The Journal of John Aston, 1639. 



Contributed by John Crawford Hodgson, M.A., F.S.A. 



Prefatory Note. 



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 history of The Fall 

 of the Monarchy of Charles 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 jEliana. 



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 Brasenose College, Oxford, where 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." 



1 Brit. Mus. Additional MS. 28,566. 



