ASHBOURNHAM, William (c.1605-79), of Tidworth, Hants.

The Ashburnham family claimed descent from a lord of the manor of the same name ‘in the time of William the Conqueror’, and they certainly owned property there by the end of the twelfth century. Combining landholding with ironworking from an early date, they became prominent in Sussex society. One John Ashburnham† was a knight of the shire in 1397 and 1398, and another in 1554.33Vis. Suss. 1530 and 1633-4, 17; Ashburnham Archives, pp. v, viii, xi; HP Commons 1386-1421; HP Commons 1509-1558. However, the recusancy of the latter’s son excluded him from public life, while accumulated fines led in 1588 to the forfeiture of his estates. Although these were recovered four years later by his heir, this state of affairs also proved temporary. This John Ashburnham (knighted in 1604), a man of ‘good nature and frank disposition’ according to his sons, became financially ‘deeply engaged’ towards friends and was ‘necessitated’ to sell both Ashburnham Place ‘and all the estate he had elsewhere, not leaving to his wife and six children the least subsistence’. None the less, once again all was not lost. The combined entrepreneurial skills and personableness of his widow Dame Elizabeth and sons John Ashburnham* and William Ashbournham, this MP (who adopted a different spelling), ensured that the family fortunes were rapidly restored.34Sig.: SP16/452, f. 159; SP16/454, f. 95. The exploitation of kinship connections to procure advantageous marriages, royal favour and commercial opportunities, soon led to renewed wealth and social prominence.35Suss. Arch. Coll. xxxii. p. xviii; Ashburnham Archives, pp. ix-xi.

While Lady Ashburnham, who assiduously celebrated the achievements of her birth family, the Beaumonts, made use of her cousin Mary, countess of Buckingham, to advance herself, her daughters and John at court, William became a professional soldier.36S. Porter, ‘Francis Beaumont’s monument, Charterhouse chapel, and Elizabeth, Baroness Cramond as patron of memorials’, Trans. London and Mdx. Arch. Soc. liv. 111-19. In 1624 he had a captaincy in the regiment raised to fight for the Dutch by Robert Bertie†, 14th Baron Willoughby of Eresby; by August he was Willoughby’s treasurer.37SP84/121, ff. 272, 277v. Willoughby had returned to England by March 1626. If Ashburnham remained under his patronage he may well have accompanied Willoughby (by then 1st earl of Lindsey and vice-admiral) on Buckingham’s 1627 expedition to the Ile de Rhé, and, as his brother John certainly did, on the 1628 expedition to La Rochelle.38‘Robert Bertie, 1st earl of Lindsey’, Oxford DNB; CSP Dom. 1628-9, p. 248. Alternatively, William may have already been in Denmark and the Netherlands with Sir Charles Morgan, under whom he was a captain in June 1629 and perhaps still serving as late as February 1631.39CSP Dom. 1628-9, p. 596; 1629-31, p. 518; ‘Sir Charles Morgan’, Oxford DNB.

The assassination of Buckingham did not check the rise of the Ashburnhams. Dame Elizabeth, who in December 1626 married Sir Thomas Richardson, chief justice of common pleas, and in February 1628 was created baroness of Cramond in the Scottish peerage, was awarded a pension of £300 a year in September 1629, to some derisive comment. John (known familiarly to the king as Jack) had become a gentleman of the bedchamber, and his sister Elizabeth, married about 1630 to Sir Frederick Cornwallis, also joined the royal household.40‘Elizabeth Richardson’, Oxford DNB; ‘Lady Elizabeth Ashburnham (later Richardson)’, Univ. of Warwick, Perdita Project database; Ashburnham Archives, pp. x-xi. This context explains how William, ‘coming from beyond sea’, was himself able to marry ‘a young beautiful and rich widow’, as he later characterised her, some time between the summer of 1629 and the summer of 1631.41MI, St Mary’s church, Ashburnham, Suss. The first husband of Jane Boteler, a niece of Buckingham, was the septuagenarian judge and one-time Buckingham protégé James Ley, 1st earl of Marlborough, a Lincoln’s Inn colleague of Richardson. From the earl’s death in March 1629 Jane, then still only about 25, enjoyed a generous jointure.42‘Sir James Ley’, HP Commons 1604-1629; ‘James Ley’, Oxford DNB; Abstracts Wilts. IPMs Chas. I, 235-6.

