[1] His youthful career has been colourfully described as consisting of "seduction, duelling, debt and imprisonment" before a period of foreign travel and then the taking up of "literary pursuits, writing, among some scientific and geographical works, several novels.
To meet this exigency, and to release me from this Island, I composed a little romance, entitled, "The Manx Monastery; or Memoirs of Belville and Julia."
[3] Ashe claimed that the novel was based on historical documents that he had been given, but that seems unlikely, not least because: "The focal point of the book consists of the long-drawn-out seduction of Julia, a young nun, accompanied by much weeping by the two lovers.
"[9] Within the space of two months of the book having been available, Ashe claimed to have sold 2,000 copies, and had already printed 6,000 more in anticipation of the sales to be obtained during the next year's tourist season.
"Further to this, at least one poem in the book has been identified as plagiarised from Lord Byron's Childe Harold, casting doubt on the rest of the work.
[14] This extension of the Museum included a Library and Literary Lounge, apparently enlarging the establishment "to the sphere of a Temple of Fancy," which promised "public accommodation to ladies of taste and reading.
"[20] However, it appears that Ashe overestimated the continued success of the Museum as he was obliged to organise a public lottery on 17 October to raise funds to pay off his debts.
"[22] However, despite the relative success of the lottery, within only ten days of its taking place, Ashe made a public announcement of the Museum's failure:[23] "all my efforts to establish a Museum in Douglas, and diffuse a love of Literature and Science throughout the Island, have finally terminated in unqualified loss, disappointment, and despair.
"After recognising his own failure in launching the Museum too late in the season and not controlling outlay sufficiently, he saw the "grand cause" of his "total failure" to lie with the people of the Isle of Man:[23] "Gentlemen, – that cause exists in the party spirit which reigns in this Island, – a spirit which, while it exercises its accursed domination over the land, will never allow it to become a rich mart of Literature, or a proper theatre of undertakings of merit, magnitude or taste.
"Regardless of the reasons for the failure of the Museum, Ashe declared himself insolvent at the end of December 1825 and was incarcerated for debt in Castle Rushen.
[26] He seems to have made an extra income from his journalism by receiving payment from individuals to write slanderous or damaging pieces about rivals or enemies.
[27] Ashe soon extended the use of slanderous journalism to carry out blackmail, threatening to publish his own pieces about people if they did not pay him.
[32] On 29 May 1831 Ashe wrote of having had an apparent conversion to Wesleyanism, having visited a chapel in Gosport only to gather material to slander it in a newspaper article.