Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/226

Astry the Society of Jesus at Watten (7 Sept., 1751). In 1761 he was professor of poetry at St. Omer. He was admitted to his solemn profession in his order 2 Feb. 1769. His commanding talents and accomplished manners recommended him for the presidency of the Little College at Bruges. On its violent suppression by the Belgic-Austrian privy council of Brussels, he was detained a close prisoner for eight months; hut he and his companions were ultimately released, owing to the exertions of Henry, the eighth Lord Arundell of Wardour, who interceded with Prince Staremberg, the Austrian prime minister, on their behalf. A few years later Father Aston established an academy at Liège, and he obtained a canonry in the collegiate church of St. John in that city. He died 15 March, 1800. Besides writing for reviews and journals, Father Aston published D'Azais' 'Compte-rendu,' 'Lettres Ultramontaines,' and 'Le Cosmopolite.'

[Oliver's Collectanea S. J.; Foley's Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, vols. v. and vii.]  ASTRY, RICHARD (1632?–1714), antiquary, was born in Huntingdonshire in or about 1632. He was admitted of Queens' College, Cambridge, on March 14, 1647-8; proceeded B.A. in 1651; and in 1654 obtained from his college a grace for M.A., though that degree is not recorded in the university registers. After leaving the university he was elected an alderman of Huntingdon, and he was buried at St. Mary's in that town on Aug. 11, 1714, aged 83. He is the author of a quarto volume of collections, heraldic and topographical, relating to the county of Huntingdon, preserved in the Lansdowne MS. 921. The authorship of this MS., which is the only systematic attempt towards a history of Huntingdonshire, has hitherto been erroneously ascribed to Sir Robert Cotton. Mr. Thomas Baker has made copious extracts from this work in the thirty-sixth volume of his MSS. now deposited in the University Library, Cambridge. Astry also drew up 'Alphabetical Catalogues of English Surnames, with the arms belonging to them, and the particular times that the persons recorded lived; 'forming three small but rather thick oblong folio volumes, formerly in the possession of the Rev. Henry Freeman, of Norman Cross.

[MS. Baker, 36; MS. Lansd. 921.]  ASTY, JOHN (1672?–1730), dissenting clergyman, was son of Robert Asty of Norwich and grandson to the 'ejected' of Stratford, whose christian name was John, not Robert (, Ancient and Present State of Congregational Churches of Norfolk and Suffolk, p. 45). He was born at Norwich 'about 1672.' Of his early education, and of his education altogether, little or nothing has been transmitted ; but in his funeral sermon by Guyse (1730) he is shown to have made 'thankful acknowledgments for his privilege in descending from godly parents' and for 'the advantages received from a religious education.' He spent several years during the earlier part of his ministry in the historic family of the Fleetwoods of Stoke Newington, then outside London. It does not appear that he undertook any pastoral charge proper until 1713. In that year he was 'ordained' as 'pastor' to a congregation at Ropemaker's Alley, Moorfields. Here he laboured most devotedly and self-denyingly until the date of his death. He was involved in a somewhat passionate controversy with a fellow dissenting minister named Martin Tomkins, also 'settled' in Stoke Newington. Tomkins was among the earliest of the originally 'evangelical' protestant dissenters who came to hold Arian-Socinian conceptions of the 'divinity' of Jesus Christ. This touched nearly Asty's beliefs, and he fearlessly and faithfully asserted the Biblical-Athanasian doctrine. Even Tomkins admitted ultimately that his opponent contended not against him as an individual, but for what he believed to be truth necessary to salvation. Later Asty signed the declaration 'on the doctrine of the blessed Trinity,' as promulgated in the first article of the Church of England and in the answer to the fifth and sixth questions of the Assembly's catechism, agreed upon at the Salters' Hall synod, 7 April 1719. He was a great admirer of the practical writings of the illustrious Dr. John Owen, and in his earnest sermons was never weary in setting forth 'the unsearchable riches of Christ.' 'And yet,' witnesses Guyse, 'in my freest converse with him I have with pleasure observed a remarkable tenderness in his spirit as to judging the state of those who differed from him, even in points which he took to be of very great importance' (as before, p. 81). He died on 20 Jan. 1729-30. He is one of the many venerable men laid to rest in Bunhill Fields, not far from John Bunyan's grave. He published only a single sermon, on the death of Mrs. Elizabeth Fleetwood and preached at Stoke Newington on 23 June 1728 from Job ix. 12. He also prefixed to the collective folio volume of the ' Sermons and Tracts of Dr. John Owen' (1721) a well-weighed and loving account of this second greatest of the later puritans. It may be added that among the 1662 farewell sermons is one by John