In June 1631, when he was party to an assignment of land in Hertfordshire from Jane’s father Lord Boteler, Ashbournham was described as of London, but the young couple appear to have taken up residence soon afterwards at Tidworth on the Hampshire/Wiltshire border, the countess of Marlborough’s chief jointure property.43CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 78; SP/17/B/4. Placed on the Wiltshire commission of the peace in July, and later also on the Hampshire commission, Ashbournham proved a moderately active justice.44C231/5, p. 61; C192/13/2, f. 72; Western Circuit Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 114, 134, 178; I.o.W. RO, OG/BB/36 He probably tried to maximise the profits of his wife’s estates – in 1638, for instance, he was fined for assarting coppice in Chute forest, north-east of Tidworth – but he was also involved in his brother’s money-making schemes.45CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 378; 1638-9, p. 140.

On 23 March 1640 Ashbournham was elected to sit in Parliament for Ludgershall, less than three miles from Tidworth in the direction of Chute. His partner was Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire*, a neighbour and friend.46C219/42, pt ii , no. 58; CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 488; Western Circuit Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 178. Ashbournham was even less active at Westminster than Evelyn; there were no references to him in the Journal. Perhaps he was already gearing up for a return to soldiering.

On 6 May he wrote to Secretary of State Sir Edward Conway apparently as he prepared to leave for the north.47SP16/452, f. 159. As lieutenant-colonel of the personal regiment of Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland, the general of the army and fleet sent to deliver a punishing counter-blow to the invading Scots, by 18 June Ashbournham had raised 1,300 soldiers in Hampshire and was bound for a rendezvous at Selby in Yorkshire. Mutiny among some impelled the earl to authorise him to hold courts martial.48E Suss. RO, ASH/4501/662. The situation did not improve over the summer. Expectations had been scaled back when on 19 August Ashbournham wrote gloomily from York to Secretary of State Edward Nicholas, an old friend from London and Wiltshire evidently much more congenial than Secretary Conway, ‘who commands all in all here’. ‘Marching for Newcastle ... is now the height of all our hopes, so that you see our mighty discourse of an invading war is turned to the sole thought of a defensive.’ Indeed, according to ‘the general noise of these parts’, the English would be fortunate if ‘we lose this year no more than [the county of] Northumberland’. Since ‘such hath been our provident foresight that more than a third of our army is ... left behind unarmed’, the Scots had it ‘wholly in their power’, ‘if they knew it, to put such an affront upon us as was never heard of nor would ever be forgotten’. Yet, notwithstanding the pressing danger, the Yorkshire trained bands delayed their musters, ‘like men that wanted both heart and will to the business’. The only remedy, he thought, was the king’s presence.49SP16/464, f. 95. By the time Charles arrived, however, his army had retreated from Newcastle back to York, where a muster at the end of August named Ashbournham second after his general.50Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 1241, 1243.

It is likely that Ashbournham stayed at his post at least until the Treaty of Ripon was signed on 26 October and probably longer, and thus that he was not present at the election that month which again returned him and Evelyn to Parliament for Ludgershall.51C219/43, pt. iii, no. 7/127. The ‘Mr Ashburnham’ who received committee appointments on 10, 14 and 16 November was almost certainly his brother, a newcomer to the House and a Member for Hastings.52CJ ii. 25b, 29a, 30a. ‘Colonel Ashburnham’ appeared first on 21 November, when with Commissary John Wilmot* and Sir Ralph Hopton* he was placed on a committee to review the state of the army and of the northern counties, on which under the treaty fell the burden of paying off the Scots.53CJ ii. 34a. Sir Simonds D’Ewes* noted that ‘Sir Robert Ashburnham’ and ‘Mr Ashburnham’ both that day offered the substantial sum of £1,000 as security for the loan, but if the distinction between the two was more accurately maintained by the clerk, then Mr Ashburnham had a higher profile (as he himself implied) and the colonel’s rare activity was largely confined to military affairs.54Procs. LP i. 228-9. The latter sat with Wilmot and Sir John Hotham* on a committee to raise and regulate money for the army (11 Jan. 1641), and with Wilmot was added to the committee for proceedings against Thomas Wentworth†, 1st earl of Strafford, for the specific purpose of investigating the commission granted to the Roman Catholic Henry Somerset, 5th earl [later 1st marquess] of Worcester, to levy soldiers in England and Wales.55CJ ii. 66a, 75b. Colonel Ashbournham was then absent from the Journal until May.

