ASHHURST, William (1607-56), of Ashurst, Dalton, Wigan, Lancs.

Background and early career

The Ashurst family had owned land in Ashurst, near Dalton in the parish of Wigan, since the thirteenth century.33Vis. Lancs. 1613 ed. F. R. Raines (Chetham Soc. o.s. lxxxii), 97; VCH Lancs. iv. 99-100. Ashhurst’s grandfather, who had purchased the manor of Dalton, was reported in 1590 as being ‘soundly affected in religion’, and Ashhurst’s father, Henry Ashurst, was described by Richard Baxter as ‘a gentleman of great wisdom and piety and zealous for the true Reformed religion in a country [i.e. Lancashire] where papists much abounded’.34VCH Lancs. iv. 100; R. Baxter, Faithful Souls Shall be with Christ (1681), 36. Ashhurst’s younger brother was apprenticed to a London draper in 1631 and went on to become a celebrated Presbyterian philanthropist – hence Baxter’s connection with the family.35‘Henry Ashurst’, Oxford DNB. But William’s own education and early career remain shrouded in mystery. There is no record of his attendance at university or the inns of court. And although his father was a long-standing member of the Lancashire magistracy, it does not appear that Ashhurst held any significant county office before the 1640s.36D.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. How he came to the attention of, and married into, the Ellis family of Lincolnshire is again something of a mystery. The only thing the two families appear to have had in common was their godly religious sympathies.37Infra, ‘William Ellys’. Ashhurst’s brother-in-law, William Ellys*, would become, like him, a prominent member of the Long Parliament. Yet despite Ashhurst’s puritan associations, he was serving as tithe-farmer to the Laudian bishop of Chester, John Bridgeman, by 1641, and, as such, he and Ellys had dealings with the bishop’s son – and steward of Archbishop William Laud’s liberties – Orlando Bridgeman*.38Infra, ‘Orlando Bridgeman’; Staffs. RO, D1287/18/2/208; ‘John Bridgeman’, Oxford DNB.

In the spring of 1642, Ashhurst put himself forward as a parliamentary candidate to replace the recently deceased Peter Legh, MP for the Lancashire borough of Newton, which lay about ten miles south-east of Dalton. The seat was contested by at least two other candidates, but Ashhurst apparently enjoyed the support of the majority of the town’s burgesses, its main electoral patron Francis Legh (uncle of Peter) and of Lancashire’s lord lieutenant and soon-to-be royalist leader, James Stanley, Lord Strange†, whose family seat at Knowsley lay a little to the west of Newton.39Supra, ‘Newton’; JRL, Legh of Lyme corresp., Lttrs. to Francis Legh, folder 11: Ashhurst to Legh, 23 Mar. 1642. On election day, which was probably in late March or April, he was duly returned, but there is no firm evidence that he took his seat in the House for another six months or so. He was apparently in London during the summer of 1642, for in mid-June, he pledged to bring in a horse on the propositions for the maintenance of Parliament’s field army under Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex.40PJ iii. 473. In July, he duly provided a horse and rider to the earl’s commissary of horse.41SP28/131, pt. 3, f. 16v. The leading Cheshire parliamentarian Sir William Brereton* looked to Ashhurst and the London MP Isaac Penington to procure a parliamentary order in August against giving obedience to the region’s commissioners of array.42HMC Portland, i. 52-3. But Ashhurst’s name does not appear in the Journal or in any of the parliamentary diaries before late September 1642. His apparent absence from the House in the months surrounding the outbreak of civil war may help to explain why he was omitted from the first draft of appointees to the Lancashire county committee and passed over for appointment as one of the county’s parliamentary deputy lieutenants.43Gratton, Lancs. 3, 5.

Ashhurst’s apparent hesitancy in committing himself to the parliamentarian cause was perhaps linked to growing divisions in his family over the deepening national crisis. For whereas his younger brother John became an officer in the Lancashire parliamentarian forces, his father acted with the county’s commissioners of array during the early months of the war – although he was thereafter deprived of both his real and personal estate by the royalists and died in 1645 in considerable financial distress.44Cheshire RO, DCC/47/42; Broxap, Lancs. 34, 69; Brereton Lttr. Bks. i. 319; Gratton, Lancs. 68-9. Ashhurst’s apparent irresolution may also have stemmed from a sense of obligation to the Stanleys, or, more likely, concern at the proximity of their residence at Lathom House and its royalist garrison to his estate in and around Dalton. He claimed after the war that he had lost his whole estate ‘from the very beginning of these troubles until about the 5th of December last [1645], when the garrison at Lathom was taken, near where my estate did lie … and my estate so ruined that I can make little use or profit of [it]’.45Bodl. Tanner 59, f. 503v.

A godly Member

Ashhurst would later argue that the civil war had begun as a constitutional quarrel resulting from ‘the king’s imposing on the power and privileges of Parliament’.46W. Ashhurst, Reasons against Agreement with...The Agreement of the People (1648), 8 (E.536.4). However, it is very likely that what drew him into the parliamentarian fold and sealed his allegiance was his concern to defend godly Protestantism. His very first appointment in the Commons, on 28 September 1642, was to request the Lancashire Presbyterian minister Thomas Case to preach the next fast sermon.47CJ ii. 787a. Thereafter, Ashhurst emerged as one of the most active MPs in the Long Parliament, and between the autumn of 1642 and the summer of 1646, when he was granted his first official leave of absence, he was appointed on no fewer than 14 further occasions either to request one or more ministers to preach before the House or to thank them for having done so.48CJ ii. 942b; iii. 110b, 542b, 574b, 622a, 672b, 680b, 688b; iv. 127b, 132a, 290b, 394b, 429b, 585b. All but two of these clergymen – the ‘orthodox’ Independent divines Joseph Caryl and Philip Nye – were Presbyterians, among them Cornelius Burges, Edmund Calamy, Francis Cheynell, Charles Herle, Matthew Newcomen, Richard Vines and Jeremiah Whitaker. It was upon Ashhurst’s motion that the House, on 28 February 1644, ordered that the daily service in Westminster Abbey be replaced by an ‘exercise’ in which six divines belonging to the Assembly would expound to the assembled congregation.49Harl. 166, f. 19v; CJ iii. 410b. He was an admirer and parliamentary patron of the Lancashire Presbyterian ministers Edward Gee, Paul Lathom and the warden of Manchester Collegiate Church, Richard Heyricke.50Bodl. Tanner 58, ff. 783-4; Harl. 165, f. 160; ‘Edward Gee’, Oxford DNB; Calamy Revised, 316. But the Presbyterian divine who probably had the greatest claim on his friendship was Charles Herle – the rector of the Lancashire parish of Winwick, in which Newton was situated.51‘Charles Herle’, Oxford DNB; Harington’s Diary, 58. On 6 November 1644, Ashhurst was appointed to draft an ordinance for providing a preaching ministry in several of the chapelries in Winwick, including Newton, and it seems very likely that he would have consulted with Herle about this piece of legislation.52CJ iii. 688b. A few weeks later (25 Nov.), he reported an ordinance for establishing a committee of Lancashire ‘Presbyters’ – headed by Herle and including Gee, Heyricke and Lathom – for examining and ordaining candidates for the ministry in Lancashire.53Harl. 166, f. 156; CJ iii. 705b; A. and O. i. 521-6. Ashhurst would later be appointed (along with Peter Brooke*) one of four elders under Herle for the parish of Warrington in the fourth Lancashire Presbyterian classis.54LJ viii. 510.

