Thomas Ashby

Suffered at Tyburn, 29 March, 1544. His name was originally contained in the process of the English Martyrs, as the fact of his execution for denying the King's Supremacy was mentioned by the chroniclers of the time and from them was recorded by Sander, though not by other Catholic writers. The "Promoter Fidei" rejected this as insufficient, and a somewhat ambiguous statement has since been found in the Grey Friars' Chronicle; to wit, that Ashby was "sometime a priest and forsook it." Possibly, therefore, while rejecting the Royal Supremacy, he did not accept the Pope's.

STOWEs Chronicle, 586; HOLINSHEDs Chronicle (1586), II, 961; Grey Friars' Chronicle in the Monumenta Franciscana (Rolls Series, II, 206. SANDER, De Schismate Anglicano, 291.

J.H. POLLEN