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Ashenhurst Pedigrees

The Three Colonels Ashenhurst

Growing up in California during the fifties and beyond, our great-grandmother, Euphemia Ashenhurst McDowell (1880-1977), told us about Ashenhurst Hall in England. (Actually, she believed it was a castle). For decades, I told anyone who would listen that I'm descended from a Colonel John Ashenhurst, a Cromwellian cavalry officer who felt obliged to flee to Ireland after the restoration of the Crown. It turns out the story may not be totally accurate and is, certainly, much more complex. In fact, there were three Colonels Ashenhurst during the English Civil Wars, and it's often difficult to determine which actions are to be attributed to which man. This is my attempt to sort it out.

The Ashenhurst family is found in Staffordshire as early as the thirteenth century. Ralph Ashenhurst of Ashenhurst Hall, near Leek, married the heiress of Beard Hall in Derbyshire toward the end of the sixteenth century. They had four sons. The eldest, Randle and Edward, were elevated to colonels during the first of the three civil wars. Edward, a Staffordshire Committee member, was apparently the first of the family to stand with the Parliamentarians. Another brother, Francis, for whom I can find little for this period, was the Mayor of Macclesfield in Cheshire from 1642 to 1643. The youngest brother, Edmund Ashenhurst of Old Park in Staffordshire, appears to have been largely neutral during the wars but leaned toward Royalist sympathies. Added to the mix is Randle's oldest son, John Ashenhurst, promoted to colonel in 1650 and given command of a cavalry troop. It is the latter who is sometimes referred to in old histories as infamous or notorious.

Not long after King Charles I raised his battle standard at Nottingham in 1642, Captain Randle Ashenhurst served in Derbyshire with the regiment of Sir John Gell who "as Colonel of his own regiment of foot and Governor of the town terrorised friend and foe alike by his undisguised and arbitrary misuse of power."¹ Ashenhurst and his lieutenant, Thomas Hatfield, defected from Gell with forty horses and men. The next year, Sir Thomas Fairfax, the commander-in-chief of the Parliamentary forces, promoted Randle to colonel.² The same year, Captain John Ashenhurst, Randle's son, was installed as governor of Caverswall Castle in Staffordshire.³ The fortunes of the Ashenhursts were on the rise. But in December, Colonel Randle was captured along with one of his sons in a skirmish against Colonel John Frescheville at Hassop Hall in Derbyshire.⁴

The young son present with Randle on that day has not been identified. Randle, styled "of Beard Hall" due to the inheritance from his father, married twice and had several sons, at least two of whom were too young to have yet served. His second son, William, was a witness in August of 1643 to the will of Sir Edward Fitton and served as surgeon to Fitton's regiment — that is, in the King's Army.⁵ Randle's companion would not have been son Captain John Ashenhurst as he was active during the pair's nine months of captivity. Another son, Peter, is known to have served as a lieutenant in Ireland ten years later.⁶ Peter's age in 1643 is unknown, but he had been apprenticed to a draper in 1637.⁷ It's easy to imagine he was a young man six years later. He's the best candidate at present for the second imprisoned Ashenhurst.

Randle and son remained at Frescheville's garrisoned Stayley Hall until the following August when the Parliamentarians, under Sergeant Major-General Lawrence Crawford, commandeered Bolsover Castle and secured the surrounding area. In the meantime, the other Ashenhursts remained busy in Staffordshire. Randle's brother, Captain Edward Ashenhurst, was promoted to major in early 1644 and given the governorship of Paynsley Hall in Cresswell, Staffordshire.⁸ In February, Captain John Ashenhurst, Randle's son, began a month-long siege of Biddulph Hall.⁹ The heavily garrisoned building finally surrendered after the captain deployed "Roaring Meg," the largest cannon of its era, and felled a supporting beam.

