William Gibson, 2nd Baron Ashbourne (16 December 1868 – 21 January 1942), was an Irish language activist and author.
Born in Dublin, to Edward Gibson, 1st Baron Ashbourne, and Frances Maria Adelaide Colles (a granddaughter of Abraham Colles and niece of John Dawson Mayne), Gibson was educated at Harrow School, Trinity College, Dublin, and Merton College, Oxford University.
He was the author of The Abbe de Lammenais and the Liberal Catholic Movement in France and was a contributor to The Dublin and other reviews.
Mary Leslie, a member of the family of the Leslie family of Glaslough, Monaghan, said of Lord Ashbourne:"I am so interested by the Ashbourne's son, a half hatched philosopher & saint who has an article in this 19th Century & is writing on "Danton" for the next.
On the back of a letter that he wrote to his wife in 1937, he wrote the opening lines of a poem:"I turned away, my soul was rich with sadness, And wondered thence in brooding reverie..."The Abbe de Lamennais and the liberal Catholic movement in France, 1896.