Thomas Ashton

Thomas Ashton, D.D. (1716–1775) was an English cleric. Life Ashton was the son of Dr. Ashton, usher of Lancaster grammar school. He was educated at Eton College, where a group of friends formed—Ashton, Thomas Gray, Horace Walpole, and Richard West—who called themselves the "Quadruple Alliance". Ashton went in 1733 to King's College, Cambridge. He is the "Thomas Ashton, Esq., tutor to the Earl of Plymouth", to whom Walpole addressed his Epistle from Florence. For some time Ashton held the living of Aldingham, Lancashire; in May 1749 he was presented to the rectory of Sturminster Marshall in Dorset; and in 1752 to the rectory of St Botolph, Bishopsgate. Meanwhile, he had fallen out with Walpole, who complained to Sir Horace Mann, on 25 July 1750, that Ashton had written against his friend Conyers Middleton. Up to this point, Walpole had helped Ashton's advancement in the church.