHTON, THOMAS DE (f. 1346), warrior, was the son and heir of Sir Robert de Ashton, and it is remarkable that, although the chief recorded event of his life shows him to have been a man of conspicuous military courage, he does not appear to have received the honour of knighthood, or to have been employed in any of the offices in which his father had distinguished himself. Whilst Edward III was fighting in France, David, king of Scotland, entered Northumberland with a force estimated at 50,000 men, and wasted and pillaged the country as far as Durham. Queen Philippa, the heroic wife of Edward III, marched against the invaders with a force of about 12,000, whom she encouraged to the unequal conflict. Battle was joined at Neville's Cross, near Durham, 17 Oct. 1346, and the result was a decisive victory for the English. Thomas de Ashton, who fought under Lord Neville, captured the royal stan dard of Scotland. Shortly after King David was made prisoner by John de Coupland, variously described as a Lancashire esquire and as a Northumberland gentleman, who was knighted when the king returned from France, but Ashton was still an esquire when, in 1385, he formed one of the retinue of John of Gaunt in his expedition to Spain. William de Ashton, doctor of laws, who was also with the serene prince, Lord John, king of Castile and Leon,' was his uncle. [Baines's Lancashire; Rymer's Fœdera, vii. 490, xi. 28; Axon's Lancashire Gleanings.] W. E. A. A. ASHTON or ASSHETON, SIR THOMAS DE (f. 1446), alchemist, born in 1403, was the son and heir of Sir John de Ashton, of Ashton-under-Lyne [see ASHTON, SIR JOHN DE], who died in 1428. Permission was granted by Henry VI to Sir Thomas to transmute the precious metals, and on 7 April 1446 a special order was issued (Rot. Pat. 2, No. 14), encouraging two Lancashire knights, Ashton and Sir Edmund de Trafford, to pursue their experiments in alchemy, and forbidding any subject of the king to molest them. Sir Thomas married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Byron, by whom he had eleven children. The eldest son, John, was knighted before the battle of Northampton, 10 July 1460, and died in 1508. [Fuller's Worthies (ed. Nicholls), i. 555; Biographia Britannica; Foster's Lancashire Pedigrees; Baines's History of Lancashire (ed. Harland), i. 133.] by a large number of people, including several noblemen and many gentry residing in the neighbourhood. Soon afterwards, however, in the same year Ashton resigned the mastership of the school. About October 1574 he was sent to Ireland to Walter, Earl of Essex, who despatched him to parley with Tyrlogh Lynogh, and subsequently employed him in confidential communications with the queen and the privy council of England. The same nobleman by will gave him 407. a year for life, and he was one of the feoffees of the earl's estates. Ashton returned to England in 1575. One of his latest acts was to visit Shrewsbury, where he preached a farewell sermon to the inhabitants. The 'godlie Father,' as he is styled in a contemporary manuscript, then returned to Cambridge, in or near which town he died a fortnight later, in 1578. [Camden's Britannia, ed. Gough, ii. 399; Owen and Blakeway's Shrewsbury, i. 353, 365, 384; The Devereux Earls of Essex, i. 77, 78, 88, 106, 107, ii. 485, 486; Murdin's State Papers, 776; Cooper's Athenæ Cantab. i. 396, 567; Carlisle's Grammar Schools, ii. 375.] T. C. ASHTON, THOMAS, D.D. (1716–1775), divine, son of Dr. Ashton, usher of the Lancaster grammar school, was born in 1716. After being educated at Eton, he proceeded in 1733 to King's College, Cambridge, where he made the acquaintance of Horace Walpole. He is the Thomas Ashton, Esq., tutor to the Earl of Plymouth,' to whom Walpole addressed his Epistle from Florence (DODSLEY, Poems, iii. 75). In a letter to Richard West, ASHTON, THOMAS (d. 1578), school- dated 4 May 1742, Walpole speaks in high master, was educated at Cambridge, where terms of Ashton's success in the pulpit : 'He he graduated B.A. in 1559-60, and M.A. has preached twice at Somerset Chapel.... in 1563. He was elected a fellow of Tri- I am sure you would approve his componity College in that university, entered into sitions, and admire them still more when orders, and in 1562 was appointed the first you heard him deliver them' (Letters, ed. head master of Shrewsbury school, which Cunningham, i. 161). In less than a month he raised to a high position; there being, West was dead; and in a letter to Sir Horace while he presided over it, as many as 290 Mann, dated 30 June 1742, Walpole encloses 1 scholars at a time. Among his pupils were an elegy on his death by Ashton. For some the illustrious Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Fulke time Ashton held the living of Aldingham, Greville, Lord Brooke. Camden, in his Lancashire; in May 1749 he was presented 'Britannia,' remarks that 'Shrewsbury is in- to