Meanwhile resentment was building up in the army over arrears of pay.56C.S.R. Russell, ‘The First Army Plot’, TRHS 5th ser. xxxviii. 85-106. Treasurer Sir William Uvedale* revealed pressures from several quarters in a letter of 9 February, noting particularly entreaties to satisfy Colonels Ashbournham and Ogle: ‘I know not well how to refuse men of their quality’.57SP16/477, f. 27v. Three weeks later Uvedale was again processing missives from Ashbournham on behalf of his subordinates.58SP16/478, f. 17v. Discontent among officers came to a head in the wake of a Commons resolution on 6 March to prioritise the provision of funds for Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex (who had replaced Northumberland as general owing to the latter’s illness) so that the burden of supplying Uvedale with the wherewithal to discharge outstanding obligations to the army would not fall on the northern counties.59CJ ii. 97b. Ashbournham and Wilmot were observed ‘much discontented’ in Westminster Hall, but it was their private meetings beginning a few days later with Northumberland’s brother Henry Percy*, Captain Hugh Pollard*, Sir John Berkeley* and Daniel O’Neill, and later in the month taking in the king, Henry Jermyn* and George Goring*, which eventually proved their undoing.60D’Ewes (N), 448-52; Harl. 163, f. 637a; Russell, ‘Army Plot’, 88-90. Although, thanks above all to Goring, the meetings were hardly secret, for the time being attention in Parliament focussed on discussion of the army petition on pay, presented on 20 March, not to speak of the trial of Strafford.

However, the attempt on 2 May to rescue Strafford from the Tower – made apparently on the orders of the king – marked a turning point. When the Protestation against popery was introduced the next day, as one response to this, Ashbournham took it promptly, preceded by Wilmot and succeeded by his brother and Pollard.61CJ ii. 133a. Earlier in the day he was named with Wilmot and Hotham to assist in drafting a letter to the army and to consider supply of clothing for soldiers.62CJ ii. 131b The revelation by Pym on 5 May of the ambitious schemes of Jermyn, Goring and Sir John Suckling* to mobilise the northern army to descend on London and challenge Parliament threatened to undermine the conspirators’ colleagues, but as these plotters fled abroad they drew away potential fire. Ashbournham was named on 8 May to prepare for a conference with the Lords on securing land and sea (a counter to Goring’s plan to seize Portsmouth), and he and Wilmot survived giving sworn evidence before a deputation of investigating peers four days later; D’Ewes later noted, they had ‘stiffly before denied things upon oath’.63CJ ii. 139b; LJ iv. 247a; Procs. LP vi. 376-7; Clarendon, Hist. i. 351. He attended a joint conference on the disbandment of the army (20 May) and ‘Captain Ashburnham’ was named to a committee arising from this (10 June).64CJ ii. 152b, 172b.

But at this point Henry Percy, apparently from the safety of the continent, cut the ground from under his friends’ feet. A letter from him to Northumberland which, according to Edward Hyde*, ‘served, as far as in him lay, to destroy all his companions’ was presented to the House by Denzil Holles* on 14 June along with evidence from Goring. It revealed not only discussion of measures to secure army pay, but also, more compromisingly, a vague agreement to action to protect the king and the bishops.65Clarendon, Hist. i. 351; The Declaration of the Lords and Commons in Parliament (1642), 28-30. One after the other Pollard, Wilmot and Ashbournham were called into the Commons and examined on interrogatories proposed by the Speaker. Their answers instantly exposed their previous testimony as false.66CJ ii. 175b/176a; Procs. LP v. 128-9 Ashbournham ‘made a long discourse touching his innocency’ in which he admitted that Percy had put to him propositions for the preservation of episcopacy, the continuation of the army in Ireland and the securing of the king’s revenue, and even that ‘some things were darkly spoken by [Percy] touching the bringing of the English army’, but avowed that he had told Percy ‘he knew not his meaning in speaking so obscurely’, and further that ‘he would assent to nothing that should be dishonourable or dishonest’. However, he refused to say whether or not he had taken an oath of secrecy, as alleged. While confessing that he had met Goring, Jermyn and others at Percy’s chamber in Whitehall, he claimed that he ‘utterly misliked’ their ‘wild’ and ‘extravagant’ propositions concerning Parliament and much else.67Procs. LP v. 136, 138-9, 142, 149, 153. Pending further enquiry he was initially committed to king’s bench prison, and then the next day switched with Pollard and sent to the Gatehouse.68Procs LP v. 129, 160, 171. Two days later an order clarified that he should be kept prisoner at the serjeant at arms’ house ‘till he be recovered of health’.69Procs LP v. 202, 210; CJ ii. 178a.

