Ashley’s ancestors held manorial property in Dorset from the mid-fifteenth century. His uncle, Sir Henry, sat for Shaftesbury in 1547 and also served twice as knight of the shire.
In 1614 Ashley was returned to Parliament for Dorchester. Despite his novice status, he made 28 speeches and attracted 15 committee appointments. On 8 Apr., with Members divided over whether the attorney-general (Sir Francis Bacon*) should be barred by his office from sitting in the Commons, Ashley cautiously moved for a committee to establish the precedents before a decision was reached, and was promptly named to it. However, he was much more outspoken three days later. Apparently picking up on concerns that Bacon might imitate Mercury, messenger of the gods, and transmit confidential business to the king, Ashley reminded Members that this deity was also a notorious thief, so that the issue needed to be taken seriously. News of this comment reached James I, possibly via secretary of state Sir Ralph Winwood*, and on 12 Apr. an alarmed Ashley insisted that he had been misreported. He was duly cleared of any wrongdoing, on the motion of Sir Roger Owen and Sir Dudley Digges.
During the same speech, on 12 Apr., Ashley concurred with Sir Richard Weston that the Commons needed to clear the air of rumours that the Crown might be trying to influence Parliament’s behaviour by means of ‘undertakers’. The next day he was appointed to help draft a Protestation to the king about this matter. Nothing had come of this by 2 May, when Ashley seconded Sir Robert Phelips’ motion for a fresh drafting committee, observing that reports of undertaking were now too widespread to be simply ignored. Three days later he took a much firmer line, arguing that no supply should be granted until this issue had been properly settled, and hinting that he had fresh evidence. However, when finally pushed into explaining himself, he revealed only that he had been given advance details of the Crown’s parliamentary programme, that Sir Reginald Mohun* had told him of a merchant who claimed that there were indeed undertakers, and that certain noblemen had allegedly influenced the election of Members. None of this amounted to firm proof, and Ashley dropped the subject again until 14 May, when Sir Henry Neville I admitted that he had made recommendations to James on how to manage Parliament. Ashley accepted that no harm had been done, but recommended that in future the Commons should guard against attempts to push through supply before grievances had been addressed.
Not surprisingly, Ashley reacted strongly to news that the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, Sir Thomas Parry*, had actually interfered in the Stockbridge election. On 9 May he demanded that Parry explain himself at the bar of the House, and the next day called for him to be censured. When the king responded by removing Parry from the Privy Council, Ashley reacted with satisfaction, advising Members on 11 May not to rush to request his reinstatement.
Ashley’s experience as a lawyer naturally influenced his performance in the Commons. He was appointed both to the conference with the Lords on the Palatine marriage settlement bill (14 Apr.), and to the committee to consider the legitimacy of baronetcies (23 May). In speeches on 14 and 20 May he questioned whether the bill on wardship or that to reform the Exchequer’s accounting procedures would actually achieve the results intended.
In general, Ashley showed little interest in economic affairs, though he was named to two committees concerned with debt (11 and 31 May). He was presumably voicing the concerns of Dorchester’s merchants when he called on 3 May for the London-based French Company’s patent to be cancelled, claiming that it was inspired purely by the avarice of London traders. Certainly he showed greater sympathy when Richard Martin* lectured the House on behalf of the Virginia Company, though he agreed on 17 May that Martin should acknowledge his errors at the Bar.
Accordingly, Ashley was outraged when Bishop Neile of Lincoln attacked the Commons for questioning impositions. On 25 May he suggested that this was an act of revenge for the Lower House’s earlier criticisms of the clergy, and insisted ‘that no greater offence can be than to tax our loyalty and discretion’. He firmly backed the subsequent complaint to the Lords, but on 30 May argued against a suspension of business while this dispute rumbled on.
Ashley was an active local magistrate, as his records of Dorset hearings demonstrate. A major contributor to the erection of the Dorchester workhouse in 1616, he also granted his lease of some local tithes to augment one of the town’s livings in the following year.
Ashley was apparently earmarked for a seat at Dorchester in the 1620 election, but he ‘resigned over his place unto Sir Thomas Edmondes’, who had been nominated by Prince Charles’s Council. However, when Edmondes chose to sit for Bewdley, Ashley was returned in the Dorchester by-election.
Appointed to help report the conference of 29 May, when the Parliament’s imminent adjournment was announced, Ashley relayed to Members Prince Charles’s request that the Commons should not try to secure extra time.
When Parliament met again in the autumn, Ashley backed calls for a diversionary attack on Spain to aid the Palatinate, recommending on 27 Nov. that Members grant James one subsidy and two fifteenths to fund the military effort for a year, after which the financial requirements might be reviewed.
