ASHE, John (1597-1659), of Freshford, Som.

The Ashe family claimed to have come over with William the Conqueror and, more certainly, were documented as owning land at Clyst Fornyson in Devon from the early fourteenth century.26Burke Dorm. and Extinct Baronetcies, 15. By the late sixteenth century this MP’s grandfather, John Ashe, had settled at Batcombe in Somerset.27Vis. London 1633, 1634 and 1635, i. 26. The Ashes were clothiers and by the reign of Charles I the various members of the family, headed by John the future MP, had become major figures in that trade in the south west, especially in western Wiltshire and eastern Somerset. That dominance was based on their preference for buying the finer-quality medleys, produced using imported dyed wools from Spain.28G.D. Ramsay, The Wilts. Woollen Industry (1965), 102-3; VCH Wilts. iv. 153-4. Evidence from the late 1640s and the 1650s indicates that the Ashes regularly shipped cloth to Paris (where their main contact was Jacques Le Conteleux) and that in 1650 they were sending cloth as far away as Naples.29C107/20, pt. 1: acct. bk. 1645-51, unfol.; C107/18: acct. bk. 1656-60, unfol. One of John’s sons, John junior, was based in Flanders throughout the late 1640s and early 1650s.30Add. 34015, f. 24. The volumes involved were huge. Between April 1640 and February 1643 Ashe’s purchases of cloth totalled over £63,000, which averaged at over £20,000 a year.31C107/20, pt. 1: acct. bk. 1640-3, ff. 22, 45, 72, 92, 100. In 1656 he told Parliament that his annual income from the cloth trade came to £3,000.32Burton’s Diary, i. 127. He had a point when, petitioning the privy council in 1637, he claimed that thousands of poor residents of Somerset depended on him for their livelihoods.33CSP Dom. 1636-7, pp. 393-4. Ashe’s great wealth meant that by 1640 he owned extensive estates, mostly in Somerset and Wiltshire.

First steps in politics, 1634-42

What first propelled Ashe into politics was the Beckington altar controversy. In 1634 the bishop of Bath and Wells, William Piers, ordered that the communion table in the parish church at Beckington be moved to the east end. When the churchwardens refused, this became a cause célèbre of the new Laudian ‘altar’ policy. Sir Robert Phelips† for one thought that the ‘puritan’ Ashe, who lived at Freshford, just six miles to the north, and who owned land within the parish, was behind the troublemakers.34E.S. Cope, Politics without Parliaments 1629-1640 (1987), 53. The attorney general, Sir John Bankes†, was inclined to agree and called him in for questioning. In January 1637 the privy council allowed Ashe to travel back to Somerset only on condition that he gave security to Bankes first and appeared at the next Somerset assizes.35CSP Dom. 1636-7, pp. 393-4; Add. 1625-49, p. 549. Ashe would give evidence on the Beckington case at Archbishop Laud’s trial in March 1644.36CJ iii. 422a; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 552. Meanwhile he also had his doubts about the king’s secular policies. In March 1640 he wrote to Edward Nicholas†, one of the clerks of the privy council, on behalf of the constables of the hundred of Bath Forum over their Ship Money arrears. Ashe’s argument was that the sheriff of Somerset in 1637-8, Sir William Portman*, had overcharged them.37CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 588. That Ashe wrote this letter just four days before the poll for the Somerset county seats in the Short Parliament elections is unlikely to have been a coincidence, not least because he was playing a leading role in that election. According to John Coventry*, Ashe was one of the prominent figures in the ‘Robins’ faction supporting his anti-court opponents, Thomas Smyth I* and Alexander Popham*.38PRO30/24/2/39; Cal. Corresp. Smyth Fam. 196.

Ashe’s own elections in 1640 at Westbury, just over the border in Wiltshire, owed much to the town’s dependence on the clothing industry. Although not resident there, his ties with Westbury were soon reinforced, for that same year he and his younger brother, Edward*, bought the manor of Westbury Mauduits from the Phipps family.39VCH Wilts. viii. 155. Ashe’s service in the Short Parliament of 1640 is a complete blank. Moreover, much uncertainty surrounds some of his activities in the subsequent Long Parliament. He was joined in that Parliament by his brother, Edward, MP for Heytesbury, and the Commons clerks and the various parliamentary diarists rarely distinguished between them, often referring only to ‘Mr Ashe’. This problem is particularly acute during the earliest years of the Long Parliament, as almost the only differentiation occurs when they were both named to the same committees, such as those on the petitions against Bishop Piers (12 Dec. 1640), on the provision for preaching at Hughendon, Buckinghamshire (19 Dec. 1640) and the committee on public accounts (26 Mar. 1642).40CJ ii. 50a, 54b, 499b. Both took the Protestation on 3 May 1641.41CJ ii. 133a. Further complicating the whole difficulty is that both were probably interested in the same sort of issues. Indeed, it would not be at all surprising if they were working closely together in Parliament in this period. They can certainly be assumed to have been in regular contact, if only because, while in London, John stayed at Edward’s house in Fenchurch Street.42CSP Dom. 1645-7, 455; J. Stawell, To the Supreme Authority the Parliament of the Common-wealth of England (1653), 22 (E.1072.2). Both would have had a natural interest in mercantile matters, especially when there was a clothing angle.43CJ ii. 54a, 77b, 108a, 210b, 327b, 340b, 491b, 571b, 580b; PJ i. 330. Both probably also supported to the moves towards religious reform.44CJ ii. 84b, 128b, 155a, 437b, 448b.