The case against Ashbournham and Wilmot was difficult to nail, however. Perjury and the taking of an oath of secrecy were serious crimes, but there was no proof that they had actually engaged themselves to effect Percy’s and still less Jermyn’s plots. Emboldened no doubt by the prior success of Pollard in this regard, on 8 July the pair petitioned for bail, acknowledging their lesser offences. ‘After some debate’, this was accepted and both were bound in the substantial sum of £10,000. Ashbournham’s sureties were all at this juncture identified among opposition peers – James Hamilton, 1st marquess of Hamilton, sitting in the Lords as earl of Cambridge and known to him through the northern campaign; William Paget, 6th Baron Paget; and Edward Howard, Lord Howard of Escrick – although the first two would not maintain that position.70Procs LP v. 558, 564; CJ ii. 203b. The fundamental facts were resolved by the Commons on 26 July: Ashbournham and the others had taken an oath of secrecy administered by Percy and had not only concealed various ‘propositions and designs’ to which they had been made party, but had also subsequently denied this.71CJ ii. 224b, 225a. This left room for optimism: Edward Nicholas wrote on 29 July of hope that Ashbournham and Wilmot would be charged with nothing worse than concealment.72CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 63.

Consideration of the case dragged on fitfully through the summer and autumn. Successive examinations brought some startlingly contradictory testimony, as on 13 August when it was claimed that in the spring Ashbournham, Wilmot and Pollard ‘had fallen from the love of the king and did adhere to the Parliament’, convinced that it had, after all, ‘real intentions towards the army’.73CJ ii. 262b; Procs. LP vi. 397, 402, 406, 466. On the morning of 8 September a sparsely-attended Commons voted that, pending the resolution of investigations, Pollard and Ashbournham should not receive their army pay, only for this to be overturned in the afternoon by a division of even fewer Members on the ground that it had not been withheld from Percy, Wilmot and Berkeley.74CJ ii. 282b, 284a; Procs. LP vi. 675, 678, 685, 689, 690; Clarendon, Hist. i. 380-1. Perhaps, as Parliament adjourned that day, this lulled them into a false sense of security. The matter resurfaced on 4 November when Oliver Cromwell* informed the House that Ashbournham had visited Berkeley in the Tower, and on the strength of that called for him, Wilmot and Pollard to be returned to prison. Arthur Goodwin* then stepped up to claim that they had been accused of treason, and while Hyde contested this, others like D’Ewes recalled that liberty had been granted ‘only for a time’. Although the Journal was sent for to settle these differences of opinion, ‘other business happening this matter was laid aside’.75D’Ewes (C), 80-1. A fortnight later notice was given that Wilmot, Ashbournham and the others were summoned before the House, but they were still free when on 4 December Holles moved to proceed against O’Neil and to further postpone consideration of the rest.76D’Ewes (C), 235. Nor had they appeared when the case was finally debated on 9 December. Clearly they enjoyed both passive sympathy and active protection. While not only determined oppositionists like Sir Arthur Hesilrige* but also more middle-of-the-road Members like D’Ewes argued for a charge of treason, not least on the ground of consistency with the verdict on Percy and Jermyn, even D’Ewes could ‘commiserate their misfortunes’ and declare that he would ‘be very forward in due time to use all possible means to make them objects of mercy’, and a majority were more indulgent. The final accusation stopped at the lesser crime of misprision of treason. This was sufficient, however, to result in Ashbournham and his fellow accused being excluded from the Commons.77CJ ii. 333a, 337a; D’Ewes (C), 239, 258-9. A writ for a new election at Ludgershall was issued the next day.78CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 493.

