Edmund Ashfield (Catholic agent)

Edmund Ashfield (1576 – ca. 1620) was an English Catholic from Tattenhoe in Buckinghamshire. He was educated at St Mary Hall, Oxford. In 1599 he travelled to Edinburgh to meet James VI of Scotland. The resident English diplomat organised his kidnap and rendition apparently in the belief that Ashfield was an agent of James VI and working to further his succession to the English throne. In 1606, Ashfield was involved in the rebuilding of Ashridge Priory for Sir Thomas Egerton. In 1612, the author Henry Peacham dedicated his Graphice, or the Auncient Arte of Drawing and Limning to Ashfield, by then Deputy-Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire. An aunt or cousin Cecily Ashfield was married to the Lord Chancellor Sir John Fortescue of Salden. Edmund's uncle Thomas Ashfield was a bailiff for the Earl of Oxford in 1571, and Edmund was Thomas's heir in 1609.

Edmund Ashfield wrote to James VI offering the advice that he ought to publish books setting forth his claim to the succession to Elizabeth I of England, and showing how he could gain support and rule. This approach was in response to the Jesuit position on the succession, set out in the pseudonymous succession tract by "R. Doleman". It was therefore in the period 1594–8.

Ashfield obtained a pass to enter Scotland from Peregrine Bertie, Baron Willoughby, Governor of Berwick upon Tweed and was helped in Scotland by Robert Ker of Cessford. Ashfield spoke to James VI twice, in Edinburgh and during the King's hunting at Colinton. An agent of the Earl of Essex, Thomas Weyman, later wrote that Ashfield had discussed the possibility of James becoming King of England over dinner with some noblemen. The Earl of Cassilis joked; "Truly the Englishmen are good husbandmen, and have so well manured the grounds their grounds that we shall find a goodly and pleasant dwelling there when we come." Weyman thought that Ashfield's activities would turn James against the Earl of Essex.

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