the rectory of Sturminster Marshall in habited both by Welsh and English, who Dorsetshire; and in 1752 to the rectory of speak each other's language; and among other St. Botolph, Bishopsgate. Meanwhile his things greatly to their praise is the grammar acquaintance with Walpole had come to an school founded by them, the best filled in all end. Writing to Sir Horace Mann on 25 July England, whose flourishing state is owing to 1750, Walpole says: 'I believe you have often provision made by its head master, the ex- heard me mention a Mr. Ashton, a clergyman, cellent and worthy Thomas Ashton.' At who, in one word, has great preferments and Whitsuntide 1568 a noble stage play, in which owes everything upon earth to me. I have Ashton was the principal actor, was performed long had reason to complain of his behaviour; at Shrewsbury in connection with the school. in short, my father is dead, and I can make It lasted all the holidays, and was attended no bishops. He has at last quite thrown off the mask, and in the most direct manner, against my will, has written against my friend Dr. Middleton.... I have forbid him my house' (Letters, ii. 216). Cole (MS. Athena) mentions that Ashton owed his Eton fellowship to Walpole's influence. In 1759 Ashton took the degree of D.D.; in December 1760 he married a Miss Amyand; and in May 1762 was elected preacher at Lincoln's Inn, which office he resigned in 1764. He died on 1 March 1775, after having for some years survived a severe attack of the palsy.' much advanced by a loan of 3007. from the Rev. James Hiet, of Croston, Lancashire, and by his marriage with Judith Reresby. He became a successful merchant, entered the common council, and, though ejected in 1662, subsequently became an alderman. In 1667 he was living at Lauderdale House, but at the time of his death, which occurred in November 1680, he is called of Hackney. He had the intimate acquaintance of Henry Newcome, of Manchester, Richard Baxter, who preached his funeral sermon, Matthew and Philip Henry, and others; and the writings of all these divines abound in references to him. His charities to his Lanca Ashton was the author of a number of sermons, among which may be mentioned 'A Sermon on the Rebellion,' 1745; a 'Thanks-shire countrymen were very extensive; he giving Sermon' on the close of it in 1746; a Sermon preached before the House of Commons' on 30 Jan. 1762; a 'Spital Sermon' at St. Bride's on Easter Wednesday of the same year. These, with others, were collected in a volume of 'Sermons on several Occasions,' 1770,8vo. Prefixed to this volume is a mezzotint portrait of Ashton from a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds. In 1754 he had an altercation with a methodist minister of the name of Jones, to whom he addressed 'A Letter to the Rev. Thomas Jones, intended as a rational and candid answer to his sermon preached at St. Botolph, Bishopsgate.' He also wrote some pamphlets against the admission of aliens to Eton fellowships. [Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, iii. 88-90; Walpole's Letters, ed. Cunningham, i. 161, 184, ii. 216-17; Cole's MS. Athenæ.] A. H. B. ASHURST, HENRY (1614?-1680), a wealthy and benevolent merchant of London, noted for his gifts of money to pious or charitable purposes, the founder of the family of Ashurst or Ashhurst of Waterstock, Oxfordshire, was descended from an old Lancashire family, seated at Ashurst, in the township of Dalton and parish of Wigan, distant five miles north-west of that town. His father, Henry, a justice of the peace, is described as a wise and pious gentleman, zealous for the reformed religion in a part of the country where Roman catholics abounded. His mother was one of the Bradshaws of Bradshaw, near Bolton. Of the sons of this marriage William engaged in politics, becoming M.P. for Newton, Lancashire, in 1641, and for the county in 1654; John became a colonel in the civil war; and Henry, born about 1614, entered into trade; all being very zealous in the interests of the parliamentarians and presbyterians. A daughter, Mary, became the wife of Dr. Theophilus Howorth, of Manchester. Henry was apprenticed at the age of fifteen to a London draper; and his prospects were allowed needy ejected ministers in that county 1007. per annum, and liberally relieved the widows of ministers. He was deeply interested in Elliot's missionary efforts in North America, and that apostle to the Indians termed him his worthy and true friend. Ashurst acted as treasurer for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, was a trustee of Boyle's Lecture, and was a great patron of religious literature. Baxter describes him as the most exemplary person for eminent sobriety, self-denial, piety, and charity that London could glory of, as far as public observation, and fame, and his most intimate friends could testify.' His son Henry, also a tried friend