Funding and fighting the war, 1642-3

By the summer of 1642 Ashe was, like most MPs, concerned about the drift towards civil war. With both the king and Parliament taking steps to arm themselves, he promised on 10 June to provide a weekly donation of £10 for horses ‘so long as the service shall continue’.45PJ iii. 468. Three days later he or his brother informed the Commons of the contents of a letter from Alexander Popham reporting details of the petitioning campaign within Somerset.46PJ iii. 66, 67; CJ ii. 622a. By August John thought the situation in Somerset so serious that he had travelled there from London. The county was dividing into two opposing sides and, with the 1st marquess of Hertford (William Seymour†) using the king’s commission of array to assemble forces at Wells, those siding with the king were intent on making a serious attempt to gain the upper hand. Ashe, in conjunction with Sir John Horner* and Popham, therefore took the lead in organising forces to oppose them. The three of them arranged for those loyal to Parliament to gather at Chewton Mendip on 5 August. They then marched on Wells. But Ashe did not see these as purely local events. On 7 August he sent a letter to London giving his account of these events. Probably through the efforts of Edward, this letter was then read to the two Houses on 9 August and, on the orders of the House of Lords, its text was then printed.47CJ ii. 711b; LJ v. 275a, 278a-279b; A Perfect Relation of All the passages and proceedings of the Marquesse Hartford (1642, E.111.5); Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 17. A second letter, written by Ashe to the Speaker, William Lenthall*, on 8 August, brought news of Hertford’s decision to abandon Wells. That was read to the Commons on 12 August and was also printed.48CJ ii. 716b; A Second Letter Sent from John Ashe (1642, E.112.13). During September the 5th earl of Bedford (William Russell*) besieged Sherborne, where Hertford had taken refuge, eventually forcing the marquess to retreat northward across Somerset and then by boat across the Bristol Channel to Wales. Ashe later claimed that he had never been paid for £300 which he had spent assisting Bedford during these operations.49CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 456. When Ashe returned to London is not clear.

To fight the war Parliament needed money and this was one way in which Ashe as an individual could be especially useful. In January 1643 he helped secure the loan of £3,000 from a number of Bristol merchants to pay for the defence of Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire.50CJ ii. 917b; LJ v. 543b. He was then one of the three MPs given the job of drafting the assessment bill to raise the funds for repayment.51CJ ii. 930b. But before long he was dipping into his own very deep pockets, for he (rather than his brother) was probably one of the four MPs who within weeks had personally advanced emergency loans of £4,000, later increased to £7,000, to pay for the forces commanded by Sir William Waller* stationed in Gloucestershire.52CJ ii. 964b, 984a-b, 987b; LJ v. 606b, 631a-b. That would have been why he, along with Nathaniel Stephens*, was sent on 24 February to tell the commander-in-chief Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, to order Waller to go on the offensive against Prince Rupert.53CJ ii. 977b-978a; Add. 18777, f. 163. On 16 March one of the Ashes was sent with Samuel Vassall* to ask the lord mayor to hold a day of thanksgiving in London to celebrate the failure of the royalist plot to capture Bristol.54CJ iii. 4a.

Ashe could well afford any loans made to Parliament. His father’s account books suggest that the family business continued to function throughout the war years.55C107/17: acct. bk. 1644-7, unfol. But this cannot have been easy. The route between the west country and London was now a war zone. Ashe’s problems in this respect even featured in the Oxford negotiations in early 1643. Among the more minor issues raised with the king by the parliamentary commissioners was their demand that a consignment of cloth belonging to Ashe which had been seized by royalist troops near Basingstoke should be returned to him. The king insisted, quite reasonably, that this should be considered separately from the main negotiations.56CJ iii. 17a; LJ v. 682a, 699b; vi. 3b, 10b; Harl. 164, ff. 360, 368v, 372.

During June 1643 the royalist army under Sir Ralph Hopton* and Prince Maurice rolled north-eastwards through Somerset. Ashe’s estate at Freshford was about to fall into royalist hands, while Bath and even Bristol were under threat. Ashe returned to Freshford and tried, with some difficulty, to ensure that the assessments from the surrounding hundreds continued to be collected.57CCSP i. 241, 242. Presumably feeling that, in the circumstances, this was insufficient, he then lent £2,000 of his own money to Waller.58CJ iii. 140a, 154b, 211b. He or his brother also helped arrange other crisis payments to him.59CJ iii. 159b, 163b, 190b. This was too late. By then Waller had already been defeated at Lansdown Hill (5 July) and Bath was in royalist hands. Ashe may have been present when Bristol fell to Rupert on 26 July, as later that year he was called as a witness to the court martial of the governor, Nathaniel Fiennes I*.60CJ iii. 341b; Harl. 165, f. 245v.

With his estates now mostly under royalist control, Ashe was even more determined than before that the king’s army be defeated. The defence of towns which had held out against the royalist advance or which were now under threat, such as Exeter, Gloucester, Plymouth and Reading, were particular concerns.61CJ iii. 192b, 200a, 247a, 247b, 252b. The immediate hope was that Waller, who had retreated to Farnham, would reverse these defeats. In September 1643 one of the Ashes therefore organised a collection among their fellow MPs to raise £4,000 for Waller’s army.62CJ iii. 240b-241a, 245a, 267a, 341b. The same one was probably also named to the committee appointed the following February to raise further sums for that purpose.63CJ iii. 383b, 409b. That may well have been John, as, according to Robert Scawen*, speaking in the Commons several days later, he had raised the subject of army pay with Essex.64Harl. 166, f. 6v. In May 1644 – and probably later as well – Ashe remained concerned that Waller’s soldiers be paid as soon as possible.65CJ iii. 487b, 544b.

