ASSHETON, Raphe II (1606-51), of Middleton, Lancs.

Assheton belonged to a cadet branch of a family that had settled at Ashton-under-Lyne, near Manchester, by the early twelfth century. Four centuries later, in 1514, when the Asshetons of Ashton failed in the male line, the Asshetons of Middleton – an estate about five miles north east of Manchester, acquired by marriage in the mid-fifteenth century – were left as the senior branch of the family. However, they did not provide a Member for Lancashire or any of its constituencies until Assheton’s own election to the Long Parliament.31W.M. Bowman, England in Ashton-under-Lyne (Altrincham, 1960), 88-90, 105, 111; VCH Lancs. iv. 341-2; v. 165; Foster, Lancs. Peds.; Pink, Beavan, Lancs. 39-40, 47, 58, 71-2; Halley, Puritanism, i. 158-9.

Assheton is often confused with his uncle Raphe Assheton of Kirby, Yorkshire, who was born in 1596 and admitted at Sidney Sussex, Cambridge, and Gray’s Inn in 1614.32Keeler, Long Parl. 92; Blackwood, Lancs. 63; Gratton, Lancs. 80; Brereton Lttr. Bks. iii. 135. Nevertheless, it is quite clear from a variety of sources – not least his father’s inquisition post mortem and his own monumental inscription – that the future MP was born in 1606.33Lancs. IPM ed. Rylands, 104-7; Whitaker, Whalley, ii. 148. He was therefore still a minor when his father died in 1618, and his wardship was purchased for £600 by his mother with financial assistance from Raphe Assheton of Whalley (the father of Raphe Assheton I*) and Sir Peter Legh†.34WARD9/162, f. 304. Assheton was added to the Lancashire bench a little before his 21st birthday, but aside from his activities as a magistrate he seems to have played no significant role in county affairs before the 1640s.35D.J. Wilkinson, ‘The commission of peace in Lancs. 1603-42’, in Seventeenth-Century Lancs. ed. J.I. Kermode, C.B. Phillips, Trans. Historic Soc. Lancs. and Cheshire, cxxxii. 63. And although generally accounted a leading figure among Lancashire’s puritan gentry, there is little evidence of his patronage of godly ministers. His brother William, whom he presented to the rectory of Middleton in 1634, was adjudged ‘an exceeding mean preacher’ who gave no satisfaction to his congregation.36Lancs. and Cheshire Church Surveys ed. H. Fishwick (Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. i), 23-4; Life of Adam Martindale ed. R. Parkinson (ChetHam Soc. o.s. iv), 59; VCH Lancs. v. 158. The clergyman whom Assheton presented to the rectory of Radcliffe in 1638, Peter Shaw, was a time-server, trouble-maker and a crony of Archbishop William Laud.37Fellows of the Collegiate Church of Manchester ed. F. Renaud (Chetham Soc. n.s. xxi), 135-7; ‘Peter Shaw’, Oxford DNB. It is not known whether Assheton was also a patron of the curate of Middleton during the 1630s, Richard Hollinworth – but he, at least, would become a staunch Presbyterian.38‘Richard Hollinworth’, Oxford DNB; J.R. Mawdesley, ‘Clerical Politics in Lancs. and Cheshire during the Reign of Charles I, 1625-49 (Sheffield Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 2014), 262.

The nature and obvious strength of Assheton’s electoral interest in Lancashire by the autumn of 1640 requires explanation. A central feature of the country elections to the Long Parliament seems to have been hostility to Lancashire’s lord lieutenant James Stanley†, Lord Strange, and to his levying ‘many and great taxes’ to further the king’s doomed and controversial attempt to crush the Scottish Covenanters. In contrast to many prominent Lancashire gentry – and particularly to the two men who had represented the county in the Short Parliament – Assheton was not intimately tied to the Stanleys and may well have profited from the reaction against figures and policies associated with the personal rule of Charles I. Moreover, unlike some members of Stanley’s circle, Assheton was a firm Protestant and also had a strong proprietorial interest in the Manchester area – the heartland of the county’s godly community. In addition, he had friends among at least one other important electoral network in the county, that of the Rigbys of Wigan and of Middleton Hall, near Preston.39Supra, ‘Lancashire’; ‘Manchester’. At any rate, he wrote to George Rigby, brother of Alexander Rigby I*, late in October 1640, apologising for his failure to attend the Wigan elections to vote for Alexander and requesting George’s company ‘to Lancaster to the [county] election ... and of so many of your neighbours as have voices and will freely go’.40Lancs. RO, DDKE/9/23/57. With the likely support of the Lancashire godly, and free of any embarrassing associations with the Stanleys or the court, Assheton would have been well placed to leap-frog wealthier and more experienced men to one of the county seats.

