ASHTON, William I (1575-1646), of Swan Close, St. Martin’s Lane, Westminster and Tingrith, Beds.

This Member’s father, who claimed descent from the Lancashire Assheton family seated at Great Lever, was gentleman of the horse to the ‘good earl of Bedford’ (Francis Russell†). Nothing is known of Ashton’s own career before the accession of James I, but in 1604 he became responsible as clerk of the market for the unpopular practice of purveyance. By 1611 he was in the service of lord treasurer Salisbury, paying doctors’ bills ‘by my lord’s commandment’, and he received some modest grants of recusants’ land, perhaps only as a trustee.15HMC Hatfield, xxi, 360, xxiv. 206; CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 100; 1623-5, p. 577. He also acquired the Bedfordshire manor of Tingrith in 1611.16C66/180/4; VCH Beds. iii. 436. Ashton’s Westminster home was leased from Sir William Maynard*, and in 1619 he helped to welcome Sir George Calvert* to the neighbourhood, subsequently acting with George Mynne* as his trustee.17HMC Hatfield, xxii. 102; C66/363; LCC Survey of London, xxiii. 5. The adjacent property was developed by the 2nd earl of Salisbury (William Cecil*), from whom Ashton leased further holdings in Bermondsey worth £400 a year.18PROB 11/198, f. 286.

On Salisbury’s recommendation Ashton was returned for Hertford when the borough was enfranchised in 1624, though only after a hotly contested election.19HMC Hatfield, xxii. 205. He sat again in 1625 but left no trace on the records of either Parliament. Ashton stood surety for the ‘necessities’ of Salisbury’s only sister, whose husband Henry, Lord Clifford*, nominated him for a seat at Appleby at the next election.20Ibid. xxii. 167. He was appointed to the inquiry into the defects in victualling Mansfeld’s expedition (22 Mar. 1626), and added to the committee for a bill to confirm customary tenures on a Lancashire manor (20 April).21Procs. 1626, ii. 340; iii. 29. Re-elected in 1628, he was knighted at Theobalds during the recess, but played no ascertainable part in either session of the third Caroline Parliament.

Ashton continued to prosper after his parliamentary career was over, purchasing Feckenham Forest in Worcestershire from the Crown, and a small estate in Hertfordshire.22C66/2470; R. Clutterbuck, Herts. i. 251. Like the earl of Salisbury he was not deterred by his Court connections from active support for Parliament in the Civil War. He served on the Middlesex county committee and became a Presbyterian elder. He drew up his will on 16 Feb. 1646, leaving £20 to the poor of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, to be distributed ‘as my wife shall think fit, provided she be careful not to dispose of it to undeserving beggars’. Generous legacies were provided for his widow, and two unmarried daughters each received portions of £2,000.23PROB 11/198, ff. 286-7. Ashton was buried at St. Martin-in-the Fields on 10 Nov. 1646, the only member of the family to sit in Parliament.24WCA, St. Martin-in-the-Fields par. reg., unfol.