Described in the early eighteenth century as a ‘zealous Presbyterian’, Ashhurst was evidently regarded by his contemporaries as a man of impeccable godly credentials.55PA, EGM/1, unfol. On 9 January 1643, he was among a group of seven MPs added to the recently established Committee for Plundered Ministers*, whose membership was generally confined to those Members with a solid reputation for godliness.56Supra, ‘Committee for Plundered Ministers’; CJ ii. 920a. Perhaps almost as revealingly, he was included on the 3 May committee to prepare the legal cases against Archbishop Laud and Bishop Matthew Wren and to draft an ordinance for establishing the Assembly of Divines.57CJ iii. 68a. Unlike some of his more Erastian colleagues, Ashhurst seems to have taken the Assembly’s authority and proceedings very seriously. He was named second to a committee in mid-July 1643 for considering how to implement its proposals for the better observance of the sabbath.58CJ iii. 173b. In October, he chaired a committee concerning a paper from the Assembly for the suppression of Antinomianism.59CJ iii. 271b; Add. 18778, f. 66v. In November, he presented a draft ordinance to the House that sought to preserve the presentation rights of lay patrons by vesting the bishops’ role in this process in the Assembly.60CJ iii. 302b; Add. 18778, f. 83.

Ashhurst’s concern to defend and extend the bounds of godly orthodoxy can be detected in many of his appointments – as a committeeman for settling a preaching ministry and enforcing observance of the sabbath; as a messenger to the Lords for carrying up an ordinance concerning tithes (7 Nov. 1644); and to committees for determining the criteria for excluding scandalous persons from the sacrament (26 Nov. 1644, 23 May 1646).61CJ iii. 273b, 302b, 408a, 440b, 579b, 689b, 705b; iv. 97b, 211b, 218a, 373a, 502a, 553b, 556b, 719b; LJ vii. 50a. He looked approvingly on initiatives early in 1645 for introducing the new Directory of Worship and for executing Laud, ‘so that the archbishop and the service book [Book of Common Prayer] died together’.62Belvoir, QZ.25, f. 3. It was probably Ashhurst’s strenuous piety as much as his skills as an administrator that recommended him to the House as one of the governors of the collegiate church and school of St Peter’s, Westminster. Added to the House’s committee on the church and school, he reported amendments to an ordinance concerning their future management (20 Oct. 1645) and was a member of the standing committee established under this legislation – performing his duties as such with characteristic diligence.63CJ iii. 365a; iv. 198b, 320a, 320b; LJ vii. 711a; Add. 70107, unfol.; Add. 70109, unfol.; WAM, 42209, 42723.

War-party MP, 1642-4

Ashhurst is usually identified (where he is noticed at all) as a member of the parliamentary ‘middle group’ – that nebulous interest at Westminster supposedly devoted to securing a moderate, negotiated settlement with the king but from a position of maximum military strength.64Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 62, 64, 84, 89, 101, 140; W. Palmer, The Political Career of Oliver St John (1993), 110. Leaving aside whether such a group ever existed, it is clear from many of his interventions in debate – and particularly those relating to the Oxford peace treaty of 1643 – that he was very far from being a moderate, but belonged instead to the militant, war-party interest at Westminster. The ‘Mr Asher’ and ‘Mr Ashrey’ whom the parliamentary diarist Walter Yonge recorded in October 1642 denouncing the Yorkshire treaty of neutrality and accusing the king of soliciting help from British Catholics and Spanish Jesuits can only have been Ashhurst.65Add. 18777, ff. 20v, 31v, 35, 45v, 99b; CJ ii. 825b, 898a. In the debates in the House in November on whether to seek an accommodation with the king, he took a notably uncompromising line, insisting that he

would have no [peace] proposition[s] but our Protestation [of May 1641] to defend our lives and estates and [the] privileges of Parliament. And therefore would have us declare to his Majesty that we have received many complaints of wrongs done to the subjects. We have sent for these men [evil counsellors and other leading royalists], which are kept from us, and therefore we should desire that the king would deliver over to the House all such as are delinquents; and if we do this, we do our duty...66Add. 18777, f. 66v.

His position had not softened by February 1643, when the House debated the peace propositions to be treated on at Oxford. Indeed, he argued that the very idea of negotiating with the king was ill-founded.

We cannot treat, for this government doth consist, as the king sayeth, of the king and his Parliament – the representative body of the kingdom. If we choose some between us [commissioners to negotiate a treaty] we make ourselves a party and no Parliament and so shall pull up the Parliament by the roots.67Add. 18777, f. 147.

A few days later, on 11 February, Ashhurst echoed John Pym’s ostensibly eirenic sentiments that ‘the differences between the king and his people are not to be decided by the sword’. However, speaking immediately after Pym, he again followed the war-party men in insisting that the royalist and parliamentarian armies be disbanded before any treaty – an idea that the peace-party MP Sir Simonds D’Ewes and other commentators denounced as ‘preposterous’ and a deliberate attempt to frustrate the peace process.68Infra, ‘Sir Philip Stapilton’; Add. 18777, ff. 148, 151; D. Scott, ‘Party politics in the Long Parliament’, in Revolutionary England ed. G. Southcombe, G. Tapsell (2017), 39-40. Ashhurst’s contribution to the debates on the peace propositions is entirely consistent with D’Ewes’s classification of him alongside Henry Marten and the Lancashire MP Alexander Rigby I among the ‘great promoters of this destructive civil war amongst us’.69Harl. 164, f. 287.

A great many of Ashhurst’s 140 or so committee appointments between 1642 and 1646 seem to bear out D’Ewes’s claim that he was one of the ‘violent spirits’ in the Commons. Moreover, Ashhurst’s support for the vigorous prosecution of the war went well beyond mere local interest. He was a committeeman and a drafter and reporter of legislation for managing and improving the conduct of military affairs throughout Parliament’s quarters, including London, the Eastern Association and the Association of Warwickshire and Staffordshire.70CJ iii. 177a, 187b, 195b, 257b, 277b, 408b, 437a, 502b, 534a, 580a, 611b, 617b, 618a, 637b, 654b, 655b, 700a; iv. 75a, 112a, 153b. He was regularly teamed in 1642-3 with war-party MPs to raise troops, publicise the presence of papists in the king’s armies and to seize the goods and money of delinquents (including those of Archbishop Laud).71CJ ii. 795b, 812b, 839b, 842a, 898a; iii. 18b. In December 1642, he played a leading role in apprehending and investigating persons that the Commons suspected were sending money to the royalists.72CJ ii. 898a, 898b, 899b.