Perhaps daunted by his inexperience as a Parliament-man or conscious of a certain lack of polish and learning (having apparently attended neither the universities nor the inns of court), he figured very little in debates on the floor of the House. Nevertheless, in the early months of the Long Parliament, he worked closely with his fellow knight of shire Roger Kirkbye and with Rigby to implement Commons’ initiatives for the suppression of popery.41Lancs. RO, DDKE/9/23/69; DDKE/9/24/14; HMC Kenyon, 59, 60; Procs. LP ii. 291. He may have been the ‘Mr Ashton’ who was active during the winter of 1640-1 on a sub-committee of the Commons’ standing committee for religion, with a brief to receive complaints from ministers ‘oppressed’ by the Laudian church authorities.42CJ ii. 54b; Procs. in Kent 1640 ed. Larking, 96, 99. His most notable contribution to the Commons’ proceedings before the outbreak of civil war was on 21 April 1641, when he presented a petition from Lancashire, purportedly signed by 4,488 people, ‘wherein they manifest the tyrannical government they suffer under bishops and desire their extirpation’.43Procs. LP iv. 35, 37-8, 43. His Protestant credentials were recognised by the House in July, when he and other leading Lancashire gentlemen were nominated to a commission for ecclesiastical causes (i.e. removing ‘scandalous’ ministers) for the county.44Procs. LP v. 642. However, there is no indication that this commission was ever approved by the Lords. In August, Assheton, Kirkbye and Rigby were appointed Lancashire commissioners for disarming recusants.45LJ iv. 385a.

Unfortunately, because of the clerk of the Commons’ failure to distinguish between Assheton and his kinsman Raphe Assheton I of Whalley, who sat for Clitheroe – referring to both men as ‘Mr Ashton’ – it is impossible to assess exactly how many committee appointments he received before 1644 (when Assheton I became a baronet) and, therefore, to form an accurate picture of his importance and activities at Westminster. The fact that one or both men were named to 19 committees between December 1640 and June 1642 and yet never to the same one, may indicate that the clerk was dealing with only one MP – and, if so, it is likely that it was Assheton I.46CJ ii. 42a, 45b, 51b, 52b, 54b, 57a, 61b, 129b, 155a, 156a, 186b, 372a, 396a, 423b, 465b, 515a, 569b, 576b. As a knight of the shire, Assheton I was the more senior of the pair and also seems to have enjoyed a greater measure of the House’s trust. The majority of these 19 committees were not of any great importance, however, and if these appointments are any guide then neither Assheton I nor II were closely involved in Parliament’s efforts to reform the perceived abuses of the personal rule and to punish their authors.

Assheton appears to have been absent from the House during the second half of 1641, but he had returned to Westminster by 10 January 1642, when he moved that one of Lancashire’s leading puritan ministers, Richard Heyricke, warden of the collegiate church of Manchester, be nominated to what would become the Westminster Assembly.47JRL, Legh of Lyme corresp., Lttrs. to Francis Legh, folder 10: P. Legh to Legh, 10 Jan. 1642; Newton, House of Lyme, 167; Richardson, Puritanism, 45. Assheton’s motion was not to the liking of the MP for Newton in Lancashire, Peter Legh, and would be opposed, claimed Legh, by ‘many more’. Yet despite their differences, Assheton would be one of the witnesses to Legh’s will when, a few weeks later, the Newton MP lay dying of wounds he had received fighting a duel.48Newton, House of Lyme, 172, 173. On 1 June, Parliament recommended that Assheton be appointed a Lancashire deputy lieutenant by the county’s new lord lieutenant, Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, and on 9 June, the Commons requested that Assheton, John Moore*, Richard Shuttleworthe I* and Alexander Rigby I go down into Lancashire to oversee the enforcement of the Militia Ordinance in the county – a duty that Assheton and his colleagues apparently performed with some hesitancy in the face of the increasing royalist activity in the county.49CJ ii. 598a, 615a, 625b; LJ v. 137a, 174b; Lancs. Civil War Tracts, 16-18, 21; Gratton, Lancs. 80. Before leaving Westminster, Assheton pledged to provide £250 on the propositions for the defence of Parliament.50PJ iii. 473. On 9 July, Assheton wrote to Moore – who had returned to Westminster by then – requesting that he acquaint the Commons with ‘what great benefit might ensue for the peace and quiet of [Lancashire] ... if the Lord Strange might be regained to our part and made [i.e. re-appointed in place of Wharton] ... lord lieutenant’. The House was unwilling to entertain this notion, however, and instead urged Assheton and his colleagues ‘to proceed with the militia [ordinance]’.51PJ iii. 198-9.

