ASTON, John (1598-1666), of Ludlow.

John Aston was of a minor urban gentry family. The Astons were of some note in Ludlow, but Aston’s mother, of the Cressett family of Upton Cressett, could claim a pedigree rooted in that parish back to 1435, when Hugh Cressett was sheriff of Shropshire. John Aston’s maternal grandmother was a Townshend, daughter of Sir Henry Townshend† of Cound, chief justice of Chester, who sat for Bridgnorth and Ludlow in the Parliaments of 1571, 1572 and 1614.10Vis. Salop 1623, ii (Harl. Soc. xxix), 465. But this gentry background did not affect John Aston’s career prospects in any decisive way. He was a mercer.11Salop Archives LB2/1/1 f. 174. Probably either because he was a lender or a borrower (and more likely the latter), a number of cases involving Aston came before the mayor’s court in Ludlow in the 1620s and 30s.12Salop Archives, LB14/303, 473, 655. Despite some early suggestions that his circumstances were not entirely stable financially, he seems to have worked his way steadily along the cursus honorum in Ludlow, starting as churchwarden in 1629, then being admitted as a burgess, holding various responsible borough offices before becoming low bailiff in 1639. Before the civil war, therefore, Aston was one of Ludlow’s civic leaders. When he was alnager (responsible for the quality of wool and perhaps other commodities at Ludlow's fairs and markets), he went with a delegation of townsmen to London about the town mills, and when he was low bailiff a few years later, he was involved in organising Ludlow’s contribution of soldiers for service in the first bishops’ war.13Salop Archives, LB8/1/158/2; 160/6. A reference before the civil war to Aston’s ‘shop’ suggests that he was involved in trade in a practical way, despite his status as a minor gentleman.14Weyman, Ludlow MPs, 29.

There is nothing to suggest that during the war years Aston did anything other than remain in Ludlow. He was there in 1646, signing municipal accounts.15Salop Archives, LB8/1/167/2. In 1647, he was named among the elders of the fifth Shropshire classis of the prototype Presbyterian church.16Shaw, Hist. English Church, ii. 410-11. Although too much should not be read into these appointments about personal convictions (another elder, Thomas Baker*, was an associate of Fifth Monarchists at around the same time), it does seem that Aston did lean towards Presbyterianism. By 1649, he was working closely with William Botterell* on a number of modest civic initiatives, including a scheme for setting the poor on work, and an attempt to attract the Presbyterian minister, Francis Boughey, to the town.17Salop Archives, LB8/1/169/1. Many years later, Aston was to acknowledge his friendship with the most prominent Presbyterian family of the district, the Harleys. During one of his periods as high bailiff (the equivalent of mayor), John Aston’s son paid an entry fine to take possession of the house in the town that Aston’s father, William, had occupied.18Salop Archives, LB8/1/169 Aston had property outside Ludlow, at Overton, near Richard’s Castle, but he seems to have used this as collateral against loans and as early as the mid-1630s was selling off parcels of it.19Salop Archives, 11/129, 130, 131. His commitment to the interests of his native town probably outweighed any wider political loyalties, and Aston seems to have been happy to serve under the Rump, the Nominated Assembly and the Cromwellian protectorate, at least in its first years. He was elected to the first protectorate Parliament in 1654 because of his local prominence, and reported back to his colleagues in the corporation on his progress in furthering their common cause.

Aston sat on only two committees in the first protectorate Parliament. On 3 November 1654, he was added to the committee to consider the petitions of the purchasers of the estates of Sir John Stawell*. Stawell had been excepted by the Rump Parliament from the Act of Oblivion, and his lands had been sold. His case had become notorious, as he had been attempting to drive a wedge between army and Parliament by claiming that his entitlement to treatment under articles of war had been disregarded by the civil authority. The hearings to which Aston was named in November 1654 were another round in what was already a protracted dispute, but nothing decisive came of them.20CJ vii. 381a. A month later, Aston appeared on what was to be his final committee in this or any other Parliament, on proposals to allow towns to tax themselves in order to maintain their parish churches. As a Presbyterian and former churchwarden, Aston would have had an eye on the implications of this proposed legislation for Ludlow, but like every other bill in this Parliament, it never reached the statute book.21CJ vii. 397b.