On 10 Dec. Ashley abruptly announced that he had again been reported to the king for making a ‘mutinous’ speech. Referring back to the similar episode in 1614, he insisted that his ‘gown and knighting’ would not stop him speaking according to his conscience. At his own request, the House then cleared him of any wrongdoing. Later that day it emerged that Ashley had good reason to shore up his reputation in the Commons, as Members heard a report on the malicious suit brought against Sir Edward Coke in Star Chamber by John Lepton and Henry Goldsmith, both of whom enjoyed the king’s support. This case was widely regarded in the House as an attack on Coke’s parliamentary privilege, but Ashley was obliged to admit that he and Speaker Richardson had been retained as counsel against Sir Edward. Now on the defensive, Ashley controversially maintained that Coke’s status as a Member did not mean that he could not be sued if the Crown wished the case to go ahead, an argument that he reiterated the following day.
Having now nailed his colours firmly to the royal mast, on 15 Dec. Ashley warmly welcomed James’s latest message to the Commons, which again condemned their petition on war, but offered concessions over Lepton and Goldsmith, and confirmed Members’ privileges: ‘the king washeth with vinegar and oil. He toucheth with the vinegar; yet the oil hath overcome it, and filled his heart with the oil of gladness’. As James was clearly no tyrant, the Commons should now stop contending with him, and get back to business, not least the bill on monopolies, which the Lords had instructed him to say had their broad approval.
In 1622 Ashley strengthened his ties with Dorchester by purchasing the old Franciscan friary, which he immediately set about rebuilding.
At the outset of Charles I’s reign Ashley was promoted to king’s serjeant, and regained his Dorchester seat. He probably also helped to secure the election at Poole of his niece’s husband, Sir John Cooper. During the 1625 Parliament Ashley received 19 appointments and made four speeches. Most of the legislative committees to which he was named concerned either religion or legal issues; their topics included Sabbath abuses, subscription, petty larceny and alienations (22, 25 and 27 June).
A member of the committee for privileges, Ashley was highly critical of Sir William Cope*, who had used habeas corpus to free himself from debtors’ gaol, and then secured election to the Commons in order to obtain protection from his creditors. Complaining on 21 June that the former stratagem was already widely abused, he stated that ‘he would be most troubled to see men come and sit in that House to make laws by habeas corpus’. He was duly nominated to help consider Cope’s case, and also on 27 June to scrutinize the bill to restrain the granting of writs of habeas corpus.
In 1625 Ashley relied heavily on the royal prerogative to defend his monopoly of milling at Christchurch, Hampshire, against Sir George Hastings*. The case, which was heard in the Exchequer, perhaps helps to explain why he subsequently abandoned many of his earlier reservations about the Crown’s power.
It appears we did not much err, when in two of the three points we prevailed at the last conference, ... viz. that the king’s council may upon just cause commit to prison, and that by mandate only without process; wherein our labours were not altogether fruitless. The third point only remains in difference, for expression of the cause of commitment, which I shall ever absolutely deny to be fit in all cases as the position is generally offered.
SP16/102/26.
Nevertheless, Ashley’s posthumous reputation has suffered less from his political record than from his determination to recover the money owed to him by his spendthrift kinsman, Sir John Cooper. His great-nephew Shaftesbury’s description of the wicked uncle who corrupted the Court of Wards but was struck down in the midst of his unjust pleadings is false in all ascertainable particulars. Ashley remained active till the last morning of his life, and then passed peacefully away at Serjeants’ Inn, Fleet Street. On 28 Nov. 1635 ‘he rose to go to the hall, but finding himself not well sat down in his chair by the fireside, commanding his man to get the cook to make him a caudle; but at his return he found him dead in his chair’. Denzil Holles reportedly inherited an estate of at least £1,200 a year.
Ashley was buried at St. Peter’s, Dorchester, where he had requested that a memorial be erected in the chancel, ‘fit rather for decency than ostentation’. His will, signed on 12 Aug., well reveals his unconventional personality.
I do forbear to declare herein the disposition of my soul according to the common course of men’s wills, for every good Christian ought to be prepared at all times to resign into the hands of the Almighty the soul which he first infused when he shall please to call for it; and by using the means of grace in time of health to be furnished with assurance upon the verity of Christ’s gospel and the precious promises therein declared that his soul shall after the separation inherit eternity of glory, and not leave the work for a formal introduction to his will at the last period of his life.
He left £100 to the puritan rector, John White, and 100 marks to the corporation to continue his augmentation to the living of All Saints, together with his law books. His coach and horses he bequeathed to his wife, who proved the will on 19 May 1636.