It is not certain whether Assheton returned to Westminster before the autumn of 1642, and it may have been Assheton I, therefore, who was named to committees in July and August for monitoring the activities of the commissioners of array and to receive contributions for the distressed Protestants of Ireland.52Supra, ‘Raphe Assheton I’; CJ ii. 689b, 713a. In September, reported one parliamentarian newsletter writer, ‘about an hundred and fifty of the tenants of Master Ashton of Middleton, in complete arms’, had helped to defend Manchester against Lord Strange’s royalist forces. But they were commanded by Captain John Bradshaw rather than by Assheton himself.53Lancs. Civil War Tracts, 51, 333. Assheton had apparently returned to Westminster by 13 September, when he was added to the committee of both Houses for raising money on the propositions for the maintenance of Parliament’s newly-raised army under Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex.54CJ ii. 763b; SP16/539/112, f. 203. The following month, he was added to a committee for raising 1,000 dragoons ‘for the suppressing of the malignant party in Lancashire’ and was included on a reconstituted version of the Committee for Examinations*.55Supra, ‘Committee for Examinations’; CJ ii. 777b, 795b, 825b. On 27 October and 3 November, he was granted permission to send powder and match to fortify his house at Middleton and ‘for the conveying down four small brass pieces [of ordnance] to Manchester ... and likewise one small brass piece for the safety of his own house’.56CJ ii. 824b, 833b. Assheton’s decision to side with Parliament in the civil war was almost certainly linked to his puritan religious sympathies.

Having been commissioned (probably by Lord Wharton) as a colonel of foot in October 1642, Assheton was quickly identified at Westminster as de facto commander-in-chief of Lancashire’s parliamentarian forces.57CJ vi. 503b; Warr in Lancs. 9; Lancs. Civil War Tracts, xi, 224; Add. 18777, f. 54. As such, he played a leading role in the series of engagements in Lancashire during late 1642 and the first half of 1643 that ended with the defeat of the county’s royalists in the field and their confinement to a few isolated garrisons. He and his regiment also fought at the battles of Adwalton Moor (in Yorkshire, June 1643), Nantwich (in Cheshire, Jan. 1644) and at Marston Moor (in Yorkshire, July 1644).58Lancs. Civil War Tracts, 81, 83, 85, 96, 98-9, 104, 106, 153-4, 162-6, 173, 204, 224, 226; Warr in Lancs. 22, 29-30, 35, 37-40, 58; HMC Portland, i. 132, 146, 156; Gratton, Lancs. 191, 213, 217, 223-4, 280. Given that he seems to have spent most of 1643 and 1644 fighting the northern royalists and that the clerk of the Commons was usually scrupulous in recognising MPs’ military rank, it seems very likely that the great majority of the references to ‘Mr Ashton’ in the Journal during this period relate to Assheton I.

Assheton had apparently returned to Westminster by 2 January 1645, when the House took notice of his ‘great, constant and very faithful services ... to the public’ and gave him leave to ‘bring in propositions for the better settlement of the country [i.e. Lancashire] and the ministers there’.59CJ iv. 7b. However, there is no evidence that he acted upon this invitation. In fact, his only known contribution to settling the county’s ministry during the 1640s was his presentation of Thomas Pyke, ‘a godly preaching minister’, to the rectory of Radcliffe.60Lancs. and Cheshire Church Surveys ed. Fishwick, 29. Assheton took the Covenant on 29 January and was added on 18 February to a committee for recruiting the New Model army.61CJ iv. 35b, 52a. Shortly thereafter, he returned to active service in the north west, where he and his regiment assisted his ‘nephew’ Colonel John Moore in the defence of Liverpool and Sir William Brereton* at the siege of Chester.62HMC 10th Rep. IV, 71, 72; Brereton Lttr. Bks. i. 10, 36, 74, 528-9. As in the case of his fellow Lancashire colonel and MP Richard Shuttleworthe I, Assheton resigned command of his regiment to his son and namesake after the passing of the Self-Denying Ordinance in April 1645.63Gratton, Lancs. 194.