That August, father and son were released from Frescheville's custody and Randle was given command of the newly relieved Bolsover Castle.¹⁰ Up until this time, historians can distinguish between the three Ashenhurst men by their respective ranks: Captain John, Major Edward, and Colonel Randle Ashenhurst. By November, however, Edward was promoted to colonel, introducing some confusion as to who was whom. But it was Captain John Ashenhurst (not a Colonel Ashenhurst, as is often stated) who gained a bloody victory at Wolverhampton in July 1645 with ten of the enemy killed and thirty-eight captured.¹¹ One of the dead appears to have been Andrew Gifford whose home, Walton Grange, was seized by the captain's uncle, Colonel Edward Ashenhurst. In June of 1651, Giffard's widow, Katherine, pleaded for the return of her estate due to the fact that she and her eight children were homeless. Instead, in March 1652, Edward bought the estate's mortgage, dispossessing the widow. He was thereafter styled Ashenhurst of Walton Grange.¹²

Charles I, the second of the Stuart kings of England, was defeated in 1646. After some negotiation with Parliament, concessions were made and he was returned to the throne. He quickly reneged on promises made and was again captured, tried, and finally executed on 30 January 1649. Oliver Cromwell, the Parliamentarian leader, was now firmly in power and wasted no time in raising arms in Ireland. During that next year, 1650, as Charles's son was crowned in Scotland as Charles II, Randle Ashenhurst was commissioned Justice of the Peace in Derbyshire and his son John was promoted to colonel of the horse. Confident of victory, Charles's Scottish allies quickly invaded England. But they were routed at Dunbar and defeated at Worcester on 3 September 1651. The King secured temporary shelter at Boscobel House just west of the Staffordshire border, and was just missed being captured by none other than Colonel John Ashenhurst and his troop of cavalry.¹³ According to all accounts, the King had found cover inside a hollow of a nearby oak, now known to legend as the Royal Oak. After forty days on the run, Charles gained passage to France. We can be certain of the accuracy of Ashenhurst element in the story because the King confided in 1680 to Samuel Pepys that a Roundhead passed the oak tree just beneath his hideout. Further, Ashenhurst's role is recounted, with varying degrees of accuracy, in a number of nineteenth century histories.¹⁴

The remainder of the decade passed peaceably for the Ashenhursts. John Ashenhurst had four children during Cromwell's rule: John, Thomas, Sarah, and Peter, all baptized in Staffordshire during the 1650s. In 1657 alone, Justice of the Peace Randle Ashenhurst conducted seventeen marriages in Derbyshire. Just the previous year, his son Revell was admitted to the Inner Temple, and his youngest son Francis entered Cambridge. In 1659, Randle's brother, Colonel Edward Ashenhurst, was appointed Commissioner of the Militia in the County of Stafford,¹⁵ and Lieutenant Peter Ashenhurst, possibly Randle's cellmate in 1644, was enumerated on the census of Ireland, marrying there to Mary Brooke in 1660.

Charles was restored to the throne in 1660, two years after the death of Oliver Cromwell, and the Ashenhursts began to disappear from the record. Randle died in Derbyshire in 1666.¹⁶ In 1667, John sold the Ashenhurst estate in Staffordshire to his cousin Francis Hollinshead.¹⁷ Edmund Ashenhurst, the youngest of the four brothers, died in 1669, and Edward, the miser of Walton Grange, was dead by 1671.

But what of the American Ashenhurst's supposed ancestor, Colonel John Ashenhurst, the terror of Wolverhampton, the bomber of Biddolph Hall, and the would-be captor of the King? Did he and his family flee to Ireland after Charles regained the crown in 1660? In fact, Ireland might not have been the safest place for someone on the run from the King. Furthermore, it seems unlikely he was a fugitive as he was still in England when he sold Ashenhurst Hall in 1667. His children, however, appear to be no mystery: Peter is recorded to have died in infancy and, according to the History of Leek, the others had no issue. True? Or might it be that the whole lot simply disappeared to another land? Although other John Ashenhursts lived during Restoration England, it needs to be noted that a man of that name was transported, courtesy of the King, to Barbados in 1669.¹⁸ He is presumably the same man who left that island and stepped ashore on the American mainland in 1675, more than a century before we pick up the family's trail in Virginia.

Beard Hall, Derbyshire

One way or another, Ireland was well populated by Ashenhursts by the end of the eighteenth century. Lieutenant Peter Ashenhurst, Randle's son, remained and died there. Record of only three daughters, no sons, are found for him. Major Edward Ashenhurst, fourth in descent from Randle, and said to have been the last of the Ashenhursts, died in Ireland in 1770 after falling from his horse. He left a single daughter. Yet, however it came to pass, an extended family of Ashenhursts crossed the Atlantic from county Tyrone to Virginia in 1793, only twenty-three years following the death of the major. The group consisted of brothers Oliver and William, their sister Nancy, and her husband, a first cousin according to family legend, named William Ashenhurst. During passage, Nancy gave birth to the couple's youngest child, Oliver Ashenhurst, my great-grandmother's grandfather.

