dignity of the peerage, by the title of Lord Aston, Baron of Forfar, in Scotland, and died in 1639. His widow, Lady Aston, had an only brother, Ralph Sadler, Esq. of Standon Lordship, near Ware, in Hertfordshire; an estate, which was granted to Sir Ralph Sadler, by King Henry VIII. and on which he erected a stately mansion. Ralph Sadler, Esq. his grandson, married a daughter of the famous Sir Edward Coke, but dying without issue in 1660, Walter, second Lord Aston, succeeded, in right of his mother, to the inheritance of the Sadler property.[1]
From this period, it appears, that the Aston family were in the habit of residing alternately, at Standon, and Tixall. James, fifth Lord Aston, my grandfather, died at Tixall, in the year 1750, leaving only two daughters, among whom his property was equally divided. On this occasion, it was thought advisable, to sell the estate, and house of Standon Lordship; but the pictures, books, papers, and other valuable effects, were transferred to Tixall, where Sir Ralph Sadler's State Papers, and Letters, were carefully preserved, till they were at length transcribed by the Reverend John Kirk, of Lichfield, and finally given to the public, in the year 1809, as above stated.
III. Soon after the publication of Sir Ralph Sadler's State Papers,
- ↑ See Chauncy's History of Hertfordshire.
ton's grandfather, Sir Walter, who died in 1589. They were both at the siege of Leith, near Edinburgh, in 1560: And Sir W. Aston was high sheriff of Staffordshire, about the time when Sir Ralph Sadler had charge of the Queen of Scotland, in Tutbury Castle; an employment, which would naturally bring him acquainted with the high sheriff, and the principal gentry of the county. There is, at Tixall, a portrait of Sir W. Aston, in black armour, in one corner of which are the Aston arms, and under them, this inscription:
"Waiterus Aston, apud Leith in Scotia miles, in re militari Elizabethæ serenissimæ Reginæ Angliæ, A° regni sui secundo A° 1560." And in another place, "Effigies, A dni 1584, ætatis suæ 55."