Having returned to Westminster by July 1645, Assheton vowed not to go back to Lancashire if it meant working again with Colonel Richard Holland* and Colonel Alexander Rigby I. But he reserved his bitterest comments for John Holcrofte* and his allies for imprisoning one of the county’s most militant parliamentarians – Thomas Birche*. Although Holcrofte and his friends were identified in Lancashire with localist resistance to the excise and other parliamentary taxes, on this occasion it was Birche who had opposed a local levy – one which he and Assheton adjudged ‘illegal both in matter and manner’. Birche was supported in this feud not only by Assheton but also by Moore and another Lancashire hardliner, Peter Brooke*.64Infra, ‘Thomas Birche’; ‘John Holcrofte’; ‘John Moore’; Whitaker, Whalley, ii. 153-4; Gratton, Lancs. 18, 35, 43, 93-5. Assheton was evidently on better terms with his fellow Lancashire MPs, working with Assheton I (now Sir Raphe Assheton, 2nd bt.), Moore and William Ashhurst during the summer of 1645 on a standing committee, set up in October 1644, with wide powers to examine the accounts of the county’s parliamentary officers and officials and to investigate ‘any offence of misdemeanour prejudicial to this House or to the peace and safety of the county’.65SP19/82, ff. 19, 21; SP28/255, ff. 9, 64.

Assheton was named to only 14 committees between July 1645 and February 1648 and was granted leave of absence on four occasions during this period.66CJ iv. 298a, 552b; v. 101b, 306b. His inclusion on committees for presenting godly ministers in the northern counties (18 July 1645), to receive complaints against unordained preachers (31 Dec. 1646), and for removing obstructions on the sale of bishops’ lands (28 Oct. 1647), is consistent with a concern on his part to settle a Presbyterian ministry. And the same can be inferred from his appointment as an elder in the second Lancashire classis in October 1646, and to the 1646 and 1648 commissions for excluding notorious offenders from the sacrament.67CJ iv. 211b, 230b, 239a, 244b, 263b, 275a, 281a, 298a, 563a, 552b, 563a, 574b; v. 9b, 14b, 35a, 101b, 306b, 332a, 344b, 447b; LJ viii. 509. Even more revealing is his nomination with Sir Richard Hoghton on 31 January 1648 to inform the Lancashire minister Charles Herle – a strong Presbyterian, who was highly regarded by the Scots commissioners – of his appointment to accompany Ashhurst and other members of a parliamentary delegation to Scotland.68CJ v. 450b; ‘Charles Herle’, Oxford DNB. Assheton’s somewhat meagre haul of Commons’ appointments during the mid-1640s contrasts with his evident zeal as a soldier and committeeman in Lancashire, where he was clearly a figure of considerable importance throughout the civil war period.69Add. 59661, f. 16; SP28/211, ff. 612, 667, 761, 771, 788, 823; Bodl. Nalson III, ff. 74, 162; VIII, f. 295; Tanner 60, f. 17v; 62, f. 152; Belvoir, QZ.24, f. 45; QZ.25, ff. 12, 14; QZ.26, f. 20.

Assheton’s last committee appointment in the Commons was on 12 May 1648 – five days later (17 May), with the second civil war looming, the House sent him and two other MPs into Lancashire ‘to employ their best endeavours ... for the safety and preservation of that county’.70CJ v. 557b, 562b. In June, he was restored as commander-in-chief of Lancashire’s parliamentarian forces, with instructions to take orders from Major-general John Lambert* ‘in the present service in the north’ – which he apparently followed without demur, despite the two men’s differences in political and religious outlook.71CJ v. 608b; Lancs. Civil War Tracts, 252; HMC Portland, i. 465. Indeed, he and his men served loyally alongside Oliver Cromwell’s* troops at the battle of Preston in August, for which Assheton received the thanks of the House.72CJ v. 680b; CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 263; Broxap, Lancs. 163, 167. Despite rumours that he was to be replaced as commander in Lancashire by the radical army officer Colonel Thomas Harrison I*, he was commissioned in September, apparently at the instigation of Assheton I, as major-general of a newly-constituted Lancashire ‘brigade’, which he led against the royalist defenders of Appleby Castle, Westmorland, in October, forcing their surrender.73CJ vi. 53b; Bodl. Tanner 57, f. 302; Chetham’s Lib. A.3.90, ff. 16, 19v; Lancs. Civil War Tracts, 273-4.