In addition to later emigrations to Australia, Canada, and South Africa, some Irish Ashenhursts returned to England and others moved into Scotland. There is, then, a virtual diaspora of Ashenhursts throughout the English-speaking world, and possibly beyond. In an attempt to put the puzzle back together, I started, some years ago, the Ashenhurst Y-DNA project at FTDNA.com. To date, only four male Ashenhursts have tested and are found to be of the very large Y-DNA haplogroup, R1b-U106, common throughout northwest Europe.¹⁹ Should more brave Ashenhurst men, wherever they presently reside, contribute a wad of their spittle to the effort, it will be possible to establish, at minimum, whether there is a single, distinct family of Ashenhursts. Or might there be another tribe that can more rightfully claim the appellation, "Ashenhurst of Ashenhurst Hall?"

1. Andrew Polkey, "Civil War Derbyshire: John Gell's 'True Relation' Reconsidered," Derbyshire Miscellany 14 (1997): 151. See also "Sir John Gell, c.1593-1671," BCWProject: British Civil Wars, Commonwealth & Protectorate 1638-1660. Web.

2. Andrew Polkey, "Civil War Derbyshire: John Gell's 'True Relation' Reconsidered," Derbyshire Miscellany 14 (1997): 170.

3. "Introduction." The Committee at Stafford, 1643-1645: The Order Book of the Staffordshire County Committee (Manchester University Press, 1957), liv.

4. "Stavely Hall and Its Occupants," The Reliquary 3, ed. Llewellynn Jewitt (London: John Russell Smith, 1862), 153.

5. William Atwood, "A true account of the unreasonableness of Mr. Fitton's pretences against the Earl of Macclesfield," Early English Books, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A26185.0001.001/1:1.2?rgn=div2;view=fulltext.

6. "Militia for Ireland," Report of the Manuscripts of the Marquis of Ormonde, K.P., preserved at the Castle, Kilkenny, Vol 2, (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1899), 247.

7. Records of London's Livery Companies Online: Apprentices and Freemen 1400-1900, Institute of Historical Research, Centre for Metropolitan History. Web. Peter, son of Randle of Beard Derbyshire, was bonded on 5 July 1637 for a period of eight years to Ralph Grafton, draper. We don't know his age but can assume he was a young man by the time of his father's capture.

8. "Surnames beginning 'A'", in The Cromwell Association Online Directory of Parliamentarian Army Officers, ed. Stephen K. Roberts, British History Online (2017).

9. Collections for a History of Staffordshire 12 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1909), 9.

10. Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of Charles I, 1644-1645, ed. William Douglas Hamilton, (London: Eyers and Spottiswoode, 1890), 279.

11. Booy, David, "Victory by Captaine Ashenhurst," The Notebook Wallington, 1618-1654: a selection (Aldershot, 2007), 215-234.

12. Collections for a History of Staffordshire, ed. The William Salt Archaeology Society, Vol. 5 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1909), 166.

13. The Boscobel Tracts Relating to the Escape of Charles the Second After the Battle of Worcester and His Subsequent Adventures, ed. by J. Hughes, Esq. A. M. (London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1847), 213-14.

14. Royal Oak is a popular pub name in Britain. It's interesting to note that on "1688, Aug. 23, in London Gazette of this date, appeared a notice that 'his majesty having granted to Randolph Ashenhurst, Esq.; Thomas Ashenhurst, gen.: and others, the sole exercise of the Royal Oak' (a gambling game dedicated to the honour of King Charles 2nd), 'of Raffling and all other Lotteries and games resembling lotteries' H.M. prohibited the use of these games by any one who had not obtained a license from ye patentees." Quoted from John Sleigh, A History of the Ancient Parish of Leek (London: Bemrose & Sons: 1883), 108. Colonel John Ashenhurst, who nearly captured the King at the "Royal Oak" had younger brothers of those names, Thomas born about 1624 and Randle in 1626. We know little about them except that Thomas was living in London in the 1660s. Did the King have a sense of humor and know the circumstances under which he granted this license?