Doubtless with their own interests in mind, either John or Edward meanwhile sat on the committee on the problem of trade with towns behind enemy lines (11 Nov. 1643).66CJ iii. 308a. That would have been why one of them took an interest in the plight of the merchants operating from Exeter.67CJ iii. 465b. An Ashe brother was also among the three MPs sent on 29 February 1644 to inform the customs commissioners that consignments of wool were to be transported only with licences from the Commons.68CJ iii. 411b. Three months later one of them was asked to deal with the difficulties in bringing cloth from Warwickshire and through Oxfordshire.69CJ iii. 510b. Both sat on the committees on alum mines (7 Feb. 1644) and to investigate the customs comptroller at Dover (23 May).70CJ iii. 390a, 504b. Ashe unsurprisingly took an interest in the proposals to extend the excise to new commodities (15 June).71CJ iii. 531b. His commercial experience may also have been evident in less direct ways. In early March 1644 he served as a member of the committee to consider how the Solemn League and Covenant could be tendered to English subjects overseas.72CJ iii. 415a; Harl. 166, ff. 23v, 30v. While Ashe can be assumed to have supported the Scottish alliance which the Covenant was intended to underpin, he also had extensive and useful personal contacts with English merchants based abroad. Similarly, one reason why he was first-named to the committee to appoint the naval officers for the fleet to sail in the summer of 1644 (19 Mar.) would have been because he had some indirect knowledge of shipping matters.73CJ iii. 432a.

Dealing with delinquents, 1643-5

On 28 September 1643 the Commons appointed 14 MPs, including John Ashe (identified only as ‘Mr Ashe’), to meet with the lord mayor and common council of London to organise the raising of funds for the Scottish army.74CJ iii. 258a; CCC 1. This committee soon became known, from its usual meeting place, as the committee at Goldsmiths’ Hall, and Ashe became its chairman. Already of some importance, the committee became even more so in July 1644 when it began to raise money using some of the sequestered estates of delinquents. This work now became Ashe’s overriding preoccupation, whether at Goldsmiths’ Hall or in the Commons chamber. When he spoke in the House, it was most often on delinquency cases and, although his brother was also a member of the committee, creating the usual problems of identification, there is little doubt that Ashe was the committee’s principal spokesman in Parliament. As early as 24 July 1644, acting on its instructions, he told the Commons that they had a number of interested potential purchasers for lands under their control and so sought permission to prepare legislation to authorise such sales.75CCC 6; Harl. 166, f. 100v. Three days later he made the first of many reports to the House on an individual case, which, in this instance, was that of John Tufton, 2nd earl of Thanet.76CJ iii. 572b

On 20 August Ashe secured the Commons’ agreement to proceed with the drafting of the necessary orders to allow the committee to reach settlements with these delinquents.77CCC 8, 10; CJ iii. 603a, 604a; Harl. 166, f. 109. Since he fell ill in late August and was out of action for several weeks, the resulting document may not have been all his own work, but the order by which the committee was authorised to accept composition fines from existing delinquents was approved by the Commons on 13 September.78Add. 15903, f. 40; CJ iii. 627a. This was the genesis of the compounding process and, as a result, an offshoot from the committee at Goldsmiths’ Hall transformed itself into the Committee for Compounding. Ashe was as aware as anyone as to how improvised all this seemed and from the spring of 1645 he was among those who began pressing for the compounding system to be placed on a firmer statutory basis.79CJ iv. 146b, 151b, 176a, 178b-179a, 244b, 246a. What was undeniable was that this process produced immediate flows of cash. Thus, he was soon able to tell the Commons of the £40,000 which they had raised for the Scottish army in Ireland.80CJ iii. 635b; iv. 6a, 73b; LJ vii. 223a; Harl. 166, f. 183. Later, in October 1645, the Commons heard from him on how the Committee had been able to send arms, armour and ammunition to the Scottish army in the north of England.81CJ iv. 302a. Meanwhile, he kept the Commons regularly informed about the progress on the major composition cases.82CJ iii. 642b, 658b, 674a, 705b, 707a, 708a, 724a, 733a; iv. 2a, 126b, 155b, 460a-b, 609a-b; Harl. 166, ff. 109v, 150v, 154v.

His conduct as chairman was inevitably open to criticism. One pamphlet, published in 1648, claimed that Ashe had personally gained £6,200 from the compositions of John Coventry*, Sir Edward Moseley and Edward Phelipps* and a further £8,000 from that of Sir John Stawell* alone. This sneering critic then asked rhetorically, ‘Is not this better than clothing?’83A List of the Names of the Members of the House of Commons (1648), 4 (E.458.12). Stawell later become Ashe’s sternest and most voluble detractor. Yet Ashe also had his defenders. Sir Roger Twysden* records that when the Committee heard his case in March 1645, Ashe declared, ‘We sit here to oppress no man’, with Twysden’s own opinion being that

I found him, however observant of the orders of the House of Commons, yet willing to hear reason in point of debts, or otherwise to despatch men out of their misery, and to moderate not their payments (for that was impossible, at least not in his power) but other things as much as he could.84‘Sir Roger Twysden’s Journal’ iv. ed. Larking, 147.

Twysden said this even although he accused Ashe of bungling the handling of his own case.85‘Sir Roger Twysden’s Journal’ iv. ed. Larking, 147.

Somerset regained, 1645-6

On 21 April 1645 the Commons despatched Ashe and Sir Arthur Hesilrige* to disband Waller’s army, then stationed at Salisbury, following Waller’s resignation under the terms of the Self-Denying Ordinance.86CJ iv. 118a. Before they left, however, they were ordered, with Edward Ashe and Thomas Hodges I*, to ensure that the excise commissioners provided immediate payments of the money needed to pay off those troops.87CJ iv. 119a. Sending Ashe to Salisbury to perform this task may have been intended to soften the blow, as he had previously done more than anyone to keep Waller’s army in the field. The following month he was again sent to the excise commissioners, first with orders to pay the military forces in the west and later in order to negotiate a loan to pay for the siege of Oxford.88CJ iv. 149b, 157a.