The more the parliamentarian cause seemed to be sliding towards defeat in the summer of 1643, the more strident and partisan became Ashhurst’s support for it. Following revelations in June, implicating Edmund Waller* and other peace-party figures in a plot to betray London to the king, Ashhurst supported Pym and his confederates’ introduction of the ‘vow and covenant’, pledging its subscribers to support the fight against the king ‘so long as the papists now in open war against the Parliament shall by force of arms be protected from the justice thereof’.73CJ iii. 118. It was Ashhurst and another godly MP aligned with the war party, Sir William Strickland, who on 29 June were ordered to bring Waller before the committee of both Houses that was charged with his examination.74CJ iii. 150a. Between late June and late September, Ashhurst was named to committees for tendering the vow and covenant to the people (and to devise a similar oath for Parliament’s troops); to consider a public vindication of the vow (which would naturally present a valuable propaganda opportunity for the war party); and for proceeding against those MPs who were deemed, by their inordinate support for peace, or their absence from the House, to have done ‘disservice to the Parliament’.75CJ iii. 144a, 173b, 216b, 250a.

Having taken up permanent residence in London by early 1643, Ashhurst also figured on several committees relating to the capital’s military affairs – most notably, on 20 July 1643, when he was named to the committee for the ‘general rising’.76CJ iii. 176a; L. Glow, ‘Pym and Parliament: the methods of moderation’, JMH xxxvi. 377-8. Established in response to a petition from a group of ardent war party supporters in London, this committee was given the task of mobilising and maintaining an army of citizen volunteers under a commander who would largely be independent of the earl of Essex. In flagrant violation of the Commons’ privileges, the petitioners had presumed to name the committee’s membership, and the result was a body made up almost exclusively of well known ‘violent spirits’, among them the two MPs whom D’Ewes had bracketed with Ashhurst earlier in the year – Marten and Rigby. It is very hard to imagine that the promoters of the general rising would have nominated Ashhurst for their committee unless they had ranked him with the likes of Marten and Rigby as zealous in the cause of absolute victory. The man the committee lighted upon to command the new army was Sir William Waller*, the darling of the London militants. In the event, the idea of a general rising proved unworkable. Nevertheless, Ashhurst had shown much more enthusiasm for putting Waller into the field than he had, or would, for ensuring that Essex’s army was similarly well manned and maintained.77CJ ii. 187b, 240a, 534a; Harl. 165, ff. 191-2.

Ashhurst was named to several committees during the first half of 1644 for remodelling and disciplining Essex’s forces.78CJ iii. 408b, 437a, 502b. His most notable appointment in this respect was to the 26 February committee for ‘the reformation of the lord general’s army’, chaired by Zouche Tate.79CJ iii. 408b. This committee’s primary task was to nominate and thus reconstitute the earl’s officer corps – and D’Ewes described its members as ‘all violent spirits’ and enemies to Essex’s army, ‘for now it was to be reduced to little above half the number it had formerly been, and many officers were to be discharged’.80Harl. 166, f. 18. Ashhurst apparently attached great importance to parliamentary oversight of the soldiery. He received a number of appointments during the war for preventing or remedying abuses committed by Parliament’s officers and troops, particularly their illegal seizure of horses.81CJ ii. 825b, 943a; iii. 53a, 212a, 213b, 277b. Not all war-party MPs were quite so scrupulous about protecting civilian property from Parliament’s soldiers as Ashhurst seems to have been. And he also diverged from the majority of ‘violent spirits’ and leading ‘northern gentlemen’ at Westminster in his failure to make any meaningful contribution to negotiating and maintaining a military alliance with the Scottish Covenanters – beyond, that is, his likely involvement in the establishment of the Assembly of Divines, which was set up with one eye on persuading the Scots of Parliament’s commitment to a Covenanted church settlement. With the exception of his nomination to successive (but from an English perspective, meaningless) commissions for conserving the peace between the two kingdoms and to several committees for the supply and ordering of the Scottish army in the north, he seems to have steered clear of any business pertaining directly to relations with the Covenanters before 1646.82CJ iii. 169a, 408a, 602b; iv. 166a.

Parliamentary man-of-business, 1643-5

Ashhurst’s reputation as one of the violent spirits at Westminster rested in part upon his prominent role in support of Parliament’s war-effort in the north. He was regularly selected to committees for prosecuting the war in the northern counties and for the supply of Parliament’s main northern army under the 2nd Baron Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*).83CJ iii. 76a, 86a, 105a, 174b, 508b, 602b. But those who relied on his services most were Parliament’s commanders west of the Pennines, notably Brereton – Parliament’s general in the north-west – and his ‘sub-general’ in north Wales, Sir Thomas Middleton*.84Infra, ‘Sir Thomas Middleton’. Ashhurst pledged himself to act as Brereton’s parliamentary agent at precisely the moment when the Oxford peace propositions were being debated in the Commons. Thus on 9 February 1643, he wrote to Brereton, assuring him ‘you shall find none more ready and willing to his utmost power to serve you’.85Brereton Lttr. Bks. ii. 537. During the course of the war, he was employed ‘about every conceivable matter of importance to Brereton in the Commons and the City’, and he worked closely with Brereton’s other allies at Westminster – a group dominated by war-party MPs and future Independents, among them John Bradshawe*, Oliver St John* and Sir Henry Vane II*.86Brereton Lttr. Bks. i. 12, 51, 52, 82, 111-12, 450; ii. 9, 11, 116, 128, 271, 321, 528. So great was Brereton’s trust in Ashhurst that he committed the care of his family – which by 1645 was living in London – to Ashhurst’s charge.87Brereton Lttr. Bks. ii. 378.

