Six north country diaries - The MAN & Other Families

THE JOURl^AL OF JOHN ASTON, 1639.'
INTRODUCTION.
In the British Museum there is a journal^ written during the
first Bishops' War by an eye-witness to the events therein related,
which, apparently escaped the observation of the late Dr. Gardiner
when writing his monumental histon- of The Fall of the Monarchy
of Chnrles I. nor has it been quoted by Professor Terry either in
his Life and Campaigns of Alexander Leslie, or in his carefully
written, paper on 'The Visits of Charles I. to Newcastle in 1633,
1639 and 1646-7 printed ' in the twenty-first volume of Archaeologia
Aeliana.
John Aston, the writer of the journal, holding the office of Privy
'
Chamber-man Extraordinary ' as deputy for his brother, may be
identified, but not with absolute certainty, with John Aston, second
son of John Aston of Aston in Cheshire, Sewer to Anne, Queen of
'
James I.,' brother to Sir Thomas Aston, first baronet, a captain of
horse in the service of Charles I. If this be so, the diarist was educated
at Braseuose College, Oxford, whei-e he matriculated on the
28th March, 1617, aged 15; and, according to his epitaph in the
private chapel at Aston, he with great prudence and ' fidelity
preserved the estate and evidences of the family from being ruin'd
by sequestration and plunder during his life, which ended on the
1st of April, 1650.'
The quality and nature of the observations set down by the diarist
show him to have been an observant and educated gentleman as well
as the companion and associate of men of standing.
Aston's Journal may be carefully compared with the parallel
Journal of the Elarl of Rutland, written in the months of March,
'
Brit. Mus. Additional MS. 28,566.
The existence of Aston's Journal and its value and suitability for the
present volume were pointed out by Dr. Gee and by Mr. H. H. E. Craster.
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