In late June 1645 Sir Thomas Fairfax* marched from Wiltshire into Dorset as a preliminary to his advance into Somerset to relieve the siege of Taunton. Ashe had travelled on ahead to Dorchester and, with Thomas Moore*, wrote to the committee of the west on 3 July reporting that Edward Massie*, who had come from the west to join up with Fairfax, had reached Dorchester and that Fairfax was expected there the following day. This letter was reported to the Commons two days later.89CJ iv. 196b; Harl. 166, f. 233v. Over the next few months, in the face of Fairfax’s advance, George Goring* abandoned Somerset, which once again came under Parliament’s control. Bristol was retaken on 10 September. Ashe and Moore probably accompanied Fairfax and on 23 September, writing to Parliament from Bath, Fairfax praised ‘the great service’ which the pair had done ‘by improving their interest for the service of the public’. On 23 September the Commons passed votes of thanks to them.90CJ iv. 283b. By then Ashe was probably back in London, for later that week he was one of the MPs sent to press Fairfax to relieve Plymouth.91CJ iv. 291a, 292a, 292b. He soon returned, for he was added to the admiralty committee on 4 October, while three days later he was included on the committee on the bill to vote more money for Fairfax’s army, as well as being asked to prepare establishments for the new garrisons at Bristol, Bath and Berkeley Castle.92CJ iv. 297a, 299a, 300a; LJ vii. 624b. Later that month he piloted the bill to purge the Bristol corporation through the Commons.93CJ iv. 319b, 322b; Harl. 166, f. 271v. When the pro-parliamentarian inhabitants of eastern Somerset petitioned Parliament, it was Ashe who was asked to thank them.94CJ iv. 321b. Moreover, it was Ashe who was given the honour of presenting Fairfax with the jewels awarded to him by Parliament to commemorate this series of recent victories.95CJ iv. 320a.

Ashe spent the final months of 1645 in the south west assisting in the electioneering to fill the vacant parliamentary seats. On 10 November he wrote to the Speaker, William Lenthall*, with news of the contests in the Dorset constituencies of Shaftesbury and Weymouth. He reported that there and in Somerset attempts to elect outsiders were encountering much local opposition. He also thought that Sir Samuel Rolle* was being unreasonable in having pressed for the army to be sent into Devon, only now to object to those soldiers being quartered on the county. Ashe ended his letter by telling Lenthall that Fairfax was ‘exceeding healthy and cheerful’.96Bodl. Nalson 5, f. 29. Ashe had a direct interest in one of the contests in Somerset, for in early December his eldest son, James*, was elected as MP for Bath. James took his seat in January 1646.

Following James Ashe’s election it becomes rather easier to distinguish John from Edward, as the arrival of a third Ashe MP seems to have prompted the Commons clerks to take greater care to differentiate them when compiling the Journals. This reveals that Ashe was not especially active during the first half of 1646, when he may well have been still focussed on affairs in Wiltshire and Somerset. On 9 December 1645 he had been asked to arrange compensation from the compounding revenues for a Bristol brewer whose house had been damaged during the retaking of the city.97CJ iv. 371a. But as this was the day after the Bath election, it cannot be assumed that Ashe was then present in the House. On 17 January 1646 he was added to the committee on absent MPs, when it was asked to consider the case of Sir John Fenwick.98CJ iv. 409b. Frustratingly, the clerks did not specify which of the Ashe brothers was the teller in the division on 26 January on how what counter-proposals should be sent in response to the possible religious settlement recently offered by the king.99CJ iv. 418b-419a. Whichever it was, he may have been less keen than some MPs to respond constructively to the king’s overture, especially in the light of the revelations that Charles had been negotiating with the Irish confederates. Ashe was certainly around at Westminster the following March, when, among other things, he was appointed to the Committee for Foreign Plantations.100CJ iv. 460a-b, 477b, 486a-b, 495a; LJ viii. 225b. He was granted leave of absence on 31 March and may not have reappeared in Parliament until the following June.101CJ iv. 571a, 583a, 586b, 603a, 609a-b, 613a.

Aftermath of war, 1646-8

The surrender of Oxford on 13 July 1646 was followed by a sharp increase in the work of the Committee for Compounding. Even the most diehard royalists now had to seek an agreement with the parliamentarian sequestrators. The need to update the Commons on these cases therefore kept Ashe busy at Westminster throughout much of the second half of 1646.102CJ iv. 626a-b, 635a-637a, 645a-647a, 660b-661a, 705a-706a, 712b, 717a-718a. Such cases even followed him when he returned to Somerset. On 5 September he was given permission to spend time in the country.103CJ iv. 663b. Later that month he visited Bristol with Edmund Prideaux I*. Discussing matters with the local sequestrators, they agreed that some delinquents in the city should be allowed to avoid sequestration by compounding first, but, on realising that most did not immediately apply to do this, he and Prideaux soon reversed this decision.104CCC 73. In February 1647 Parliament replaced the old Compounding Committee with a new commission, but this made little difference to Ashe, as he was reappointed and continued as its chairman.105CJ v. 8b, 78b; A. and O. The following summer, acting on behalf of the commission, he proposed legislation to streamline the compounding process by allowing the county commissioners to handle cases worth less than £200.106CCC 69; CJ v. 241b-242b.