of Baxter's, became a baronet; he was the builder of Waterstock. The second son, William, was knighted in 1689, and was lord mayor of London in 1693. Each brother received 207. by bequest of Robert Boyle. [Dugdale's Visitation of Lancashire, p. 9; Burke's Visitation of Seats, ii. 11; Baxter's Funeral Sermon, London, 1681, 4to; Sylvester's Reliquiæ Baxterianæ, ii. 290, iii. 17, 189; Le Neve's Knights, 414; Newcome's Autobiography and Diary; Matthew Henry's Life; Life of Antony à Wood, 8vo, 157-8.] J. E. B. ASHURST, JAMES (d. 1679), divine, whose christian name was unknown to Calamy and Palmer, was vicar of Arlesey, in Bedfordshire, and had been episcopally ordained, but he could not comply with the new impositions of the Act of Uniformity, and hence quitted his living. He was very old, and his vicarage slender. Samuel Browne, the judge [q.v.], was one of his parishioners, and a great friend. The whole parish,' says Palmer (after Calamy), 'was well affected towards him for his worthy behaviour amongst them, and was entirely under the influence of the judge... and so, though he was legally silenced, he continued in his church a nonconformist. He read part of the morning and evening service, viz. the confession, scripture- fears of the hour respecting the French revo lution, attacked as 'absurd, nonsensical, and pernicious' the doctrines of its English admirers. There is no nation in the world that can boast of a more perfect system of government than that under which we live. I trust that your minds will be impressed with these ideas, and that you will be assiduous in supporting our present form of government.' This charge was printed by the Society for preserving Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levellers as an opportune warning to the nation. It called forth several replies, one of the best-known being a pamphlet Justice to a Judge.' It also elicited from Bentham one of his most incisive pamphlets, Truth versus Ashhurst,' which was written in 1792, but was not printed until August 1823. Bentham's strictures are somewhat too sweeping. Sir William Ashurst was an admirer of what [Palmer's Nonconf. Memorial (1802), i. 281; of the common law. But he co-operated in Bentham terms in this pamphlet 'the rubbish' local researches at Arlesey.] A. B. G. ASHURST or ASHHURST, WILLIAM HENRY (1725-1807), judge, belonged to the Lancashire family, the Ashhursts of Ashhurst or Ashurst. One of his ancestors was Henry Ashurst, the philanthropist [q.v.], and another was lord mayor of London in 1693. Sir William Ashurst was born at Ashhurst, near Wigan, 25 Jan. 1725, and was educated at Charterhouse. He was admitted of the Inner Temple on 19 Jan. 1750. He practised for some years as a special pleader; and Mr. Justice Buller was one of his pupils. He was called to the bar on 8 Feb. 1754, and was made a serjeant in 1770. On 25 June of the same year, on the removal of Sir William Blackstone to the Common Pleas, he succeeded him as a judge of the King's Bench, in which court Lord Mansfield then held undisputed sway. Mr. Justice Ashurst's judgments, which are reported in Loffts and Douglas's 'Reports' and Chitty's Practice Cases,' are remarkable for their clearness and good sense. A contemporary writer thus describes his qualities as a judge: 'Sir William Ashurst is a man of liberal education and enlarged notions. His language has no peculiar neatness nor brilliancy, but it is perspicuous, pointed, and clear. He reasons logically, and knows well how to winnow the chaff and eloquence from argument and law.' Mr. Justice Ashurst is best remembered by his charge to the grand jury of Middlesex on 10 Nov. 1792. The charge was delivered shortly after the massacres of September in France, and at a time when the name of reform had become odious to a multitude of Englishmen. Mr. Justice Ashurst, giving expression to the some degree with Mansfield in introducing a Judge Ashhurst with his lanthorn jaws Being highly esteemed as a lawyer, Sir Wil- [Foss's Judges, viii. 234; Bentham's Works, V. 231; Strictures on the Lives and Characters of the most Eminent Lawyers (1790), p. 71; Baines's History of Lancashire, ii. 187.] J. M-L ASHURST, WILLIAM HENRY (17921855), solicitor, was born in London 11 Feb. 1792. His father had led an aimless existence, under the impression-due to rumours about his infancy and his likeness to the eminent judge of the name--that he would be some day recognised as belonging to a distinguished family. William Henry's per ception of his father's weakness stimulated his spirit of independence. After some education at a dame school he entered a solicitor's office, where his employer rewarded his industry by giving him his articles. He gained a good practice as a solicitor, though his marriage at the age of nineteen compelled him to increase his income by copying work at night and by writing for the press. He read much, |