George Ashby (antiquary)

George Ashby (1724-1808) was an English learned antiquary and sometime president of St. John's College, Cambridge.

Ashby was born in Red Lion Street, Clerkenwell, London in 1724. Educated at Croydon, Westminster, and Eton, he entered St. John's College, Cambridge, on 30 Oct. 1740, and took the degree of B.A., in 1744, of M.A. in 1748, when he was admitted fellow of St. John's, and of B.D. in 1756. He was presented by a relative to the rectory of Hungerton, in Leicestershire, in 1754, and in 1759 to that of Twyford in the same county; he held both benefices in conjunction until 1767, when he resigned the former, and in 1769 he gave up the latter on his election to the presidency or vice-mastership of St. John's College.

About 1775, when he became a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, he appears to have resigned his official connection with Cambridge, where he supported academic reform too vigorously to obtain further preferment. Among other changes, he advocated the right of the fellows to marry. At the same time he accepted the college living of Barrow, Suffolk, to which John Ross, the bishop of Exeter, an intimate friend and patron of Ashby, added the rectory of Stansfield in 1780. In 1793 his sight began to fail, and shortly afterwards he became totally blind. He died of paralysis at Barrow on 12 June 1808, and was buried in the parish church, where a monument was erected to his memory.

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