Ashe may have returned to the country in mid-April 1647.107C107/17: acct. bk. 1644-7, unfol. But if so, he was back at Westminster by the following June, when Parliament faced the problem of an increasingly restless army. Unwilling to bow to pressure from the soldiers, Ashe was among those appointed on 11 June to the ‘committee of safety’ created to organise resistance within the capital in the event of the army marching any further south.108CJ v. 207b. Six weeks later, with Parliament now also facing the opposing pressure from the London mob, this crisis had only deepened. On 22 July Ashe was named to the committee to investigate the Presbyterian ‘engagement’ of the Londoners, a document with which he may have had some sympathy.109CJ v. 254a. When the withdrawal of the Independent MPs following the 26 July ‘riots’ at Westminster handed the initiative to the Presbyterians, Ashe seems to have sided with the latter, if perhaps with a degree of reluctance. He certainly remained at Westminster. On 31 July he was a teller in the division on the declaration concerning negotiations with the king.110CJ v. 262b. Two days later he was second on the list of those MPs named to investigate the riot at the Guildhall, as well as being named to the committee on the bill to increase the powers of the committee of safety.111CJ v. 265a, 265b. The next day he sat on the committee to prepare instructions for the delegation to be sent to open talks with the army.112CJ v. 266a. Following the latter’s entry into London on 6 August, the Commons immediately recognised the termination of Presbyterian ascendancy by appointing Fairfax as the constable of the Tower of London. Some Presbyterians, with Ashe and Sir Walter Erle* acting as their tellers, attempted without success to block moves to give Fairfax powers to purge the Tower garrison.113CJ v. 269a. But Ashe was also named subsequently to the committee on the bill to repeal the measures passed in the Independents’ absence (11 Aug.).114CJ v. 272a. Up until this point, Ashe had always strongly supported the army and he was on close personal terms with Fairfax. He probably had much sympathy with many of their demands. But he probably also shared the fears of many MPs – not just Presbyterians – about such a direct political intervention by the soldiers.

Like many of his colleagues, Ashe may well have been disillusioned by this turn of events. When the House was called on 9 October, he was listed as absent.115CJ v. 330b. However, he travelled back to London ten days later.116C107/17: acct. bk. 1645-55, f. 13. On his return he was named to the committees on the sale of bishops’ lands (28 Oct.), on the latest attempts to negotiate with the king (30 Oct.), on military supplies for Ireland and on John Lilburne (both 1 Nov.).117CJ v. 344a, 346b, 347a, 347b. Both Houses then agreed that he and Walter Strickland* should be appointed to the Committee for Foreign Affairs, seemingly, in Ashe’s case, because of his first-hand knowledge of overseas trade.118CJ v. 352a, 353b; LJ ix. 516a, 517b. News of the king’s escape from Hampton Court then complicated everything. When the rendezvous of some regiments at Ware on 15 November developed into a trial of strength between more radical voices and their commanders, Ashe, already fearful of an over mighty army, was among those appointed by the Commons to investigate claims of London (i.e. Leveller) influence behind this mutiny (16 Nov.).119CJ v. 360a. Under the threat of another march by the army into the capital, Ashe and other MPs were sent to encourage the corporation of London to listen to Fairfax’s demand that the assessment to pay the army be collected as quickly as possible.120CJ v. 365a.

In December 1647 the number of compounding cases presented to Parliament for its approval became a flood. Between mid-December and mid-January the Commons spent most of its time considering the many, sometimes complex cases which Ashe laid before them.121CCC 75; CJ v. 381a, 383a-384b, 386a-387a, 388a-390a, 391a-b, 392b-393a, 394a-395a, 397a-398b, 407b-409a, 411b-412b, 416a-b, 417b-419a, 421a-422a, 424a-b, 425b-426a, 427a-428a, 429a-b, 431a-b, 433a-b, 435b, 443b-444b. Ashe’s stamina as an orator must have been pushed to its limits. He presented further batches of cases in March 1648.122CJ v. 480b, 482a-483a, 486a-488b, 495a-497a. Meanwhile, on 17 January 1648 it fell to him to seek the Lords’ approval for the printing of the Vote of No Addresses. It is possible that this was just a coincidence and that he was asked to do so only because the Commons also wanted their approval to its list of commissioners for Bath to be named in the latest assessment bill.123CJ v. 434b-435a; LJ ix. 664a. But Ashe may have come round to the view that further negotiations with the king would be pointless, even though he is likely to have approached with some sympathy the Londoners’ petition expressing their fears that the army intended to seize control of the capital, which he was among those nominated to consider on 27 April.124CJ v. 546a.

The outbreak of the second civil war kept Ashe busy throughout the summer of 1648. On 12 May he was on the delegation sent to inform London of Thomas Horton’s victory over the Welsh rebels at St Fagans.125CJ v. 558a. The next day he and Sir John Bampfylde* were the tellers for the minority who wanted a wider discussion before the Commons approved the names of the new militia commissioners.126CJ v. 558b. The following week, after fighting had broken out in Westminster Hall when a band of Surrey petitioners had arrived to demand the king’s return, Ashe was a member of the committee appointed to investigate.127CJ v. 562b. The uprisings, in Kent and elsewhere, were created a whole new category of delinquents who might well be sequestered in the near future. This may be why Ashe was given the task of carrying up a number of orders to the Lords on 17 June.128CJ v. 603a, 604a; LJ x. 330a. It was probably also not a coincidence that during these weeks Ashe sought parliamentary approval for several existing composition deals.129CJ v. 594a, 596a-597a, 598a-b, 600a-601a, 618b-619b, 621a-b, 623b; LJ x. 357b. Thus reminded how Parliament had treated earlier opponents, some thought that similar treatment would be too good for these new delinquents. Several months later Oliver Cromwell* wrote to Ashe and Robert Jenner* objecting to the moves to allow Sir John Owen, who had led the risings in north Wales earlier that year, to compound.130Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 671-2. In mid-August, before Cromwell’s victory at Preston and the capitulation of Colchester crushed all remaining royalist hopes, rumours circulated of a planned royalist coup in London. Ashe was one of the MPs sent to brief the London militia committee about them on 17 August.131CJ v. 673b. Five days later he was second-named to the committee on the bill to raise a detachment of horse within London.132CJ v. 678a. His presence at Westminster over the following two months is difficult to confirm, however, and he was absent when the call of the House was taken on 26 September.133CJ vi. 34b. But he was certainly back by the final weeks of November 1648, when, among other things, he was appointed a commissioner for the removal of obstruction to the sale of the episcopal lands.134CJ vi. 81b, 84b, 87a.