Many of Ashhurst’s most high-profile parliamentary appointments during the war related directly or indirectly to Brereton. The first of the two conference management teams to which he was named during his career, on 24 March 1643, concerned letters from Brereton.88CJ iii. 16b; iv. 22b; Add. 34253, f. 23. Similarly, the majority of his 14 appointments as a messenger to the Lords involved carrying up legislation for the support and encouragement of Brereton’s and Middleton’s armies.89CJ iii. 500a, 556b, 686a, 689b; iv. 320b, 386b, 387a, 446b, 575b; v. 273b, 678a; vi. 71a; LJ vi. 208a, 506b, 625b; vii. 46a, 50a; viii. 70b, 373b; x. 450a, 581a, 602b. The task of drafting letters, orders and ordinances concerning the two commanders specifically, or of providing cash and arms for their forces in Lancashire, Cheshire, north Wales and the northern Welsh borders, was regularly referred during the war years either to Ashhurst alone, or to him and one or two other MPs from the region. As an agent and man-of-business for Brereton and Parliament’s forces in the north-west, he liaised with and was a suitor to Essex and to the lord admiral, the 2nd earl of Warwick (Sir Robert Rich†), and had dealings with a number of executive committees, including the Committee of Navy and Customs*, the Committee for Advance of Money* and the Committee of Both Kingdoms*.90SP19/82, ff. 19-21; Belvoir, QZ.25, f. 3; PZ.1, f. 40; PZ.2, f. 23; CJ iii. 129a, 320a, 331a, 342a, 345b, 482a, 492a, 501b, 514a, 527a, 541b, 572a, 611b, 616b, 626a, 691b; iv. 71b, 267a, 366b; Harl. 166, f. 101; Brereton Lttr. Bks. i. 173, 239, 273, 292, 347, 402; ii. 22; CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 482; 1645-7, p. 75. He probably chaired a committee set up on 6 March 1644 for authorising Brereton to raise money and troops for the defence of Cheshire.91CJ iii. 418b, 429b. On 16 May, he reported details of ‘that expedition for setting out Sir William Brereton’ – including, it seems, a commission appointing Brereton commander-in-chief (under the Fairfaxes) of the parliamentarian forces in Cheshire, and an ordinance for empowering John Bradshawe and William Steele* to collect subscriptions for his army.92Harl. 166, f. 62; CJ iii. 496. In all, Ashhurst was named to a dozen committees relating to the war in the north-west, several of which he either chaired or reported from, or both.93CJ iii. 278a, 321a, 386a, 400a, 418b, 482a; iv. 99b, 109a, 110a, 255b, 275a, 396b, 429a, 443b. He may well have chaired a committee set up on 5 August 1645 to advance the siege of the royalist stronghold of Chester; and he and his ‘good friend’ the Staffordshire recruiter John Swynfen were the principal figures in managing the Westminster end of this operation – drafting ordinances to advance the good work and writing letters to the region’s parliamentary committees and gentry, requesting assistance and troops.94Infra, ‘John Swynfen’; CJ iv. 230b, 254b, 278b, 285a, 291a, 308b, 370a, 384b, 386b, 387a; Brereton Lttr. Bks. i. 293; ii. 115, 175, 215, 377, 380, 382, 396, 405, 411, 431, 432-3, 448-9, 456-7, 471. With the surrender of Chester in February 1646, Ashhurst and John Glynne were ordered to prepare a letter of thanks to Brereton and his officers; and on 17 April, Ashhurst was named first to a committee for settling the city’s government.95CJ iv. 429b, 512a.

Ashhurst’s constant care to strengthen Parliament’s hold in the north-west meant that he could scarcely avoid becoming involved in the two Houses’ efforts to guard against the threat from Ireland. Several of his more significant contributions to debate during the war were inspired by a concern that Parliament, and specifically the navy, was doing too little to prevent the landing of royalist or Catholic troops from Ireland.96Harl. 165, ff. 123, 167, 233v, 244; Harl. 166, ff. 73, 77, 101. By 8 March 1643, he was attending the standing Committee for Irish Affairs, although he was never formally added to this body.97SP16/539/127, ff. 15, 38. And between July 1643 and February 1644, as the prospect of the king importing troops from Ireland grew and then materialized, he received a series of Commons’ orders and committee appointments to advance the war against the Irish Confederates and to counter the arrival of royalist troops from Ireland.98CJ iii. 182a, 223a, 236a, 276b, 320a, 342a, 400a; LJ vi. 208a. His dealings with Warwick and the Committee of Navy and Customs in 1643-4 to secure extra protection for the Lancashire and north Welsh coasts appear to have given him a good grounding in naval affairs, and this in turn probably accounted for his subsequent appointment to several ad hoc committees relating to the navy and to his addition on 4 October 1645 to the Committee for the Admiralty and Cinque Ports* (of which he was an active member).99CJ iii. 722a; iv. 57a, 297a; LJ vii. 624b; Add. 63788B, f. 26; ADM7/673.

Ashhurst’s talents as a parliamentary man-of-business recommended him to the House for addition, on 11 November 1643, to what would quickly emerge as one of Parliament’s most influential executive bodies, the Committee for Revenue*.100CJ iii. 307b. What is striking about this committee’s membership is the prominence of Parliament-men who, like Ashhurst, favoured the vigorous prosecution of the war.101Supra, ‘Committee for the Revenue’; Brereton Lttr. Bks. iii. 206. Ashhurst would be among the Revenue Committee’s most diligent members, and he was rewarded by it on 30 November 1643 with appointment to the exchequer office of remembrance of first fruits and tenths. He would later claim that he had not received ‘any penny of the state’s money’ in this office – except, that is, £90 in fees and profits – before he was required to relinquish it under the terms of the Self-Denying Ordinance.102Bodl. Tanner 59, f. 503; Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, ii. 571-2. Although he was involved in the Commons’ efforts to put the legal administration of Lancashire on a more parliamentary footing, there is no evidence for claims that he was appointed to the potentially very lucrative office of joint-keeper of a new seal for the duchy of Lancaster.103CJ iii. 448b, 733a; iv. 574b; JRL, Pink ms 296, f. 206. On 7 August 1644, he was added, with his brother-in-law William Ellys, to another important executive body, the Committee for Sequestrations*, which he attended on a reasonably regular basis during the mid-1640s.104CJ iii. 581b; LJ vi. 663a; SP20/1/2, ff. 269, 288; SP20/1/3, ff. 415, 500; SP20/2, f. 177. To judge by these appointments and by his regular inclusion on ad hoc ‘money committees’, he was concerned not only with managing and maximising Parliament’s various revenue streams, but also with the proper auditing and oversight of public finances. Similarly, his nomination on 3 July 1645 to Alexander Rigby’s committee to investigate abuses of offices, and to a committee set up on 1 December to receive information about MPs taking bribes, suggests that he expected high standards from those in public employment.105CJ iii. 473b, 534a, 606a, 676a, 723b; iv. 116a, 123b, 166a, 194a, 225b, 244b, 345b, 346a, 362a, 445b. It was Ashhurst’s motion that was responsible for a Commons’ order of 1 December 1645 that ‘the public debts and engagements of the kingdom’ be satisfied before leading Parliamentarians were rewarded with titles and estates as part of any peace settlement.106CJ iv. 361b; The Scotish Dove no. 112 (3-10 Dec. 1645), 883 (E.311.19). He would boast the following year that ‘for myself, I did never receive any penny of the state’s money’ in any of the offices in which he had served.107Bodl. Tanner 59, f. 503. Parliament’s radical critics thought otherwise, alleging in 1648 that he had been ‘a great gainer by the places he held all these troubles’.108Westminster Projects, or the Mysterie of Darby House Discovered (1648), 7 (E.433.15).

