Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/162

 and so continued to this day, &c.' London, 1558.



ASCHAM, ANTONY (d. 1650), parliamentarian ambassador at Madrid, was 'born of a genteel family, educated in Eton school, and thence elected into King's College, Cambridge, 1638.' He took the parliament side in the civil war, and was appointed tutor to James, duke of York. In 1648 he published his 'Discourse of what is lawful during confusions and revolutions of government,' a treatise determining within what time allegiance might be transferred from a sovereign to those who had conquered him. It was answered by Dr. Sanderson (whose tract on the subject was formerly printed with Walton's 'Lives'), and republished in 1689 without the author's name. In August 1649 Ascham was the Hamburg agent of the republic, and in the following June he was appointed resident at Madrid, at a salary of 800l. a year. Clarendon (then Sir Edward Hyde and ambassador for Charles II) sneers at his rival's incompetence; but Milton, some years after, recommending Marvell to Bradshaw, thinks it sufficient commendation to say that 'Mr. Marvell will do as good service as Mr. Ascham.' The dignity of the new resident was jealously guarded by a formal introduction to the Spanish ambassador, and by a special commission under the great seal. At Madrid Hyde was assured that no embassy was in question; it was only that a gentleman had come with letters from the parliament to the king. The letters were never delivered, for the day after his arrival Ascham and his interpreter, De Rivas, were murdered at their inn by John Guillim and William Spark, who, with their four accomplices (Henry and Valentine Progers, John Halsal, and William Arnet), took sanctuary immediately afterwards. The parliament not only demanded their punishment, but ordered that six persons, who had been in arms for the king and had not been admitted to compound, should be at once seized and tried by the high court of justice, an order repeated in November. The Spaniards, to save appearances, took the assassins out of the church, tried, condemned, and restored them to sanctuary, where they were maintained by the contributions of 'persons of quality' till they all had opportunity to escape. Spark, the only protestant among them, was alone recaptured and executed. In 1652 the murderers were excepted from the act of oblivion, and provision was made for Ascham's relations, and so late as 1655 the topic of the murder is urged in Cromwell's declaration against Spain. The pleadings for the punishment of the murderers, translated from the Spanish, were published in 1651 and are reprinted in the 'Harleian Miscellany' (iv. 280, ed. Park).



ASCHAM, ROGER (1515–1568), author was born in 1515 at Kirby Wiske, near Northallerton. His family appears to have been of considerable antiquity, and to have taken its name from the villages known East and West Askham, near York. A Roger de Askham is mentioned as an adherent of Thomas, earl of Lancaster, in 1313, and as receiving pardon for his complicity in the murder of Piers Gaveston ( Fœdera, iii. 444). Hamond Askham was appointed master of Balliol College, Oxford, in 1397 (, Antiquities, p. 82). In 1406 William Askham became an alderman of London, and was sheriff in 1398, when Richard Whittington was mayor (, Memorials of London, 546, 548, 565). The will of another William Askham, dated 7 Nov. 1390 preserved at York, proves the members of the family who remained in Yorkshire to have belonged to the yeoman class. At the date of Roger's birth his father, John Ascham, was house-steward to Lord Scrope, of Bolton, and bore a high reputation for uprightness of life. A mention of him in the will (20 Feb. 1507-8) of Robert Lascelles, a substanial Yorkshire landowner, proves him to have then held the tithes of Newsham, near Kirby-Wiske, and to have lately sustained heavy losses (cf. Testamenta Eboracensia, published by Surtees Soc. i. 129-30, ii. 28, iv. 271). The maiden name of Roger's mother, Margaret Ascham, has not been preserved; but it has been stated that she was of an important Yorkshire family. Roger was the third son. The eldest son, Thomas, was fellow of John's College in 1523 (, Hist. of St. John's Coll. ed. Mayor, i. 282), and died before 1544 (, Epistles, ed. Giles, No. xxi.). He apparently married, and left three sons, Roger, Thomas, and John, of whom the first was promoted, in 1573, from the office of ordinary yeoman of Elizabeth's chamber to that of yeoman of the bears, and the last was the author of an unprinted pamphlet entitled 'A Discours against the Peace with Spayne, 1603' (Harl. MSS. 168, art. 117; 295, art. 231 b). Anthony, Roger's