Ashley was the son of Anthony Ashley of Damerham, Hampshire, and Dorothy Lyte, daughter of John Lyte, Esq., of Lytes Cary of Somerset. He was the younger brother of Anthony Ashley, 1st Baronet of Wimborne St Giles, and the elder brother of Sir Francis Ashley of Dorchester. Ashley attended the Grammar School at Southampton under the headmaster Hadrian Saravia. At the age of 13 he continued his studies at Salisbury Cathedral School with Adam Hill. Anthony Wood says he became a fellow commoner of Hart Hall in 1580, and does not speak of his being a member of any other college in Oxford University, but from his autobiography it appears he transferred to Magdalen Hall. Ashley was granted his BA degree in 1582 and was named fellow in 1583. He was made Master of Arts in 1587. In 1588 he entered New Inn and was admitted to Middle Temple on 8 October 1588. He was called to the Bar on 24 October 1595 after travelling to France. His mind was too mercurial for law, and he gave himself to the study of Dutch, French, Spanish and Italian. "Finding the practice of law", says Wood, "to have ebbs and tides, he applied himself to the learning of the languages of our neighbours, to the end that he might be partaker of the wisdom of those nations, having been many years of this opinion, that as no one soil or territory yieldeth all fruits alike, so no one climate or region affordeth all kind of knowledge infull measure." Ashley was elected Member of Parliament for Dorchester in 1597. He lived for many years in the Middle Temple, dying in October 1641, leaving no descendants. He was buried in the Temple Church, leaving his personal library of over 4000 volumes to re-establish that of Middle Temple.
Literary background and published works
Ashley, who wrote during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I, is called by Wood in his Athenæ Oxonienses "an esquire's son and Wiltshire-man born". When Ashley was a boy he delighted in reading Bevis of Hampton, Guy of Warwick, Valentine and Orson, Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, and later the Decameron of Boccace and the Heptameron of the Queen of Navarre. His principal works are:
Urania, in Latin verse, London, 1589, quarto, translated from the French of Du Bartas
The Interchangeable Course, 1594, folio, translated from the French of Louis le Roy
Almansor, the learned and victorious King that conquered Spain, his Life and Death, London, 1627, quarto, translated from Spanish.
Relation of the Kingdom of Cochin-China, containing many admirable rarities and singularities of that country, London, 1633, quarto, translated from the Italian of Christ. Barri
David Persecuted, translated from the Italian of Malvezzi, London, 1637
Ashley is also credited as main author of an unpublished occult manuscript, the Book of Magical Charms, though only identified as such in 2017.