From war to peace, 1644-6

Ashhurst seems to have bowed out of the war party’s harrying of the earl of Essex by mid-1645, focusing his attention instead on the less than glittering military career of Essex’s fellow aristocratic general, Basil Feilding, 2nd earl of Denbigh. Denbigh, the commander of Parliament’s west midlands association, was regarded by some of the fiery spirits, including Ashhurst’s good friends Brereton and Swynfen, as ineffective and treacherous.109Infra, ‘John Swynfen’; ‘Sir William Brereton’. Added to the committee on the west midlands association in place of William Purefoy I on 30 August 1644, Ashhurst reported from this body on 20 November concerning the state of play between the earl and his detractors.110CJ iii. 611b, 700a; A. Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War in Warws. (Cambridge, 1987), 237. D’Ewes noted how Ashhurst ‘cunningly’ used his knowledge of the House’s procedure to block legislation for strengthening the earl’s command.111Harl. 166, f. 127. Yet even though new modelling was designed to remove dilatory commanders like Essex and Denbigh, Ashhurst received only one appointments that had any bearing on this development – to a committee set up on 24 March on the Self-Denying Ordinance.112CJ iv. 88a. Ashhurst evidently regarded the ordinance as a prudent measure, remarking to Colonel John Moore* that ‘many of those that understand the state of our affairs think it necessary to pass’ it.113Belvoir, QZ.25, f. 3.

Very little can be deduced from Ashhurst’s appointment in the summer of 1645 to committees relating to the Savile affair (the allegedly treacherous dealings of Sir Thomas Savile†, 2nd Baron Savile and by this time earl of Sussex) and to translate the letters in French that had been seized in Charles’s I’s cabinet after the New Model’s victory at Naseby in June.114CJ iv. 172b, 183b, 195a. A slightly surer indication as to his factional alignment in the House in 1645-6 is his chairmanship on five occasions between 15 December 1645 and 13 January 1646 of committees of the whole House concerning what would become the Newcastle peace propositions.115CJ iv. 376b, 381a, 396b, 397a, 405a. The committee that Ashhurst chaired dealt specifically with that part of the propositions concerning the conduct of the war against the Irish rebels; and from its deliberations emerged the House’s vote of 5 January 1646 that the government of Ireland be committed to one person.116CJ iv. 397a. That person, nominated as chief governor of Ireland on 21 January, was Philip Sidney*, Viscount Lisle, the nephew of the Independent grandee Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland. This vote represented a stark repudiation of the Scots’ insistence on a joint, Anglo-Scottish approach to the reconquest of Ireland.117D. Scott, ‘The ‘northern gentlemen’, HJ xlii. 369-70. Another likely pointer as to his political loyalties in the months following new-modelling was his collaboration with Swynfen in defeating attempts by George Boothe* and Edward Leigh* and their factional allies in Cheshire and Staffordshire respectively to blacken Brereton’s reputation at Westminster and thereby undermine his military and political authority in the region. Most of the leading members of this anti-Brereton faction were aligned with the Essexian, Presbyterian interest at Westminster.118Infra, ‘George Boothe; ‘Edward Leigh’; ‘John Swynfen’; Brereton Lttr. Bks. i. 60-1, 293, 305-6, 403; ii. 18; CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 273.

Towards the Presbyterians, 1646-7

That Ashhurst was never pulled too far into the Independents’ orbit at Westminster was perhaps due, in part, to the sincerity of his commitment to a strongly Presbyterian church settlement. He doubtless took seriously his appointment on 25 July 1645 to a committee headed by two of the House’s leading spokesmen for Scottish-style Presbyterianism, Zouche Tate and Francis Rous, for liaising with the Assembly about the election of elders within the province of London.119CJ iv. 218a. And his intervention on 15 October at the third reading of an ordinance laying out ‘rules and directions’ for parish presbyteries to suspend ‘scandalous’ person from communion suggests collaboration on his part with Tate and his friends. Endeavouring to secure a compromise that would satisfy the Erastian majority in the House as well as the ‘Covenant-engaged’ interest in the Assembly and the City, Ashhurst proposed adding a proviso to the ordinance that would allow a minister, ‘with the consent of the eldership and approbation of the classis’, to exclude persons guilty of ‘notorious sin’ as long as Parliament was informed about the matter. This echoed a similar proposal made by Tate a few weeks earlier that presbyteries should have a discretionary power to suspend communicants for offences not specified in the legislation, pending adjudication by Parliament. Ashhurst’s intervention succeeded to the extent that it split the Erastian majority, provoking a division – on whether to give his proviso a second reading – in which all four tellers were opponents of clericalist Presbyterianism. But although the yeas won this division, and the proviso was given its second reading, the House then rejected it and stuck to the line that presbyteries could suspend communicants only for offences specified in the ordinance.120Infra, ‘Zouche Tate’; Add. 18780, f. 143v; CJ iv. 308b-309a.

The evidence suggests that Ashhurst was not entirely sold on the idea that Presbyterianism was jure divino [divinely ordained] – as Scottish divines and their English allies insisted – which is consistent with his appointment to a committee set up on 16 April 1646, and specially referred to the care of the leading Independent MPs Sir Arthur Hesilrige and Henry Marten, to assert Parliament’s supremacy over the Westminster Assembly in matters of church government.121CJ iv. 511a; R.S. Paul, The Assembly of the Lord (Edinburgh, 1985), 506-11. Nevertheless, he seems to have favoured a stronger and more clericalist Presbyterian church than most parliamentary Independents were prepared to stomach. Signs of this tension in his relationship with the Independents are clear in his first tellership, on 17 April, in which he partnered the leading Presbyterian MP Sir Walter Erle in a division on a declaration (drafted by an Independent-dominated committee) to counter Scottish claims that Parliament had reneged on the Covenant and was intent on altering the fundamental constitution in church and state. Ashhurst and Erle were tellers against including a clause which stated that acceding to the Assembly’s proposals for giving the last word in matters of church discipline to parish presbyteries and clerical synods (rather than, as Parliament insisted, to lay commissioners nominated by the two Houses) would be to ‘consent to the granting of an arbitrary and unlimited power and jurisdiction to near 10,000 judicatories to be erected within this kingdom’ and was inconsistent with the proper exercise of parliamentary authority. The opposing, and victorious, tellers were the Independent grandees Sir Arthur Hesilrige and Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire.122CJ iv. 512b, 513b; P. Crawford, Denzil Holles, 125-6.

Ashhurst was granted leave on 16 June 1646 and seems to have spent most of that summer away from the House.123CJ iv. 578b; Belvoir, QZ.26, f. 20. Between his return to Westminster in September and the Presbyterian ‘riots’ of July 1647 he was named to 21 committees.124CJ iv. 671a. He chaired, or at least reported from, a committee to draft an ordinance for settling the militia and civil government of Cheshire – which was perhaps the last time that he acted for Brereton at Westminster in an official capacity.125CJ iv. 674b; v. 40a. But the majority of his appointments during this period suggest that he, like Swynfen, was moving away from Independents like Brereton and into closer alignment with the Presbyterians.126Infra, ‘John Swynfen’. With the war won and the Scots soon to return home, Ashhurst would probably have seen little point in maintaining the army – on which the Independents relied for much of their political strength – especially if it represented an obstacle to the establishment of a strong Presbyterian national church. The third, and last, of his tellerships may well witness to this shift in his political orientation.127CJ iv. 691b, 700b. Thus on 20 October, he and the Presbyterian MP Edward Bayntun were tellers in favour of an ordinance appointing Arthur Squibb (not to be confused with the MP of that name) to one of the senior heralds’ positions, Clarenceux King-of-Arms.128CJ iv. 700b. Squibb’s appointment was probably intended to further the elaborate arrangements being made for the funeral of the earl of Essex – an event that the Presbyterian leadership hoped to turn into a massive show of military and political strength against their Independent enemies.129Infra, ‘Arthur Squibb’; J. Adamson, ‘Divine rites and Roundheads: royal symbolism and civil-war politics in the funeral of the earl of Essex’ (unpublished ppr.). This would explain why the tellers against passing the ordinance were prominent Independents – namely, Oliver Cromwell and Harbert Morley.