With treaty negotiations at Newport still in train, on 1 December Ashe was a teller for those who wanted an immediate vote on whether the Commons should declare themselves satisfied with the king’s last answer to the parliamentarian commissioners.135CJ vi. 92a. As the majority instead voted to delay their decision until the following day, only for that plan to be overtaken by the army’s entry into London, it was not until 4 December that debate on the subject resumed. By then the most pressing issue was whether to condemn the removal of the king from the Isle of Wight to Hurst Castle. While a majority decided that a declaration should indicate that the move had been made not just without their knowledge but also without their consent, Ashe and Thomas Chaloner* were the tellers for the minority who thought that the word ‘consent’ should not be included, tacitly implying that the army had done the right thing.136CJ vi. 93a.

The Rump, 1648-53

Ashe had long feared another intervention by the army and, with its entry into London and then its purge of the House of Commons, that nightmare came to pass. His name appears on more than one contemporary list of those secluded at the purge of 6 December.137A Vindication (1649), 29 (E.539.5); A Second Part of the Narrative (1648), 4 (E.477.19). Only on 3 February, four days after the king had been executed, did he seek re-admission to Parliament, the day after his brother.138CJ vi. 130b. Plausibly a realist, he probably thought that much unfinished business required his attention. A week after resuming his seat he and John Trenchard* were added to the committee handling the new compounding bill.139CJ vi. 137b. Before long he had returned to his old role as the Compounding Committee’s main spokesman in Parliament, regularly reporting from it on individual cases.140CJ vi. 155b-156a, 212a-b, 214b-215a, 276b, 285b-286a. Unsurprisingly, he also headed the list of those appointed to the committee on the bill on sequestered estates (11 Dec. 1649), even though it was this measure that would end his oversight of that process.141CJ vi. 330b. The existing Committee for Compounding was from April 1650 replaced by a commission of non-MPs: Ashe and his colleagues were deliberately excluded. Ashe also subsequently sat on the Commons’ committee to grant additional powers to those new commissioners (3 July 1650).142CJ vi. 436b.

As before, the extent to which Ashe was a disinterested participant in the compounding process was open to question. In 1649 and later in 1651 he acted in conjunction with Anne, widow of Sir William Portman*, first over a bond underwriting the payment of part of the Portman composition fine to the corporation of Taunton and later over the grant of a lease to Roger Hill II*.143Som. RO, DD/PM/7/4/4; DD/X/VNL/1, pp. 49-52; Bucks. RO, D 193/1/22. Lady Portman doubtless saw the advantages in seeking Ashe’s assistance in connection with the composition fine, but it may well be that Ashe was also lending her money in a personal capacity to allow her to pay that fine. In 1652 Ashe bought from James Ley, 1st earl of Marlborough, the Wiltshire manor of Teffont Evias, which had, while under sequestration, had been in the hands of Ashe’s nominee.144CCC 77; VCH Wilts. xiii. 189. Ashe meanwhile benefitted from the sales of church lands, buying an estate at Melksham which had hitherto belonged to the dean and chapter of Salisbury Cathedral.145VCH Wilts. vii. 97.

The remodelling of the Compounding Committee in early 1650 also had local consequences for Ashe. As part of that reform, new county sequestration commissions were to be appointed. Ashe hoped that, in one of his final acts of chairman, he would be able to nominate men he trusted to the new Somerset commission. This was too much for John Pyne*, who had long dominated county politics within Somerset and who correctly saw this as an attempt by Ashe to undermine him. Pyne denounced three of Ashe’s nominees, Benjamin Mason*, Latimer Sampson and Thomas Shute.146CCC 209, 221-2. In response, Ashe wrote to Samuel Moyer* in May 1650 to defend the character of all three men.

But a malicious man may charge me or you with a crime, therefore to be cashiered and disgraced, unheard, unproved, will be thought hard measure. Let justice be done, and then defy the devil and all his agents. But what can we expect when there is a failure amongst you in the place and ordinary course of justice? I affirm solemnly, in presence of God, I know no other crime in these men than the perfect service of Parliament.147CCC 222.

Ashe sent another letter denouncing Pyne’s actions to his cousin, Denis Bond*.148CCC 226-7. The Committee for Compounding in London was able to resolve this immediate argument only by appointing an entirely new set of Somerset commissioners in November 1650.149CCC 354-5, 363; CSP Dom. 1650, p. 379; 1651, p. 3. These local quarrels may have only added to Ashe’s personal unpopularity among some Somerset inhabitants. In April 1650 the council of state had to ask the Somerset militia commissioners to investigate actions by some soldiers evidently directly against Ashe, while a mere two months later the governor of Bristol was told to arrest Hercules Arnott for an ‘outrage’ against Ashe’s house at Freshford.150CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 126, 206.

