Sir Thomas Aston, 1st Baronet

Sir Thomas Aston, 1st Baronet (29 September 1600 – 24 March 1645) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons in 1640. He fought for the Royalist cause in the English Civil War.

Aston was born in Shropshire, the eldest son of John Aston of Aston, Cheshire and his wife Maud Needham, daughter of Robert Needham. His uncle was the soldier Arthur Aston. He matriculated at Brasenose College, Oxford on 28 March 1617, aged 16, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts on 8 July 1619. In 1620, he was called to the bar by Lincoln's Inn.

Aston was created a baronet of Aston, in the County of Chester by King Charles I of England on 25 July 1628 . He was appointed High Sheriff of Cheshire in 1635. In April 1640 he was elected Member of Parliament for Cheshire in the Short Parliament.

When the First English Civil War broke out between the king and parliament, Aston took part with the Royalists, and was in command at Middlewich in March 1643, when he was defeated by Sir William Brereton in the First Battle of Middlewich. The Royalists lost two cannons and five hundred stand of arms. Few were killed, but the prisoners included many of the principal Royalists who took part, and the town suffered at the hands of the Parliamentarians, who made free with the property of burgesses and the plate of the church. Aston escaped, but when a few days later he returned to Chester, he was placed under arrest at Pulford, where he wrote a defence of his conduct which furnishes a very minute account of the affair. William Axon stated in his biography on Aston in the DNB that this was an interesting picture of the civil war.

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