Once again, proceedings stalled as parliamentary attention turned elsewhere. By the time the spotlight again shone on the army plotters, there was little hope of bringing them to justice. Details of their examinations were made public with Percy’s letter to his brother in Parliament’s Declaration of 19 May 1642.79Declaration of the Lords and Commons in Parliament (1642). Four days later, when Cromwell informed the Commons that, since the king had sent for Ashbournham and Wilmot to attend him at York, Viscount Mandeville wished to be discharged of his bail obligation, the pair were summoned to attend Parliament.80PJ ii. 361, 363; CJ ii. 583a. Another fruitless summons was issued on 9 June, this time to all the delinquent Members at York and with instructions to the local authorities to assist in their detention.81CJ ii. 614b; PJ iii. 54. The messenger on that occasion was sent back empty-handed.82LJ v. 169; PJ iii. 160n.

It may be that Ashbournham had already left the City. Once bailed the previous year he seems to have returned home to the west. Some time in the autumn of 1641 he wrote from Hartford Bridge, Hampshire, to Secretary Nicholas – ‘our truest friend’ – of arrangements in the event of the death of his brother, then gravely ill, which consisted in handing over primary responsibility for the family estates to their eldest sister Elizabeth. The ‘worst’ outcome, ‘which I tremble to think of’, did not happen.83SP16/487, f. 41. Indeed, there are even indications that for some time, and even into the spring, Ashbournham resumed normal duties as a justice of the peace, acting with Sir John Evelyn.84Western Circuit Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 224, 231. None the less, eventually he made his way to York, and stayed there until some time in June when he, Wilmot, Pollard and Berkeley ‘purposely removed themselves from court, upon the clamour of Parliament, till the king was ready to use their service’. Joining with Digby, who had visited Charles in disguise, they returned with him to the east coast and embarked on a boat for the Netherlands. A few hours into their voyage, however, they were chased by parliamentarian ships which ran them on to the shore. Ashbournham and the still disguised Digby were captured and taken before Sir John Hotham, parliamentary governor of Hull. While the latter kept up the pretence of being a Frenchman, the former, who could hardly hide his identity, received a friendly reception from Hotham.85Clarendon, Hist. ii. 256-7.

Informed of developments by letter on 5 July, Parliament wasted some days in procedural dispute between the Houses before agreeing to despatch the earl of Warwick to Hull to bring back in custody Ashbournham and fellow captive Sir Edward Stradling (13 July).86PJ iii. 170, 172, 192, 204, 215; LJ v. 197a, 205a, 205b; CJ ii. 667b, 669b. It was an easier matter to absolve Howard of Escrick and the other sureties from their bail obligations (7 July), and in the event a relief to those involved.87CJ ii. 659a. With the connivance of Hotham, who had a watchful eye on the king’s army advancing towards his city, Ashbournham and Digby once more gave Parliament the slip.88Clarendon, Hist. ii. 267, 275n; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 745; cf. Exceeding Good News from Nottingham and Yorkshire (5 Sept 1642, E.115.18).

Ashbournham was soon back in the west country, and early in August, he and Berkeley joined William Seymour, 1st marquess of Hertford, at Sherborne in Dorset.89Clarendon, Hist. ii. 298-9. Given command of the 8th regiment of the royalist army, he was also commissioned as major-general of foot in the region.90A Copy of a List of All the Cavaliers (1642, 669.f.6.910); Clarendon, Hist. ii. 453-4. Having participated in campaigns in Cornwall and Devon, at the beginning of December 1643 he replaced Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper* as governor of Weymouth, with authorisation from the king to impress soldiers in Dorset.91Bodl. Rawl 395, f. 60; Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 111. However, as his quartermaster John Strachan reported to Henry Percy (now Lord Percy, in Oxford as general of artillery) on 9 January 1644, ‘disappointed of his expectations of soldiers and gentlemen in the county which he thought would [have] proved themselves valiant’, Ashbournham faced an uphill task.92Bodl. Rawl. D 395, f. 60. In such adversity he displayed a cheerful ruthlessness: if he had a ‘pressing occasion’ for arms, Strachan told Percy, ‘no man’s authority, seal or warrant under heaven should forbid his taking for the king’s service any thing that was in his power to command, whether it be the king’s, the subjects’, or strangers’ goods’. These, said Strachan ‘were his words which he bid me write to your honour (verbatim as he spake them)’; Percy could ‘send what directions [he] please to the contrary’, but Ashbournham would ‘obey in what he pleaseth’.93Bodl. Rawl. D. 395, ff. 96–7.

