ASHBURNHAM, WILLIAM (d. 1679), royalist, was the younger brother of John. He was member for Ludgershall in both the parliaments held in 1640, and in 1644 was governor of Weymouth, which place he kept four months for the king. Ten years later (3 June 1654) he was arrested and examined on the charge of complicity in that plot to murder the Protector for which Gerard and Vowel afterwards suffered. He does not, however, appear to have been sent before the high court of justice. After the Restoration he was made cofferer of the household. He was frequently a fellow-guest and a sharer in treasury business with Pepys, who styles him an 'experienced man and a cavalier.' His 'odd stories' are duly noted, and there was one touching the lease of Ashburnham House from the dean and chapter of Westminster, wherein the 'devilish covetousness' of Dr. Busby was commemorated.
[The Tryal of Colonel Ashburnham, London (3 June), 1654, 4to; Pepys's Diary, ed. Bright, iv. 323.]
ASHBURTON, Lord. [See Baring.]
ASHBURTON, Lord. [See Dunning.]
ASHBURY, JOSEPH (1638–1720), actor and theatrical manager, born in London in 1638, of good family, was educated at Eton, and entered the army. Quartered in Ireland when the protectorate of Richard Cromwell came to an end, he was one of the officers who were dismissed under the régime of the revived Rump Parliament, and he was also one of those who, in the royalist interest, seized Dublin Castle in the December of 1659. At the Restoration he was rewarded by the lieutenancy of a company of foot which Charles II granted to the city of Dublin, and the new lord-lieutenant, the Duke of Ormond, made Ashbury in 1662 one of the gentlemen of his retinue and deputy master of the revels. In 1682 he became master of the revels and patentee. The duties or privileges of the latter post seem to have been nominal, since for years the only playhouse in Dublin, the Smock Alley or Orange Street Theatre, had been closed. But Ashbury, whose first wife was the sister of an actor, seems at this time to have turned his attention to professional acting and to have given instructions in the art with eminent success. About 1674 both he and Mrs. Betterton are mentioned as teaching the Princess Anne, afterwards queen, to play Semandra in Lee's 'Mithridates,' when acted at Whitehall by persons of high rank (cf. Miss Strickland's Queens of England (1852), vii. 16). When, in celebration of the overthrow of the Stuart cause in Ireland, 'Othello' was acted (December 1691) at Dublin by amateurs, most of them officers of the garrison, Ashbury, who superintended the performance and played Iago, is spoken of as the only professional actor among the performers. About the same time he engaged in London a company which included Wilks, and attempted to revive the drama in Ireland by reopening the theatre in Orange Street with 'Othello' on 23 March 1692. By skilful management and by encouraging promising histrionic talent — Booth and Quin were introduced by him to the boards - Ashbury secured for the Dublin stage a great reputation. He himself was an excellent actor, and his second wife, also an actress, gave him material assistance. Colonel Careless in the 'Committee,' and Don Quixote were among his best parts. In his 78th year he continued to act with success, and he survived to the age of 82, dying in the summer or autumn of 1720.
[Chetwood's General History of the Stage (1749); Hitchcock's Historical View of the Irish Stage (1788); Genest's Account of the English Stage (1832), vol. x.; Carte's Ormond (1736).]
ASHBY, GEORGE (d. 1475), poetical writer, was born about 1390. Little is known of him till late in life, when he appears to have owned an estate named 'Breakspeares' in Harefield, Middlesex, and to have been clerk of the signet, first to Henry VI from the beginning of his reign, and afterwards to Margaret of Anjou, in whose service he evidently travelled abroad. His earliest extant poem, written in English and preserved in manuscript at Trinity College, Cambridge (R. 3, 19), describes him as a prisoner in the Fleet, and begins with a 'prohemium vnius Prisonarii.' Ashby there says that he has been
Wrytyng to theyr sygnet full fourty yere
As well beyond the see as on thys syde.
A former owner of the book has, from internal evidence, assigned its production and its author's imprisonment to 1463. Ashby was perhaps confined in the Fleet at the time by the Yorkist conquerors of Henry VI, who was deposed in 1461. Subsequently the poet would seem to have directed the education of the young Prince Edward, Henry VI's son, until his murder in 1471. For his use Ashby prepared two English poetical treatises—one entitled 'De Activa Pollecia Principis,' which opens with an address to 'Maisters Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate,' and the second called 'Dicta et