15. Journals of the House of Commons, Volume 7, Great Britain House of Commons, (H. M. Stationery Office, 1813), 761.

16. "St Matthew's Church, Hayfield, Complete Burials from Bishops Transcripts," North West Derbyshire Sources, http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~dusk/hayfield_burials_1664-1810/hayfield_burials_1664-1810.html.

17. Faith Cleverdon, Landscape with Buildings: A North Staffordshire Study Based on the Medieval Parish of Leek (The University of Sheffield, 2002), 109.

18. Peter Wilson Coldham, English Convicts in Colonial America, Vol. 2 (New Orleans: Polyanthos, 1976), 170. Also note that there was a Jno Ashenhurst who arrived in Virginia in 1664, Nell Marion Nugent, Cavaliers and Pioneers: Abstract of Virginia Land Patents and Grants, 1623-1666 (Richmond Dietz Printing Co, 1934), 455.

19. https://www.familytreedna.com/public/ashenhurst/default.aspx?section=yresults

Timeline

• c1589 Ralph Ashenhurst of Ashenhurst, Staffordshire, marries Elizabeth Beard, hieress of Beard Hall, Derbyshire.
• 1631 Randle Ashenhurst is Justice of the High Peak Hundred of Derbyshire.
• 1632 Randle's children named in will of brother-in-law Franics Bradshaw.
• 1638 Randle mentioned in will of his cousin William Leversage of Wheelock.
• 1642 First civil war begins. Charles I raises battle standard at Nottingham.
• 1642 Capt Randle Ashenhurst and Lt Thomas Hadfield defect from Col John Gell with 40 men and horses (Derbyshire).
• 1643 "Edward Ashenhurst, a Staffordshire Committee member."
• 1643 Randle promoted to Col and authorized by Lord Fairfax to raise a regiment of foot.
• 1643 (Aug) Randle's son, William, is witness to the will of Colonel Edward Fitton, for whom he served.
• 1643 (by Dec) Capt. John Ashenhurst made Governor of Caverswall Castle, Staffordshire.
• 1643 (Dec) Col Randle Ashenhurst and a son captured by Colonel John Frescheville at Hassop Hall, Derbeyshire.
• 1644 (Feb 26) Capt John Ashenhurst besieges Biddulph Hall.
• 1644 Captain Edward Ashenhurst made Major by March and is governor of Paynsley, Colonel by Dec.
• 1644 (August) Balsover Castle, Wingfield Manor, and Staveley House, where the Asehnhursts were imprisoned, are taken by Major-General Lawrence Crawford. The Ashenhursts are released.
• 1644 Randle becomes Governor of Bolsover Castle, Derbyshire.
• c1644 Randle takes possession of Shallcross Hall, Derbyshire.
• 1644 Randle Ashenhurst is on the committee for Commonwealth Assessments for Derbyshire.
• 1644 (June) Brereton besieges Dudley Castle. Two majors, two captains, two liuetenants taken prisoner.
• 1645 (July 1) "Capt" Ashenhurst's victory at Wolverhampton. 14 killed and 34 captured. Some texts say this was Edward, but he was already commissioned a colonel, as was Randle.
• 1645 Caverswall Castle back in Royalist hands.
• 1645 Edward Ashenhurst serves under Sir William Brereton at Chester.
• 1646 Brereton takes Dudley Castle. Col Edmond (Edward?) Ashenhurst, former prisoner at Dudley, is negotiator.
• 1646 Charles I surrenders.
• 1648 Second civil war
• 1649 Charles I executed. End of second civil war.
• 1649 Third civil war
• 1650 Randle becomes Justice of the Peace in Derbyshire.
• 1650 Capt John Ashenhurst commissioned colonel of horse.
• 1651 "Col" Ashenhurst just misses capturing Charles II as he escapes to France.
• 1652 (March 10) Col Edward Ashenhurst buys Walton Grange.
• 1657 As J P, Randle performs 17 marriages.
• 1659 Col Edward Ashenhurst appointed a Commissioner of the Militia in the County of Stafford.
• 1660 Restoration of Charles II
• 1666 Death of Randle "of Beard" in Derbyshire.
• 1667 John Ashenhurst sells Ashenhurst estate to cousin Francis Hollinshead.