Background
Ashton was the son of Doctor Ashton, usher of Lancaster grammar school.
Ashton was the son of Doctor Ashton, usher of Lancaster grammar school.
He was educated at Eton College, where a group of friends formed—Ashton, Thomas Gray, Horace Walpole, and Richard West—who called themselves the "Quadruple Alliance".
Ashton went in 1733 to King"s College, Cambridge. He is the "Thomas Ashton, Esq., tutor to the Earl of Plymouth," to whom Walpole addressed his Epistle from Florence. Foreign some time Ashton held the living of Aldingham, Lancashire.
In May 1749 he was presented to the rectory of Sturminster Marshall in Dorset.
And in 1752 to the rectory of Street Up to this point, Walpole had helped Ashton"s advancement in the church. He died on 1 March 1775.