Back at Westminster Ashe continued to participate in the Rump. In July 1649 he was among MPs given the task of negotiating the latest loan from the corporation of London.151CJ vi. 250a. The following October he sat on the committee to ensure that all MPs took the Engagement.152CJ vi. 307b. In early 1650 he almost certainly supported the bill to regulate the Norwich weavers, while the bill to promote the preaching of the Gospel in Wales probably also had his backing.153CJ vi. 352a, 358a. On 20 February 1650 he was one of the four MPs deputed to count how many MPs were present in the House at the first stage in the process of electing the new council of state.154CJ vi. 368b. A flurry of activity in June of that year saw him named to the committee for the suppression of licentious religious sects (14 June), appointed a commissioner for the regulation of trade (19 June) and named to the committee on the bill to reform the excise commission (20 June).155CJ vi. 423b, 426a, 427a. A couple of weeks later he was also added to the Committee for Plundered Ministers (4 July), while in August 1650 he was one of the MPs brought in to revise the bill to restrict the export of coin, plate and bullion after it had been re-committed.156CJ vi. 437a, 458a. Finally, on 18 December 1650, Parliament gave permission for him to appear as a witness at the trial of his old bête noire, Sir John Stawell.157CJ vi. 511a.

However, Ashe’s role in the Rump from 1651 onwards is especially difficult to determine. The clerks reverted to their former practice of calling all three Ashe MPs ‘Mr Ashe’. Almost none of the Journal references from this period can be linked reliably to any one of them, although occasionally tentative identifications can be made. John was very probably the most interested in the bill for the sale of forfeited estates.158CJ vii. 46b, 189a, 205a. One of the Ashes was named to the committee on soap in May 1651.159CJ vi. 581a. For John, ill health may have been a problem. In November 1651 he was laid up with gout at the house of his brother Edward in the City, and he also spent some periods away from Westminster.160‘Sir Roger Twysden’s Journal’ iv. ed. Larking, 189. In January 1652, as a justice of the peace, he attended the general sessions at Wells, while he was again in Somerset in April 1652.161QS Recs. Som. Commonwealth, 164; Harington’s Diary, 72. Yet in the meantime he had probably been back to London, for his only certain committee appointment for this period came on 3 February, when he was named to the committee to consider the petition from Colonel Owen Roe.162CJ vii. 80b.

Serving the protectorate, 1653-9

Ashe ceased to be an MP when the Rump was dissolved in April 1653 and he was not among those summoned to its replacement, the Nominated Parliament, later that year. But he continued to hold his local offices and had other distractions. Also in 1653 Sir John Stawell had published a detailed critique arguing that the Committee for Compounding had thoroughly mishandled his sequestration case.163Stawell, To the Supreme Authority the Parliament of the Common-wealth of England. In 1654 Ashe responded with a point-by-point refutation.164J. Ashe, An Answer to Divers Scandals Mentioned in a certain Pamphlet (1654, E.1072.2*). The following year Stawell in turn replied with an equally lengthy counterattack, which included the allegation that Ashe had personally profited from his role as chairman.165J. Stawell, The Vindication of Sir John Stawells Remonstrance (1655), 19-22 (E.1072.4).

The reorganisation of the parliamentary constituencies forced Ashe to look elsewhere when he came to stand for the 1654 Parliament, as both the Westbury seats had been suppressed. In practice this was no problem as he was elected as one of the eleven Somerset MPs, with several hundred votes to spare.166Som. RO, DD/HI/B/442, unfol. His known activities in this Parliament were confined to a few committee appointments. He, rather than his son James, was probably the ‘Mr Ash’ included on the committee for privileges (5 Sept.) and over the following weeks he was also named to the committees on Irish affairs (29 Sept.), whaling oil (12 Oct.) and, inevitably, Stawell’s latest petition (3 Nov.).167CJ vii. 366b, 371b, 375b, 381a.

Ashe stood again for Somerset in the elections for the second Protectoral Parliament. In the poll held on 20 August 1656, he came seventh with 1,648 votes.168Som. Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 77. His participation in this Parliament was hampered by ill health, however. When the roll-call of the House was taken on 31 December 1656, it was accepted that his absence could be excused because he was suffering from a recurrence of his gout.169Burton’s Diary, i. 286. Yet Ashe still managed to make more of an impact than many of his younger and fitter colleagues. This is evident despite the fact that, as his son James was the MP for Bath, there is the usual problem in trying to separate out references to ‘Mr Ashe’. Their political views were also similar – both siding with the Presbyterian or ‘country’ interest in the Commons. What is certain is that on 18 September, the day after the Parliament had assembled, John Ashe was sent to invite Joseph Caryl to preach to MPs on the fast day to be held on 24 September and that he was subsequently instructed to thank the minister. That makes it likely that he was named to the committee sent to see the lord protector with a declaration concerning that fast day.170CJ vii. 424a, 426b, 427b. Ashe also headed the list of MPs appointed to the committee of privileges on 18 September, a mark of his high standing among his colleagues.171CJ vii. 424a. Certainly named on 3 December to work on the bill to grant Irish estates to Henry Whaley and Erasmus Smyth, he then tried to block moves to include all the Irish MPs on that committee, arguing that, as MPs, they were ‘not Irishmen, but mere Englishmen.’172CJ vii. 463b; Burton’s Diary, i. 5.

During December 1656 Ashe took a hard line against the alleged heretic, James Naylor. Speaking on 6 December, he argued that MPs needed to do no more than declare him guilty of blasphemy and then proceed against him by an act of attainder.173Burton’s Diary, i. 42. Later in that debate, when Henry Lawrence I* moved for an adjournment, Ashe objected that this was unnecessary as all the facts were already obvious.174Burton’s Diary, i. 50. Two days later he accused John Cleypole II* of distracting those present from the question as to whether Naylor’s blasphemies amounted specifically to ‘horrid blasphemy’.175Burton’s Diary, i. 77.