Against a backdrop of mounting pressure in the City and Assembly for a Covenant-engaged settlement, Ashhurst and six other enthusiasts for a strong Presbyterian church were tasked on 9 December 1646 with bringing in an enumeration of ‘those more crying national sins, for which the nation hath not yet been humbled before God’.130CJ v. 7b. Three days later, on 12 December, he was named in third place after Swynfen to a committee for examining the army preacher William Dell for the unauthorized publication of a sermon he had delivered to Commons on the morning of 25 November and for his criticism of a sermon delivered that afternoon by Christopher Love, who had preached strongly in favour of a Presbyterian reformation.131CJ v. 10b. Dell was a fervent anti-formalist, and it was perhaps his opposition to all fixed church structures, as much as his printing of his sermon without permission, that landed him in trouble with the House. That same day (12 Dec.), Ashhurst was named to a committee for examining a work by the Presbyterian ministers of London in favour of jure divino Presbyterianism.132CJ v. 11a. The majority of MPs, and probably Ashhurst among them, were insistent that Parliament should remain the final arbiter on questions of church government.

Ashhurst’s firm but non-‘Scottified’ Presbyterianism and his experience in Anglo-Scottish relations probably account for his appointment late in 1646 as a parliamentary commissioner with Henry Grey*, 1st earl of Stamford, and Robert Goodwin to oversee the withdrawal of the Scottish army from England and to ensure that ‘matters may be so accommodated with our brethren [the Scots], upon their departing, as may prevent all unkindness that might happen by any misconstructions or misapprehensions’.133CJ v. 35b, 36b, 38b, 40a; LJ viii. 641; Bodl. Tanner 59, ff. 671, 724. Early in February 1647, this committee was ordered to proceed to Edinburgh in order to preserve a good correspondence between the two kingdoms and ‘to press, with great instance’, that the Scots return Belfast to English control.134CJ v. 69b, 74b; LJ viii. 709a; Bodl. Tanner 59, ff. 743, 815. Late in April, the two Houses gave Ashhurst permission to return to England (although he was already in Lancashire by then, signing orders of the county committee), but he does not appear to have resumed his seat in the Commons until early June, when he became caught up in the furore over the army’s removal of the king from Holdenby.135CJ v. 157a, 157b, 200a, 201b; Farington Pprs. ed. S. M. Farington (Chetham Soc. o.s. xxxix), 106. He was among those named to a high-powered ‘committee of safety’, set up on 11 June, to join with the Presbyterian-dominated City militia for mobilising London against the New Model.136CJ v. 207b; Juxon Jnl. 159; Clarke Pprs. i. 132. But as this committee contained Independents as well as Presbyterians it offers no clear insight into his political alignment at this time. The same caveat applies to his inclusion on a committee on 15 June to provide assurances to the army that no forces had been raised against it in London and requesting that it comply with former parliamentary orders for withdrawing 40 miles from the capital.137CJ v. 210b. During the second half of June, he helped to draft letters thanking Parliament’s commissioners to the king and also to Sir Thomas Fairfax*, protesting at the detention of the Presbyterian officer Colonel John Birch* on suspicion that he was mobilising forces against the army.138Infra, ‘John Birch’; CJ v. 215a, 220b, 221a; Mems. of the Great Civil War ed. Cary, i. 251-3. As part of an attempt by the Commons to encourage a spirit of compromise among the parliamentarian faithful, Ashhurst and nine other ardent supporters of a Presbyterian church settlement – some friendly towards the army, others less so – were appointed on 30 June to nominate person of ‘moderation, piety and learning’ to draw up heads for an accommodation in religion.139CJ v. 228b.

In contrast to many of Brereton’s friends in the Commons, Ashhurst and Swynfen remained at Westminster following the Presbyterian ‘riots’ of 26 July 1647. Indeed, having been forced to choose between the army and a Presbyterian-controlled Parliament Ashhurst plumped decisively for the latter. On 31 July, he was ordered to prepare a provocative letter to Fairfax, reminding him that his authority as general did not extend to militia or garrison troops.140CJ v. 262a. The next day (1 Aug.), he and four other Presbyterian Members were ordered to draw up a declaration justifying the House’s proceedings and thereby counter ‘the designs and carriages of the army towards the Parliament and City’.141CJ v. 263a. But with the army closing in on London the Presbyterians’ nerve broke, and on 3 August, Ashhurst was appointed with Swynfen and Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke, to attend Fairfax ‘to see if they [the army] could be stopped from coming in that manner, to endanger putting all into blood’.142CJ v. 266a, 267b; D. Holles, Mems. (1699), 162. Undeterred, the army tightened its grip on the capital, entering London unopposed a few days later.

Obliging the Independents, 1647-8

Yet like Swynfen, Ashhurst saw no reason to make a politic withdrawal from the House following the army’s occupation of London. In fact, August and September 1647 would rank among the busiest months of his entire parliamentary career – largely, it seems, because of the Independents’ determination to involve him in the process of undoing the work of the ‘forced’ Parliament of late July and early August. Despite the fact that he was among the Presbyterian majority that voted on 9 August against an ordinance sent from the Lords for repealing the legislation passed between 26 July and 6 August, the task of bringing in a new ordinance to this effect was specially referred to his care on 11 August.143CJ v. 270a, 271b. During August, he served as a committeeman, a member of a conference-reporting team and as a messenger to the Lords in helping to steer several versions of this much-contested piece of legislation through the House.144CJ v. 273a, 273b, 277a, 278a, 279b. When he was not busy about such matters he was thanking the Independent divine Philip Nye for a fast sermon, reporting an ordinance for excluding reformadoes (disbanded troops) from London and reporting amendments to a declaration sent from the Lords for vindicating the New Model’s proceedings against the forced Parliament.145CJ v. 272b, 273a, 273b. He was also selected to carry the amended declaration up to the Lords – although as with his appointment to carry up the repeal ordinance, it was apparently Sir Robert Pye I who did the actual leg-work.146LJ ix. 386a. During September, he headed a committee on the prevention of money clipping and was ordered to prepare an ordinance concerning the military establishment in Lancashire.147CJ v. 289b, 312a. More remarkably, he was named to committee on 15 September for removing grievances associated with tithes – a difficult assignment for one who believed that tithes were ordained by Christ as well as a ‘civil right’.148CJ v. 302a; Ashhurst, Reasons, 12-13.