At this point, however, with elements of the New Model making ominous noises against the king, Assheton’s troops – who presumably included a significant number of Lancashire Presbyterians – began to ‘give out big words against the army’, and it was reported early in December that Assheton and his men had declared against the army’s Remonstrance and its demand that Charles be put on trial.74Moderate Intelligencer no. 192 (16-23 Nov. 1648), sig. Hhhhhhhhhv [sic] (E.473.15); Mercurius Pragmaticus nos. 36-7 (5-12 Dec. 1648), sig. Ccc4v (E.476.2); Mercurius Elencticus no. 55 (5-12 Dec. 1648), 532 (E.476.4). It is unclear whether he was among the MPs secluded at Pride’s Purge on 6 December. He was certainly not included on a near contemporary list of the imprisoned and secluded Members drawn up by William Prynne*, who was in a position to know about such things.75[W. Prynne], A Vindication of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1649), irreg. pag. (E.539.5). His name does appear on one listing, and there he is probably confused with Assheton I.76OPH xviii. 468. But Assheton’s omission may simply have reflected the fact that he was still in the north at the time of the purge. Moreover, the army had reason to suspect his loyalty, for he had apparently disobeyed orders to disband his forces.77CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 335-6. The royalist Marchamont Nedham, writing late in December, was confident that

In due season, we may expect Col. Gen. Aston [sic] and his Lanc[ashire] forces to be at open hostility with the ... [army] grandees, for he hath been often commanded to disband but refuseth still and lists the northern royalists daily as a preamble to a sudden breach. The gen[eral] [Sir Thomas Fairfax*] sent [Henry] Ireton* to the House to move that the ordinance authorising Aston may be repealed, which being on Tuesday, the coun[cil] of war intend to renew their commands for his disbanding, which if he disobey then they declare him an open enemy.78Bodl. Clarendon 34, ff. 12v-13.

The ‘militia of Lancashire’ (i.e. Assheton’s brigade) declared one Lancashire minister early in January 1649, ‘was the honestest army in the kingdom, for they would stand for the Presbyterian government’.79Clarke Pprs. ii. 162. On 10 February, the Rump ordered the brigade to be disbanded and that Lambert ‘be required to see it forthwith done’ – and yet weeks later it was being reported that Assheton’s troops had declared for the Covenant and, encouraged by the Lancashire clergy, were determined to remain in arms until Presbyterianism had been established in the county.80CJ vi. 137b; Original Lttrs. and Pprs. ed. T. Carte (1739), i. 228, 231; The Moderate no. 37 (20-27 Mar. 1649), sig. Oo2 (E.548.21); Lancs. Civil War Tracts, 277. Not until late March, it seems, did Assheton’s troops bow to the inevitable and agree to disband.81Lancs. RO, DP 522/4/1, pp. 19-20; Lancs. Civil War Tracts, 277.

Despite the difficulties the Rump encountered disbanding his brigade, Assheton himself was not regarded from the first as a confirmed enemy of the new regime. He was named to the April 1649 assessment commission for Lancashire and retained his place on the county bench that year, though he does not appear to have attended the quarter sessions after January. He was also a Lancashire militia commissioner during 1649. If he failed to attend Parliament after Pride’s Purge it was possibly by choice rather than because he had been secluded. However, his relations with the Rump worsened significantly from late 1649, when he was omitted from the Lancashire assessment commission. In March 1650, the council of state dismissed him and several other leading Lancashire parliamentarians from ‘their employment in settling the militia’, and the following month he was dropped from the county bench.82CSP Dom. 1650, p. 34; Lancs. RO, QSC/51-2.

A refusal to take the Engagement may well account for Assheton’s removal from local office.83A. Craven, ‘‘For the better uniting of this nation’’, HR lxxxviii. 88. But the Rump may also have suspected him of more serious disaffection. Colonel Robert Duckenfeild* informed army headquarters in March 1650 that Assheton and Richard Holland were ‘much eyed’ in Lancashire ‘as ... inclining to head a party to close with the Scots against us’.84HMC Leyborne-Popham, 58; Blackwood, Lancs. 73. That same month, one of Assheton’s correspondents felt the need to caution him against thoughts of siding with Charles II and the Scots, ‘for if I be not a false prophet it will produce no good conclusions to the old roundhead’.85Greater Manchester County RO, E7/17/8/29. In May, Assheton’s son, Lieutenant-colonel Raphe Assheton junior, was brought before the council of state on a charge of high treason, ‘he being informed against as a very dangerous person’.86CSP Dom. 1650, p. 539. And the following year, Holland was imprisoned by the council, presumably on suspicion of fomenting unrest in Lancashire in support of the Scots.87Infra, ‘Richard Holland’.

Assheton, too, might have been imprisoned by the Rump had he not fallen ill early in 1651 and died on 17 February.88Whitaker, Whalley, ii. 148. He was buried at Middleton on 25 February.89Middleton par. reg. In his will, he charged his estate with an annuity of £30 for the education of his younger son and with raising portions for his two surviving daughters of £1,000 each.90PROB11/216, ff. 211v-212. Assheton’s grandson was returned for Liverpool in 1677 and for Lancashire in 1694 and 1695.91HP Commons 1660-90, ‘Sir Ralph Assheton II’.