Several matters considered during this session were ones in which Ashe had a direct personal interest. In debate on 13 December he spoke strongly in support of the bill to regulate the production of mixed cloth in the West Riding of Yorkshire: ‘our manufacturers are almost lost, and snatched into Holland only for want of regulation.’176Burton’s Diary, i. 127. His commercial interests were equally apparent when, on 8 January 1657, he disputed the accusations by Samuel Hyland* that merchants were making excessive profits on the importation of wine.177Burton’s Diary, i. 327. Of even more direct interest to him was the controversy over a bond for £600 given to the late Mary Boucher. This issue was raised in Parliament on 30 December when the attorney-general, Edmund Prideaux I*, presented a petition on the subject. The accusation seems to have been that three MPs – John Ashe, Nathaniel Fiennes I* and Clement Walker* – had made out the bond to Boucher, but that those with an interest in it included her kinsman, George Boucher, the Bristol man who had plotted to betray that city to the royalist forces in March 1643. Having heard the petition, the House referred the case to the committee on the bill confirming that the county court for Wiltshire was to be held at Devizes (a committee of which Ashe was a member). When this was reported back from that committee on 6 March 1657, the House agreed that Ashe, Fiennes and Walker had acted ‘for the use of the state’ and that they should be indemnified.178CJ vii. 475a, 476b, 499a; Burton’s Diary, i. 476b.

Ashe had meanwhile set in motion an idea which came to dominate this Parliament. On 19 January 1657 the secretary of state, John Thurloe*, informed the House of the plot by Miles Sindercombe to assassinate Cromwell. This served as an abrupt reminder of just how fragile the 1653 constitutional settlement actually was, resting as it did on the life of one man, the ‘single person’ of the lord protector. The immediate reaction of most MPs was to call for a day of thanksgiving for Cromwell’s safe delivery. For Ashe that was not enough. He saw a much bigger picture. With emotions running high, he called on the lord protector

to take upon him the government according to the ancient constitution; so that the hopes of our enemies’ plot would be at an end. Both our liberties and peace, and the preservation and privilege of his highness, would be founded upon an old and sure foundation.179Burton’s Diary, i. 362-3.

The coded message was not too difficult to discern – Ashe wanted Cromwell to become king. The idea was not new and, in the short time, Ashe’s proposal went nowhere, but talk of a new constitutional settlement continued to circulate at Westminster and the idea burst back on to the agenda when Sir Christopher Packe* presented his Remonstrance on 23 February. A month later a majority of MPs were pressing Cromwell to accept the crown, and Ashe was himself listed among the 120-odd MPs who voted for the inclusion of kingship in the first article of the Humble Petition and Advice on 25 March.180Narrative of the Late Parliament (1658), 22 (E.935.5). How far Ashe’s intervention in the previous January had been spontaneous is impossible to say. It could easily have been a put-up job (by Thurloe or Broghill?), possibly in order to test the water. Or he may just have been articulating what many were already coming round to thinking.

While that issue was still gathering momentum, Ashe had probably welcomed the defeat of the militia bill, which, had it been passed would have entrenched the major-generals by placing the decimation tax on a statutory basis. A letter of 12/22 February from John Johnson, Ashe’s agent in Antwerp, welcoming ‘so good an understanding between the protector and Parliament’ was written in response to a letter from Ashe which is likely to have reported news of the bill’s defeat.181TSP vi. 56. Four months later Johnson told Ashe that he viewed Cromwell’s refusal of the crown as evidence that relations between the lord protector and the army were not as strong as had been assumed, although that is one interpretation Ashe is unlikely to have shared.182TSP vi. 304.

On 28 December 1657 Ashe replied to a letter from Thurloe encouraging him to attend Parliament when it reassembled on 20 January 1658.

Upon your advice I am resolved (if the Lord be pleased to give me health) to be at Westminster the first day of the Parliament, that I may give my best assistance after the perfecting the happy settlement, which is so much expected and desired by all those that love his highness and the peace and safety of these nations.183TSP vi. 709.

It is possible that this promise was fulfilled, as it was more probably John than James who spoke in debate on 30 January. The issue was whether the Commons should send a reply to the Other House, thereby tacitly acknowledging its existence. Whichever man spoke argued that they should, adding that they should go further and invite the Other House to join with them in an address to the lord protector for a day of humiliation.184Burton’s Diary, ii. 400. That sounds just like John Ashe the strong supporter of Cromwellian kingship and, by extension, of the Humble Petition and Advice.

When the new lord protector, Richard Cromwell*, summoned a new Parliament for January 1659 to be elected under the old franchises, Ashe initially hoped to sit for his old constituency of Westbury. When that option was blocked, he instead got elected with his younger brother Samuel* at Heytesbury.185CCSP iv. 133. He then travelled up to London to take his place in his fifth Parliament. Within weeks he was dead, prompting his royalist son-in-law, John Shaw†, then in exile at Antwerp, to observe that, ‘if he had kept himself at Freshford, and not come up to this accursed Parliament, he might have lived many years’.186CCSP iii. 251. The writ for the by-election to replace him was issued on 12 February.187CJ vii. 603a.

Ashe’s will, drawn up two years earlier, divided his substantial land holdings between five of his six sons. John received the lands at Beckington, Somerset and Teffont Evias; Edward, those at Freshford and Buckland Dinham, Somerset (but with a life interest to his wife); Joseph, those at Enford, Wiltshire; Samuel, those at Westbury and Dilton, Wiltshire; Benjamin, those at Batcombe; and Jonathan, those in Tipperary which he had gained as an investor in the Irish Adventure.188PROB11/293/280. Of those sons, probably only the last continued in the cloth business.189C107/17: acct. bk. 1662-6. Much of Ashe’s vast business network instead passed to his son-in-law, Paul Methuen (husband of his daughter, Grace), thus helping to establish the enormous wealth of the later generations of the Methuens of Corsham Court.