The question of how to settle the kingdom’s religion may well have been uppermost in Ashhurst’s mind during work that autumn on a new set of peace propositions for presentation to the king. On 30 September 1647, he was named second to a committee on a proposition ‘touching religion, in the points of government and doctrine’, and on 6 October, he was included on a committee for preparing a proposition ‘concerning the settlement of the Presbyterian government and concerning the exemption of such tender consciences as cannot conform to that government’.149CJ v. 321b, 327b. To what extent Ashhurst approved of such exemptions is not clear. He probably felt more at home in a committee – to which he was named in second place – set up on 28 October on an ordinance for removing obstructions on the sale of bishops’ lands.150CJ v. 344a.

Having obediently towed the Independents’ line since mid-August 1647, Ashhurst was granted leave of absence on 1 November and made no recorded impression upon the House’s proceedings until early January 1648.151CJ v. 347a. His inclusion on a large committee established on 4 January to prepare ordinances for the redress of grievances and the removal of burdens on the people’s liberties was probably a mere formality.152CJ v. 417a. But the same cannot be said of his nomination to a sub-committee of this body on 11 January for considering a petition from London’s Presbyterian ministry – a task referred specifically to Ashhurst and Francis Rous.153CJ v. 427a. His most important appointment of 1648, however, came on 27 January, when he was selected for a parliamentary delegation to Scotland for preserving a ‘good correspondency’ between the two kingdoms.154CJ v. 442b, 447a; LJ x. 4a, 7a. Besides Ashhurst, the Commons named Robert Goodwin, Colonel John Birch and Brian Stapylton*. Clement Walker* and other commentators identified Ashhurst and Goodwin as Presbyterians and Stapylton and (mistakenly) Birch as Independents.155Bodl. Clarendon 34, f. 39; [C. Walker], Hist. of Independency (1648), 81 (E.463.19); ‘Mr Thomas Reade’s relation’, ed. C.H. Firth, Scottish Hist. Soc. xliv. 295-6. Accompanying the delegation, which was nominally headed by two peers (neither of whom went to Scotland), were the ministers Stephen Marshall and Ashhurst’s friend Charles Herle. Their task was essentially one of frustrating the plans of the Scottish Engagers to invade England and restore the king. Publicly, the commissioners were instructed to inform the Scots of Parliament’s desire to maintain peace between the two kingdoms.156CJ v. 447a; LJ x. 7a. Privately, they were to provide money and encouragement to the anti-Engagement faction under Archibald Campbell, 1st marquess of Argyll; and on this score they received their orders (or so it was widely believed) from the Independent grandees William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, William Pierrepont and Oliver St John.157Bodl. Clarendon 34, f. 38v; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 3 (11-18 Apr. 1648), sigs. C2-C2v (E.435.42); Hamilton Pprs. 205; HMC Hamilton Supplementary, ii. 72; ‘Thomas Reade’s relation’, ed. Firth, 295; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 89. As a Presbyterian and, by now, an experienced hand in Anglo-Scottish diplomacy, Ashhurst was a natural choice for this delegation. ‘It is not doubted’, wrote one of the Engager’s London correspondents, that Ashhurst ‘will be able to satisfy’ Scotland’s Presbyterians of Parliament’s good intentions.158Hamilton Pprs. Addenda ed. S. R. Gardiner (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, liii), 8.

To make sure of their man – or so Walker claimed – the Independent grandees had Ashhurst ‘sweetened with the gift of £1,000 and an office before they would trust him’.159[Walker], Hist. of Independency, 81. Indeed, it was almost certainly the Independents who were instrumental in securing him a parliamentary grant of £1,000 on 31 January ‘towards reparation of his great losses and damages’, and his appointment, late in February, as clerk of the crown for Lancashire.160CJ v. 450b, 472a; LJ x. 10b, 79b. The newsletter writer Marchamont Nedham claimed that Ashhurst was

adopted by my Lord Saye and Nol Cromwell, the two fathers of the faction [the Independents], for a special favourite ... before his voyage into Scotland, and he made no scruple to seal and deliver up his conscience to their service upon the receipt of a thousand pounds; which was given as a portion to that new saint [i.e. Ashhurst], to encourage him at his departure, upon the motion of Duke Oliver [i.e. Cromwell] in the House, whose special care it was to bribe all the brethren of that embassy, knowing this by experience, that ready money makes ready proselytes.161Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 3 (11-18 Apr. 1648), sig. C2v; Westminster Projects, 7.

Ashhurst and Saye would certainly have been on familiar terms. Not only were they colleagues on the Committee for Revenue, but they had also worked together in the autumn of 1643 to clear the war-party peer Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, of accusations of backsliding.162Supra, ‘Committee for Revenue’; CJ iii. 300b; Bodl. Carte 80, f. 126. While in Scotland, Ashhurst would write to the Speaker, praising Saye for having relinquished his right to nominate an incumbent for the Lancashire parish of Ecclestone and thereby allow the parishioners to choose the Presbyterian minister Edward Gee.163Bodl. Tanner 58, f. 783.

The parliamentary delegation arrived at Edinburgh early in February 1648.164Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1003. At their first hearing by the Committee of Estates, later that month, Ashhurst delivered a speech emphasising the many ties and common interests between the two kingdoms and warning of the continuing efforts of ‘the popish, prelatical and malignant ... to bring in tyranny and episcopacy (it may be popery)’. ‘We are two kingdoms in one island’, he declared, ‘of one language, under one king and (which is more than all) professing one religion’. He spoke warmly of the need to preserve unity among the ‘good’ Protestants of Britain and Ireland, not least in order to establish ‘a right discipline in the church’. ‘Division is the Devil’s work at all times’, he insisted. He was also at pains to assure the committee of the ‘real resolution’ of the English Parliament to preserve the union between the two kingdoms.165W. Ashhurst, The Speech of William Ashhurst Esquire (1648). But for all his fine words and the strength of feeling in Scotland against the Engagement, the commissioners achieved very little. Their attempts to open a dialogue with the Scottish Parliament and the Committee of Estates were repeatedly ignored, and by April they were reduced to making ineffectual demands to the Scots that they disband their forces and hand over the English royalists they were harbouring.166HMC Portland, i. 411, 446, 456, 457, 458, 469; ‘Thomas Reade’s relation’, ed. Firth, 294-6; Montereul Corresp. ed. J.G. Fotheringham (Scottish Rec. Soc. xxx), 452; LJ x. 129a, 228a, 250a; CJ v. 544a, 556b. Ashhurst was said to have been the commissioners’ ‘penman ... as best known in the laws’ (which again raises the question of where he had received his legal training) and was particularly cultivated by Argyll’s party – an indication, perhaps, that he was better connected to the Independent grandees than the rest of his colleagues.167Bodl. Clarendon 34, f. 39; ‘Thomas Reade’s relation’, ed. Firth, 296. He returned to Westminster on 18 July, carrying a declaration from the Committee of Estates, explaining the grounds of the recent Scottish invasion of northern England.168Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1196. That same day (18 July), he received the thanks of the Commons ‘for his great care and pains in the service of Parliament in Scotland’.169CJ v. 640a.

