an English composer of the Renaissance. He was a skilled composer of polyphony, and may have been the teacher of John Taverner. Only scattered remnants of Ashwell's music survives. As was common for pre-Reformation music in England in Latin, the large majority of manuscripts were destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII (and a large proportion of English-language sacred music was destroyed during the subsequent reign of Mary, during her attempt to re-impose Roman Catholicism on the island).
