The Earl of Essex’s chaplain: Rev. Abdias Assheton

By Anne Falloon

Abdias Assheton (1563-1633) was a member of Middleton’s manorial family who rose to some prominence in the final years of Elizabeth I’s reign. A Protestant with strong Puritan leanings, as an academic and preacher he sought all his answers not from centuries old tradition as his Catholic forebears had done, but directly from a deep reading of the bible.
In the 1590’s his approach to thinking through religious and moral choices using scripture attracted the attention of the greatest man in England.

This is the story of the controversial relationship between Essex and the influential chaplain he called his ‘little man’, Abdias Assheton.

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