Richard Assheton of Middleton

Richard Assheton or Ashton of Middleton (1483–1549) was an English soldier.

Richard's grandfather was Sir Ralph Assheton who was knighted by the Duke of Gloucester at the capture of Berwick (1482) and married Margaret Barton, the heiress of Middleton. Richard's father was Sir Richard Assheton (d. 28 April 1507) and mother, Isobel Talbot.

Richard raised a company of archers to fight at the battle of Flodden in 1513 from Middleton, near Manchester. An heraldic visitation in 1533 by Clarenceux King of Arms Thomas Benolt noted that Richard had captured the courtier John Forman, sergeant porter to James IV of Scotland and Alexander Burnett, Sheriff of Aberdeen, at Flodden. John Forman was taken to Berwick upon Tweed where he identified the body of James IV of Scotland.

Richard continued the rebuilding the parish church of St. Leonard's at Middleton. He commissioned the "Flodden Windows" depicting himself and his wife, and seventeen captains of the archers, and the priest Henry Taylor who blessed them before the battle, commemorating them each by name in stained glass. The windows are one of the oldest war memorials in England, second in date to All Souls College, Oxford, founded in 1438 with the provision that its fellows should pray for those killed in the French wars.

The main inscription on the glass was, as described in 1845; "Orate pro bono statu Richardi Assheton et eorum qui hanc fenestra(m) fieri fecerunt quoru(m) no(m)ina et imagines ut supra ostendatur. Anno d(omi)ni, MCCCCC(X)V", meaning "Pray for the wellbeing of Richard Assheton and those whose names and images they caused to be made in the window shown above, 1515." As there was no "X" in the painted date, it has been argued that the window dates from the decade before Flodden, and commemorates a religious confraternity of archers.

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