AYSCOGHE, Edward (1618-68), of North Kelsey and Stallingborough, Lincs.

Ayscoghe was the scion of one of Lincolnshire’s leading puritan families and probably received a suitably godly education at Westminster School under its anti-Laudian headmaster, Lambert Osbaldston, and then at Sidney Sussex, Cambridge – one of the university’s most Calvinist colleges.31Record of Old Westminsters ed. Barker, Stenning (1928), i. 37; Al. Cant. Late in June 1642, he was a leading signatory to the Lincolnshire declaration ‘against all such as shall attempt to separate his Majesty from his great and faithful council of Parliament’.32PA, Main Pprs. 4 July 1642. His godly background and upbringing may well have influenced his decision to side with Parliament at the outbreak of civil war, and by 22 July he had been commissioned as a captain of horse in the parliamentarian army of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, alongside his fellow Lincolnshire gentlemen Francis Clinton alias Fines, Thomas Hatcher* and Sir Christopher Wray*.33SP28/143, pt. 6, f. 5v; SP28/170, pt. 3.

Ayscoghe’s military career is difficult to trace in detail. He continued to draw pay as a captain in Essex’s army into early 1643, but then he evidently transferred to the command of Francis Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham, in the defence of Lincolnshire and was among the county’s parliamentarians who were indicted for high treason at the Grantham quarter sessions in April 1643 (when he was described as being of North Kelsey).34SP28/143, pt. 6, ff. 31v, 33v, 36, 46; A Declaration of the Commons Assembled in Parliament upon Two Letters Sent by Sir John Brooks (1643), 11 (E.101.13). He earned the praise of Oliver Cromwell* in July 1643 and the thanks of the Commons in October for his conduct in the engagements at Gainsborough and Winceby, and by time of the latter he had been commissioned (almost certainly by Willoughby of Parham) as a colonel of horse.35Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i, 240-4; CJ iii. 279b. ‘Colonel Ayscough’ was among the senior officers who attended the council of war at St Albans that tried and condemned Nathaniel Fiennes I* late in 1643 for his surrender of Bristol in August.36W. Prynne*, A True and Full Relation of the Prosecution, Arraignment, Tryall, and Condemnation of Nathaniel Fiennes (1644), sig. A2 (E.255.1).

Ayscoghe emerged during the winter of 1643-4 as one of Willoughby of Parham’s leading supporters in his quarrel with Edward Montagu, 2nd earl of Manchester, the commander of the Eastern Association army. Late in January 1644, following Parliament’s transfer of supreme command in Lincolnshire to Manchester, the irate Willoughby of Parham sent a message to the earl, via Ayscoghe, challenging him to a duel.37CJ iii. 389b; LJ vi. 414a; Add. 31116, p. 225. When Parliament learnt of this quarrel it had Willoughby of Parham and Ayscoghe taken into custody, and they were examined by a committee of the Lords on 5 February.38CJ iii. 384a; LJ vi. 414; C. Holmes, ‘Col. King and Lincs. politics, 1642-6’, HJ xvi. 458-9. Ayscoghe testified that Manchester and his officers, in particular Cromwell, ‘had done both the Lord Willoughby and his officers wrong’.39LJ vi. 414a. Ayscoghe’s loyalty to Willoughby of Parham precluded any possibility of him serving under Manchester in Lincolnshire, and in May, having apparently been relieved of his colonelcy, the Commons ordered that his troop of horse be added to Essex’s army.40CJ iii. 491a. For the remainder of the year ‘Captain’ Ayscoghe was stationed in Berkshire as part of the force blocking the southern approaches to Oxford.41CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 215, 269, 394, 396, 422; 1644-5, p. 132. In November, he and several of his officers were captured and then exchanged, and by late December all of his troop was reported to have deserted for lack of pay.42CJ iii. 716a; CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 132, 205; Add. 31116, p. 356. His military career ended when his troop was disbanded during the formation of the New Model army over the winter of 1644-5. In April 1645, Sir Samuel Luke* referred to Ayscoghe as ‘my old fellow reformado [reduced officer]’.43Luke Letter Bks. 237. Although he was often styled colonel thereafter, this was either an honorific rank or referred to a regimental command in the Lincolnshire militia.44LJ vi. 414; viii. 655b; CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 203; Lincs. RO, MM6/10/5/13.

