ASHTON, Richard (?1553-1610), of Mawdesley, Lancs.

The Richard Ashton, described on the election return in October 1601 as of Mawdesley was presumably identical with the man returned in March 1603 as ‘Richard Assheton, gent., steward of Newton’, though there being at least three contemporary namesakes precludes certainty. A Richard Ashton entered Gray’s Inn in 1574 and another in 1578. That one of these was the member is suggested by a 1584 report of mass being held ‘in one Ashton’s chamber ... a Lancashire man ... a counsellor in Gray’s Inn’,1SP 12/168/25. for the patron at Newton was a Catholic, Thomas Langton, the lord of the manor. The MP’s one recorded intervention in the 1601 Parliament occurred on 19 Nov. when he spoke on behalf of Langton’s solicitor, who had been arrested during the course of the Session. In his will, dated 2 Nov. 1610, Richard Ashton of Mawdesley requested burial in his brother’s chapel at Croston parish church and made his friend Robert Hesketh overseer.2Stowe 362, Hayward Townshend’s jnl. ff. 116-18; Cheshire wills at Preston.