Sir John Ashburnham

They were much together in the last years of the King's life, and Charles always called him Jacko. In 1628 he was elected M.P. for Hastings, but, busily engaged in money-lending, looking after his own fortune, and attending on the king, he so neglected his duties at Westminster that the Commons discharged him in 1643 and took away his estate.

Having fought for the king and lent money to him in the Civil War, he was one of his two companions during his flight from Oxford to the Scottish camp in 1646.

 

The next year he was with Charles at Hampton Court, where he organised the secret flight by night to a hiding-place in the Isle of Wight. There he set about arranging for a further flight to France; but Colonel Hammond, who as Governor had the king in his keeping, was brought into the secret against the wishes of Charles, who de dared,

" O Jack, thou hast undone me,"

and is said to have refused permission to Ashburnham to kill Hammond; with the result that Charles once more became a captive, and John Ashburnham was parted from the king, in disgrace with Royalists and Parliamentarians alike.

 

At the Restoration he became once again Groom of the Bedchamber and recovered his lost fortunes. We meet him in Pepys's Diary, where the diarist describes with what wrath he rated a subordinate because his royal master was allowed to run short of handkerchiefs one day.

It was Sir John who rebuilt the church at Ashburnham in the years when all his exciting adventures with Charles Stuart were over and he was Groom of the Bedchamber to Charles the Second.

He kept the Tudor tower and the Jacobean railings at the foot of the raised chancel; perhaps the iron railings were made in the furnaces at Penhurst and Ashburnham, where the best Sussex iron was smelted, the last Sussex fireback made, and the last Sussex furnace extinguished.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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