Notwithstanding such determination, when parliamentarian commander Sir William Balfour arrived in mid-June, Ashbournham concluded he could not defend Weymouth and withdrew to Portland Castle, leaving the town to surrender.94Bodl. Rawl. D 395, f. 186; Clarendon, Hist. iii. 362-3; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 683. On 25 June he sent a defiant letter from Portland to Essex, taking the earl ‘who is so full of conscience, honour and true English affection to your nation’ to task for his loyalty to Parliament. Well aware that ‘for the present I am like to smart’ for his own loyalty to the king, he expressed himself ‘confident these miseries are but a part of those [that] were meant by him that said all these things must [be]’ and also that ‘the end is not yet, out of which ... I will humbly pick some hope of better days’. For the time being, Ashbournham would follow ‘your example of fidelity in being as faithful to my master the king’. Acknowledging Essex’s past favours, he concluded by asking another in the form of safe conducts to France for his wife and his sister-in-law Lady Newport.95Add. 46188, f. 160. Such a ‘stomachful’ missive received a hostile reception in some quarters, but Ashbournham survived to fight another day.96CSP Dom. 1644, p. 270.

In the spring of 1645 Ashbournham was in Devon, where amid military duties he was employed with Berkeley and Pollard in hearing disputes between rival royalist commanders Prince Rupert and Lord Goring.97Clarendon, Hist. iv. 25, 51-2. A commissioner for the surrender of Exeter early in April 1646, by the 26th he was in Oxford for the commencement of negotiations for that city’s capitulation.98Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 260, 262; The Articles of Exeter made on the Rendition thereof (1647). On 14 May he petitioned to compound with his wife on the articles of Exeter. The following March the countess of Marlborough presented herself alone to the Committee for Compounding, explaining that her husband was absent from London owing to bad health. When in December 1647 she was fined over £500 for her jointure from her first husband, it was noted that she had lost stock and goods to the value of £20,000 and incurred £2,000 in debt; her petition ‘so modestly proposed’ was referred to the Members for Pembrokeshire, Hampshire and Wiltshire to be resolved in Parliament.99CCC 77, 105, 1282; LJ ix. 590a.