In mid-March 1647, when the Presbyterians were in the ascendant at Westminster, Ayscoghe was appointed vice-admiral of Lincolnshire and was added to the commission of peace for Lindsey.45LJ ix. 81a; C231/6, p. 81. The timing of these appointments and the fact that he was recommended for the Lincolnshire vice-admiralty by the Presbyterian grandee Denzil Holles* suggest that he was well regarded by the Presbyterians at Westminster.46LJ viii. 655b; ADM7/673, pp. 105, 287. But whether his apparent alignment with the anti-New Model faction extended to support for his brother-in-law, the Presbyterian firebrand Colonel Edward King, in his dispute during the mid-1640s with the Lincolnshire county committee, is less certain. King had been one of Willoughby of Parham’s bitterest enemies and had clashed with Ayscoghe’s father over the ‘recruiter’ election at Great Grimsby in 1645.47Infra, ‘Sir Edward Ayscoghe’; Holmes, ‘Col. King’, 451-84. Ayscoghe and King were on close terms by the 1660s, but their relationship may have been a fraught one during the mid-1640s.48Lincs. RO, FANE/2/1/2/1; W1668/ii/537.

Although Ayscoghe remained vice-admiral of Lincoln until at least June 1649, he seems to have withdrawn from public life after the regicide – as did his father who had been secluded from the House at Pride’s Purge.49CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 203. Ayscoghe was omitted from every Lincolnshire assessment commission between November 1650 and January 1660 and was removed from the Lindsey bench in July 1650.50C231/6, p. 191, His stock seems to have improved early in 1656, when he was restored to the Lindsey bench, and he may have stood as a candidate for one of the Lincolnshire county seats in the elections to the second protectoral Parliament that summer. The Lincolnshire parliamentarian Francis Mussenden* certainly voted for him.51C231/6, p. 327; Lincs. RO, MM6/10/5/13. But Ayscoghe received an unquantifiably low number of votes and was not among the ten successful candidates.52Supra, ‘Lincolnshire’.

In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, Ayscoghe was returned with William Wray for Great Grimsby – Wray, the town’s MP in the previous two Parliaments, probably taking the senior place.53Supra, ‘Great Grimsby’. As lord of the manor of nearby Stallingborough and a friend of the Wrays, who had been the town’s principal electoral patrons for several generations, Ayscoghe would have enjoyed a strong interest at Grimsby. He seems to have been entirely inactive at Westminster, receiving no committee appointments and making no recorded contribution to debate. It was in 1659 that Gervase Holles* – a native of Grimsby – compiled his list of Lincolnshire gentry who might be ‘serviceable’ to Charles II in the event of a royalist uprising, among whom he named Ayscoghe, Colonel Edward King and Wray as ‘Presbyterians ... who have heretofore disserved his Majesty and pretend now to be better disposed, either out of a sense of what they have done ill or hatred to the now governing faction’.54Eg. 2541, f. 362v; A.C. Wood, ‘A list of Lincs. royalists, 1659’, Lincs. Architectural and Arch. Soc. n.s. i. 217-18. It is likely that Ayscoghe welcomed the Restoration. He was knighted on 2 June 1660 and retained his place on the Lindsey bench.55Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 227. But though nominated that autumn as a deputy lieutenant for Lincolnshire, his actual appointment as such was not approved by the crown until some point in the mid-1660s.56SP29/11, f. 208; Oldfield Letter Bk. ed. Seddon, 47.

Ayscoghe died on 13 August 1668 and was buried at Stallingborough the following day.57Lincs. Peds. 67. In the preface to his will, he hoped to be saved by the ‘alone merits of Christ ... apprehended by a lively faith’. He referred to property he had purchased in Stallingborough and elsewhere in Lincolnshire since his father’s death and to three other manors and lands that he had settled in trust in 1656 upon his cousin John Hatcher (son of Thomas Hatcher) and William Wray to raise £6,100 in portions for his five daughters. He also charged his estate with annuities of £300.58Lincs. RO, W1668/ii/537. Ayscoghe’s eldest son, Sir Edward Ayscough†, sat for Great Grimsby between 1685 and his death in 1699.59HP Commons, 1660-90.