[1] He was Clerk of the Signet, first to Henry VI from the beginning of his reign, and afterwards to Margaret of Anjou, in whose service he evidently travelled abroad.
[3] Between the summer and 28 September 1462, Ashby started a term in the Fleet Prison to which he was probably confined by the Yorkist conquerors of Henry VI, who was deposed in 1461.
[4] Prior to that, the poet would seem to have directed some part of the education of the young Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales, Henry VI's son.
[4] For Prince Edward's use Ashby prepared two English poetical treatises that may have been designed as one poem: one entitled De Activa Pollecia Principis, which opens with an address to 'Maisters Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate,' and the second called Dicta et Opiniones Diversorum Philosophorum, with translations into English verse.
[4] According to Thomas Warton, Ashby was likewise the translator into English of several French manuals of devotion, ascribed by Robert Copland to Andrew Chertsey in his prologue to Chertsey's Passyon of our Lord Jesu Christ (printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1520): but no authority is given for this statement.