Unwell or not, in the summer of 1647 Ashbournham was in fact on his way to France with his brother and Berkeley. They reached Calais in time to hear of the king’s capture by Cornet Joyce at Holmby Hall, and proceeded via Rouen to St Germain. All subsequently returned to England, but while John Ashburnham and Berkeley attended the king, William served from a distance. Once confined at Carisbrooke, Charles instructed Berkeley to require Colonel Ashbournham to find him a ship to wait off the coast of Sussex for his escape.100[J. Ashburnham], A Narrative by John Ashburnham (1830), ii. appendix, pp. cxxxi-cxxxii, clxxix. Thereafter Ashbournham and his wife appear to have based themselves with their kin. In 1650 they sold their interest in South and North Tidworth.101VCH Hants, iv. 393; VCH Wilts. xv. 157. Late in 1650 and 1651 Ashbournham was, taking care of his brother’s children while the latter was absent at the exiled court, and in contact with Lord Conway.102CSP Dom. 1650, p. 485; 1651, p. 472. In 1651 or 1652 he seems to have lived at the home of the earl and countess of Newport, where he regularly received correspondence from abroad; remarkably constant in his associates, he was still close to Daniel O’Neil. All this was revealed when his longstanding servant, John Clerk, was examined in May 1654, in the wake of the Gerard plot, with which he had no known connection; it was later suggested that Ashbournham and Newport were Hyde’s chief correspondents in England, although the antipathy of the latter towards John Ashbournham at least casts some doubt on the importance of this.103TSP ii. 321; Narrative by John Ashburnham. i. 1-11; Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 103. Apprehended under a warrant of 24 May, Ashbournham was committed to the Tower three days later.104CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 436, 273. In June 1655 he was transferred by ship, on which he was reported to have contracted a fever, to Deal Castle, where as Secretary Nicholas learnt, he was ‘upon his parole and upon pretext of sickness’.105Nicholas Pprs. ii. 336, 346; iii. 6. Periodically moved on, still without trial he was at Rochester until February 1657, transported to Guernsey in February 1658, and, for the sake of his health, removed to Windsor in August 1658.106CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 281; 1657-8, p. 523; 1658-9, pp. 115, 117, 579. Apparently at liberty by April 1659, he was still under suspicion during that summer of insurrection, rightly so as some royalists counted him among the more competent potential leaders.107CCSP iv. 181, 297; Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 244, 326. In November, when he was living in St Giles-in-the-Fields, London, he made moves to divest himself of his remaining coppice land in Wiltshire.108Wilts. RO, 261/1/3. From the capital he was well placed to engage in conferences with other royalists. He was a signatory to a manifesto in favour of the Restoration, while on 30 March 1660 it was reported to Hyde that he and his brother were in the service of Henrietta Maria.109A Declaration of the nobility and gentry (1660, 669.f.24.69); CCSP iv. 579, 625; Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 306.

Once Charles II returned, Ashbournham swiftly reaped his reward. Appointed cofferer of the royal household in June, he retained the office to the end of his life.110Bodl. Carte 59, f. 4. Despite having sold up at Tidworth, he was re-elected for Ludgershall to the Cavalier Parliament, where he was noted as a court dependent.111HP Commons 1660-1690. Meanwhile, he had ample opportunities for patronage, for property speculation and for investment in miscellaneous mercantile and industrial ventures, including exploration of the Gambia, storing ice, tapestry-making at Mortlake, and west end theatre.112Jnl. of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 3rd ser. xvii. 204; Whitelocke, Diary, 635, 643; Pepys’s Diary, vii. 160, 198-9; CSP Col. (America and W. Indies) 1661-8, p. 348; 1669-74, p. 410; Wells, Hist. of the Drainage of the Great Level i. 458; CTB vi. 2; Ashburnham Archives, p. xii. As early as about 1644 Ashbournham had petitioned the king with O’Neile and others for mining privileges north of the Trent, claiming considerable experience in mineral extraction.113CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 211-12. A member from 1662 of the Society of Mines Royal, in 1665 he joined his old friends Berkeley and Pollard in a partnership which took on leases of mines in Devon.114BL, Loan 16; Devon RO, 155M-O/T. He and his brother used some of their wealth in rebuilding Ashburnham house; while John made improvements to the parish church, William endowed a hospital there.115Suss. Arch. Coll. xiii. 306; Ashburnham Archives, p. xii. As lord of the manor of Chiswick, Surrey, from about 1663, he also built almshouses in Sutton Lane.116VCH Mdx. vii. 71, 99; LMA, ACC/0119/003.

Samuel Pepys, who met him regularly, appreciated Ashbournham’s fund of stories and found him ‘a pleasant man, and that hath seen much of the world and more of the court’.117Pepys’s Diary, vii. 92, 383, 407. The intense family loyalty and long-lasting friendships expressed in correspondence and funeral monuments, and characteristic of his military and business associations, was shared with his wife, who died in 1672.118MI, Jane and William Ashbournham, St Mary’s church, Ashburnham. The couple had no surviving children. Ashbournham’s will – an extremely detailed and careful document with several codicils – devised his stocks and his lands to trustees including his subordinate in the royal household, Charles Toll, ‘my not to be equalled servant and bosom friend’. The main beneficiaries were a selection of nephews and nieces but especially John Ashburnham, his brother’s grandson†.119PROB11/362/382. This John was elected MP for Hastings in 1679 and was created 1st Baron Ashburnham.120HP Commons 1660-1690; CP.