Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Ashley, General Charles
ASHLEY, GENERAL CHARLES (1770?–1818), eldest son of John Ashley [see Ashley, John, 1734?-1805], obtained some celebrity as a violinist. He was a pupil of Giardini and Barthelemon, and with his three brothers took part in the Handel commemoration in 1784, on which occasion the young musicians distinguished themselves by nailing the coat of an Italian violinist to his seat and filling his violin with halfpence, proceedings of which he complained so loudly that George III sent to the orchestra to find out what occasioned the disturbance. G. C. Ashley led his father's orchestra at the Covent Garden oratorios, of which, after John Ashley's death, he became Joint manager with his brother Charles Jane. He became a member of the Royal Society of Musicians 3 April 1791 (Records of Roy. Soc. of Musicians). On 2 March 1804 he married a Miss Chandler, and, having no family and an independent fortune, shortly afterwards retired from his profession. He died at King's Row, Pimlico, on 21 Aug. 1818.
[Gent. Mag. for 1818; Burney's Commemoration of Handel, 1786.]