Most of Aston’s work in this Parliament was in pursuit of matters peculiar to Ludlow. Among these were the augmentation of the living, the tax burden on the town charities, and the campaign to attract the assizes to sit at Ludlow, in which Aston was supported by Sir Henry Herbert* and Serjeant Littleton, neither of whom sat in this Parliament, but was thwarted by John Glynne*.22Salop Archives, LB7/387-9, 1713-1717. The cause that Aston most actively pursued in the 1654-5 Parliament concerned the defunct jurisdiction of the court of the marches. For the English counties which had lain under that authority before 1641, the court had been burdensome and a grievance, but it brought much economic and legal activity to Ludlow, in other respects a town remote and vulnerable to trade recessions. It is certain that Aston’s lobbying was in the interests of Ludlow, and highly likely that it was intended to promote a revival, although in some way acceptable to the counties far from Aston’s town, of the marcher jurisdiction. In the series of letters that Aston wrote the corporation to account for his time in London, he has left an account of the patience needed by a minor supplicant to Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell*, as he attempted to lobby on the matter:

I had access to his highness three times whilst the Parliament sat, who relished it well, but since the Parliament rose I have attended almost 20 times and cannot speak with him, save only that himself put me into a room promising to speak with me presently, but he came not, though I attended till nine at night, and at another time he opened the door and spake to me, willing me he would gladly speak with me, but he could not then.23Salop Archives, LB7/1715.

In his report to Ludlow corporation, Aston urged that his colleagues kept confidential his frustrations, evidently fearing that anything less than a resigned endurance on their part would jeopardise their case.

Aston was returned again to the second Protectorate Parliament in 1656, but has been included by historians among those Members not allowed to take their seats.24Little and Smith, Cromwellian Protectorate, 89, 303. His name appears in an appeal to fellow Members and the public, apparently published by those MPs who were excluded.25To all the worthy gentlemen (1656, E.889.8). If Aston was indeed excluded it would have been because of his Presbyterian leanings, and because he was probably associated with Col. Edward Harley* in the minds of members of the lord protector’s council. It seems unlikely that there was anything more solid against Aston than guilt by association, but it is in any case doubtful whether he was excluded at all. The new Parliament assembled on 17 September, and the first list of the excluded appeared on the 19th. Aston’s name was not among them. He was named to a committee in the House on 23 September: the important committee for Irish affairs.26CJ vii. 425a, b, 427a. His name subsequently appeared in the published address by the excluded MPs, but George Thomason marked his copy of that pamphlet 7 October, by which time Aston had been in Parliament at least two weeks. On 25 October, Aston was named to a committee for improving the yield of the excise, and, in the month that followed, to committees on reversing the attainder against John Deane, and on a new jurisdiction for York and Yorkshire.27CJ vii. 446a, 456a.

Towards the end of November, Aston was served with a writ by a bailiff acting for William Morgan, a delinquent. The bailiff claimed he did not know Aston was an MP. The writ was a subpoena to attend a court, but the Parliament, sensitive to challenges to its authority and suggestions that it had not inherited the powers and privileges of its bicameral predecessors, treated the case as a breach of privilege. Both Morgan and his agent were brought to the bar of the House and discharged only after they had made fulsome apologies.28CJ vii. 458b, 461a, b, 462a. On 18 December, Aston was named to the committee which, in the wake of the James Naylor case, was mandated to investigate petitions from around the country against Quakers.29CJ vii. 470a. He is unlikely to have harboured any sympathy for the sectaries, and on 25 March was the only Shropshire MP to be listed as voting in favour of including the offer of the crown to Cromwell in the first article of the Humble Petition and Advice.30Narrative of the Late Parliament (1657), 22 (E.935.5). On 6 April Aston was among a group of MPs who waited on the lord protector to urge him to accept the new constitution, including the title of king, in its entirety.31CJ vii. 520b. At the end of that month, Aston took part in his last committee, dealing with acquisitions of private property by the state: on the rights of those whose woodlands were to be taken over in the interests of funding the armed forces.32CJ vii. 528a.

Aston seems to have entertained no further aspirations to serve in Parliament. The subpoena with which Aston was served in 1656 may have been connected with his financial affairs. After his service in Parliament, he did not, as might have been expected, simply return to Ludlow. In 1660 he was living in Mare Street, Hackney, his son a Lincoln’s Inn attorney.33Salop Archives, 11/135, 138. He borrowed £100 in 1659, and had incurred significant debts to his son-in-law, John Kiffett, by the early 1660s.34Salop Archives, 11/137, 192, 193. It seems likely that he had left public life altogether by the time the monarchy was restored, but he retained his lands and houses at Overton, Mary Knoll in Mortimer Forest, and Ludlow.35PROB11/319/477. On 1 May 1665, Aston made his will, from Hackney, asking ‘who can touch pitch and not be defiled therewith?’ The pious, orthodox Calvinism of the will conveys the unchanged Presbyterian outlook of the testator. He left 10 shillings to Thomas Harley, brother of Edward Harley*. Aston must have died before 5 March 1666 when the will was proved. His lawyer son, Edward, died shortly afterwards. John Aston’s next heir was his second son, John, a London grocer.36Salop Archives, 11/159. Aston’s debts were heavy enough to force the sale of his Shropshire property to Sir Job Charlton*, who then paid off the debts and legacies.37Salop Archives, 11/172, 174-81, 185, 192-210. None of Aston’s descendants is known to have sat in Parliament.