Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/184

 Vaughan, Mrs. Salmon, and Charles Smith. He composed some pianoforte music and a few sets of songs. He became a member of the Royal Society of Musicians 5 Aug. 1792, and died on 5 Jan. 1815.



ASHLEY, ROBERT (1565–1641), a miscellaneous writer of the reign of Elizabeth and James I, is called by Wood, in his 'Athenæ Oxonienses,' 'an esquire's son and Wiltshire-man born,' and from notes on his life, written by himself, to be found in the Sloane MSS. in the British Museum (Addit. MS. No. 2105), it seems that he was born at Damerham, on the confines of the counties of Wiltshire, Hampshire, and Dorset, seven miles from Salisbury: that his father was Anthony Ashley, or Astley, of a knightly family in Dorset, and his mother Dorothy Lyte, of Lytes Carey, in Somerset. He further tells us that when a boy he delighted in reading 'Bevis of Hampton,' 'Guy of Warwick,' 'Valentine and Orson,' 'Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table,' and aftenvards the 'Decameron of Boccace' and the 'Heptameron of the Queen of Navarre.' He was at school under Hadrian Saravia, at Southampton. Wood says he became a fellow commoner of Hart Hall in 1580, and does not speak of his being a member of any other college in Oxford; but from his autobiography it appears that he was of Alban Hall and also of Magdalen College. He left the university without a degree, and was called to the bar by the Middle Temple. His mind was too mercurial for law, and he gave himself to the study of Dutch, French, Spanish, and Italian. 'Finding the practice of law,' says Wood, 'to have ebbs and tides, he applied himself to the learning of the languages of our neighbours, to the end that he might be partaker of the wisdom of those nations, having been many years of this opinion, that as no one soil or territory yieldeth all fruits alike, so no one climate or region affordeth all kind of knowledge in full measure.' In the preface to his 'Almansor' he speaks of having been in the library of the Escurial, where, he says, he saw a glorious golden library of Arabian books. He lived for many years in the Middle Temple, where he died, without issue, Oct. 1641. He was buried in the Temple Church, and gave many books to the Temple Library.

His principal works are 'Urania,' in Latin verse, London, 1589, 4to, translated from the French of Du Bartas; 'The Interchangeable Course,' 1594, fol., translated from the French of Louis le Roy; 'Almansor, the learned and victorious King that conquered Spain, his Life and Death,' London, 1627, 4to, translated from the Spanish; 'Relation of the Kingdom of Cochin-China, containing many admirable rarities and singularities of that country,' London, 1633, 4to, translated from the Italian of Christ. Barri; 'David Persecuted,' translated from the Italian of Malvezzi, London, 1637.



ASHMOLE, ELIAS (1617–1692), 'the greatest virtuoso and curioso that ever was known or read of in England before his time,' was born at Lichfield 23 May 1617. His father, though following the trade of a saddler, was a man of good family who had seen much service in Ireland. His mother, whose maiden name was Bowyer, was nearly related to James Pagitt, a baron of the exchequer. A boyish intimacy with Pagitt's son procured Ashmole's reception into the judge's family after having received a fair education at Lichfield grammar school, and as a chorister in the cathedral. Through the patronage of Baron Pagitt he became a solicitor in 1638, 'and had indifferent good practice.' In the same year he married Eleanor Mainwaring, of Smallwood in Cheshire, who died suddenly in 1641. In 1642, having embraced the royalist side in the civil war, he left London and retired into Cheshire, and in 1644 was appointed by the king commissioner of excise at Lichfield. Business connected with this employment brought him to Oxford, where he was long detained soliciting the royalist parliament assembled in that city. He there made the acquaintance of Captain (afterwards Sir) George Wharton, who procured him a commission in the ordnance, and imbued him with the love of astrology and alchemy which, next to his antiquarianism, became the leading feature of his intellectual character. He entered himself at Brasenose College, and studied physics and mathematics; but about the end of the year became commissioner of excise at Worcester, to which he soon added the employments of captain of horse and comptroller of the ordnance. In July 1646 Worcester surrendered to the parliament, and Ashmole again retired into Cheshire. In October he came to London and mixed much in astrological circles, becoming acquainted with Lilly and Booker, and finding himself a guest at 'the mathematical feast at the White Hart.' He was also one of the earliest English Freemasons, having been initiated in or about 1646, in which year the first formal meeting of the body in England was