Thomas Ashton

Thomas Ashton (died 29 August 1578, Cambridge) was an English clergyman and schoolmaster, the first headmaster of Shrewsbury School. Life Identification Ashton was originally identified with the Thomas Ashton who was educated at Cambridge University, where he graduated B.A. in 1559–60, and M.A. in 1563 This man was elected a fellow of Trinity College in 1562 and entered holy orders. This was the accepted identity of the first head master of Shrewsbury School at the time his sketch was written by Thompson Cooper for the first edition of the Dictionary of National Biography (1885). John Venn's Alumni Cantabrigienses gave in its entry of him an approximate lifespan of 1537-1578. However he was later identified by J.B. Oldham in 1935 with an earlier Thomas Ashton who graduated from St John's College, Cambridge as B.A. in 1520, M.A. in 1521 and B.Th. (Bachelor of Theology) in 1531. He was elected fellow of the college in 1520, of which he was still serving in 1542, and holding a benefice as a clergyman in the Diocese of Lincoln. Oldham's argument was based on the likely age of the earlier candidate against the later candidate, who could not have been born earlier than 1540, and would therefore have been an improbably young 21 at being appointed headmaster and 38 at his death, that a letter from the Bailiffs of Shrewsbury to St John's College referred to Ashton as being of that College, and Oldham thought it unlikely for a Trinity man to have turned the control of Shrewsbury School over to another Cambridge College he had not grown up in.