Simeon Ashe
d. 1662
Chaplain to Lord Brooke then Manchester; senior London Presbyterian.
Biography
Of Emmanuel College Cambridge, then chaplain to Lord Brooke (Robert Greville, killed at the siege of Lichfield in March 1643) and after Brooke's death to Edward Montagu, Earl of Manchester through the Eastern Association campaigns. Ashe was thus an eyewitness to Marston Moor (July 1644) and reported the battle to Parliament. A senior London Presbyterian, he served at St Augustine Watling Street and was a steady moderate at the Assembly — neither a great preacher nor a controversialist, but a constant attender. He died in the very week of the Act of Uniformity in 1662 — buried two days before he would have been ejected; Calamy described him as 'one of those whom God hid in the day of trouble.'
English Presbyterian divine
The great majority of the sitting members were English parish ministers of Presbyterian conviction. They formed the drafting core of the Assembly, manning its three standing committees and supplying most of the text of the Confession, the two Catechisms, and the Directory for Public Worship.