During July and August 1648, Ashhurst was named to six committees either for dealing with the English culprits in the second civil war, or for trying to satisfy the Scots of Parliament’s efforts towards closer political and religious union between the two kingdoms.170CJ v. 640b, 643a, 643b, 676a. In a debate on 16 August on whether to involve the Scots in any future negotiations with the king, Ashhurst supported the Independents in rejecting this idea, reminding the House that ‘the major part of the packed Parliament of Scotland overpowered the minor part by an army and so got the Engagement and other acts and the Committee of Estates passed’, contrary to the wishes of the General Assembly of the Kirk.171[Walker], History of Independency, 137. Walker and other commentators noted the movement of Ashhurst, Swynfen and other ‘rigid’ Presbyterians towards the Independents during 1648.172Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 101. However, it was these men’s very commitment to a Presbyterian church settlement, and their fear (shared by Argyll’s party in Scotland) that the Engagers would sacrifice Presbyterianism in their eagerness to restore Charles, that made them so determined to work with the Independents for victory in the second civil war. In Ashhurst’s case there was also the worrying fact that Lancashire lay directly in the Scots’ line of march and that their invasion might spark an insurrection by the county’s royalists and Catholics.

With victory against the Scots assured by 21 August 1648, Ashhurst was granted leave of absence and returned to Lancashire, from where he and other members of the county committee wrote to the House of their inability to raise sufficient money to pay off the supernumerary forces raised to fight the Engagers.173CJ v. 677a; Add. 5494, f. 307. Declared absent and excused at the call of the House on 26 September, he had returned to Westminster by 17 October, when he was appointed with John Gurdon and Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire to prepare a letter to Cromwell, approving of his proceedings against the Engagement regime in Scotland.174CJ vi. 34a, 54a. Like Swynfen and other Presbyterian Members, Ashhurst would not have been satisfied with the king’s niggardly concessions to Presbyterianism during the Newport treaty negotiations. But he was named to only two committees relating to the treaty.175CJ vi. 62a, 82a. Early in December, the New Model seized the king and made preparations for purging the Commons, prompting the House to set up a seven-man committee, to which Ashhurst was named, in a last ditch attempt to smooth relations with the army.176CJ vi. 93b. On the day of Pride’s Purge (6 December), this committee wrote repeatedly and insistently to Fairfax, demanding the release of those MPs detained by the army, but to no avail.177Worc. Coll. Oxf. Clarke ms CXIV, f. 135v; Belvoir, QZ.28, f. 55; CJ vi. 94a; W. Prynne, A Full Declaration of the True State of the Secluded Members (1660), 17-18 (E.1013.22).

Despite Richard Baxter’s assertions that Ashhurst was ‘abused and cast out’ by the army at Pride’s Purge, in fact he suffered neither imprisonment (Swynfen’s fate) nor seclusion – a lucky escape that he may have owed to his friends among the Independent grandees.178Baxter, Faithful Souls Shall be with Christ, 37. William Prynne* – writing over a decade after the event – claimed that Ashhurst and the Independent grandees Pierrepont and Evelyn of Wiltshire were among a group of MPs who were allowed to take their seats in the purged House, where they tried for ‘many days’ to have ‘the so highly broken privileges and freedom of Parliament vindicated’. But ‘finding the force continued upon the House and secluded Members, they also withdrew and never sat since’.179Prynne, Secluded Members Case, 18; Life of Humphrey Chetham ed. F. R. Raines, C. W. Sutton (Chetham Soc. n.s. xlix), 168.

From purge to protectorate, 1648-56

Ashhurst published a pamphlet late in December 1648 against the Levellers’ revised blueprint for constitutional reform, The Agreement of the People. Among his many objections to the Agreement was its proposal ‘to take away (not only this king) but all kings and the House of Peers out of the supreme judicatory of this kingdom, and that for ever, without showing any necessity of it’. He was also alarmed that ‘this paper allows a toleration of popery’ and had been devised (in his opinion) in order to divide the supporters of Parliament and to drive a wedge between them and those in Scotland, ‘both ministers and people, that have adhered to us in this cause’. In fact, he professed to believe that the Agreement had actually been written by a Jesuit, ‘with the advice of some of the king’s old councillors’. Nothing would give him greater happiness, he declared, than to see the Long Parliament ‘legally discharged’, but not by tearing up ‘the very foundations of all government’. He concluded by insisting that the Agreement would establish ‘a government without authority, a magistrate without power, if a minister, yet without maintenance, a people left to be of any religion, or of all religions, or of no religion, as they please’.180Ashhurst, Reasons.

Ashhurst was omitted from the Lancashire assessment commission in December 1649, but retained his place as clerk of the crown for the county until February 1652, when he was replaced by his deputy, William West*.181Lancs. RO, DP 522/4/1, p. 7; Duchy of Lancaster Office-Holders ed. Somerville, 104; TSP iv. 450. He continued to associate, or be associated, under the Rump with Herle, Heyricke and other members of the Lancashire Presbyterian community, and he worked with Sir Raphe Assheton II*, John Moore* and Alexander Rigby to help augment the stipends of the county’s godly ministers.182Lancs. RO, DDHP 20/50; DDM 17/129, 19/37, 38; DDCL 355; Lancs. Civil War Tracts, 278-9. When his younger brother Major John Ashhurst defected to the royalists during the troubles of 1651, Ashhurst was imprisoned at Chester, before being discharged on bail of £1,000.183Severall Procs. in Parliament no. 78 (20-7 Mar. 1651), 1191 (E.784.31); HMC 6th Rep. 434; CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 170, 219-20; VCH Lancs. iv. 100.

Ashhurst’s public career revived after the establishment of the protectorate late in 1653; and in the summer of 1654, he was appointed a Lancashire ejector and returned as one of the county’s knights of the shire to the first protectoral Parliament.184Supra, ‘Lancashire’; A. and O. ii. 972. His popularity with the voters probably rested largely on his high-profile support for Presbyterianism both locally and nationally. In the event, he made no recorded impression upon the proceedings of this Parliament, and it is not certain that he ever took his seat. Royalist predictions that he would appear in support of the risings against the protectorate in 1655 were apparently unfounded and certainly proved false.185CCSP iii. 43.

Ashhurst died on 9 January 1656 and was buried at Upholland church, near Dalton, on 12 January.186Upholland, Wigan par. reg. In his will, he charged his estate with annuities worth £100 a year and legacies totalling £1,250.187PROB11/255, f. 147v. None of his immediate family sat in Parliament.