Bertram Ashburnham, 5th Earl of Ashburnham

Bertram Ashburnham, 5th Earl of Ashburnham (28 October 1840 – 15 January 1913) was a British peer. He was the English agent for the Spanish Carlist cause, and a supporter of Irish Home Rule. He sold off the Ashburnham collection of manuscripts which the 4th Earl had collected.

Early life and family Bertram Ashburnham was born on 26 October 1840, the eldest son of Bertram Ashburnham, 4th Earl of Ashburnham. He was educated at Westminster School and in France. He was a convert to Roman Catholicism, and was formally received into the Church in 1872. On the death of his father in 1878, he became the 5th Earl of Ashburnham, Viscount St. Asaph and Baron Ashburnham, and inherited the family property of about 24,000 acres in England and Wales, including the main family seat of Ashburnham Place in Sussex. His daughter became a nun, entering the Sacred Heart Convent at Roehampton in 1912.

The sale was complicated by the fact that many of the items in the Libri and Barrois collections had been stolen from French libraries by Count Libri, who then sold them under false pretences to the 4th Earl. Lord Ashburnham originally offered to sell the whole collection to the British Museum for £160,000 in 1879. He refused to consider lowering the price or selling off part of the collection, and the British Museum trustees declined his offer. and started the brief Neo-Jacobite Revival.

Carlist activity increased during the Spanish–American War of 1898 and its aftermath. With the Spanish government weakened by its defeat in the Spanish–American War, the Carlists hoped to depose Alfonso XIII, by force if necessary, and replace him with Don Carlos. Ashburnham gave his opinion that the Spanish Army would not defend the defeated king against the Carlist forces, and that "there will not be a real war, but perhaps a little fighting here and there".

In preparation for the expected hostilities, Ashburnham allowed part of his Welsh estate to be used for military training. Among the recruits who learned to operate a machine gun and rifle and "studied drill, tactics and strategy" was the young Aleister Crowley. It was seized on 17 June at the southern French port of Arcachon carrying a crew of 15 and a cargo of rifles. In early August The Times reported that the vessel had been "allowed to leave on payment of a small deposit" but that the 3,664 rifles it had been carrying had been "detained as security for the fine which may be imposed upon her". Despite Ashburnham's efforts, a Carlist coup d'état did not take place.

Lord Ashburnham was also a supporter of Irish Home Rule. He was a founding member and the first president of the British Home Rule Association, which held its first public meeting in London in 1886, the year of William Ewart Gladstone's unsuccessful First Home Rule Bill. According to his obituary in The Times, the meeting which he chaired was "one of the earliest public meetings ever held in Great Britain to advocate that policy".

Later life, death and succession After the failure of the Carlist uprising and the death of his wife in 1900, Lord Ashburnham largely withdrew from public life and spent more time at his country properties. Don Jaime, the Carlist pretender to the Spanish throne, was a frequent guest at Ashburnham Place. Lord Ashburnham died in Paris on 15 January 1913. He was succeeded by his youngest and only remaining brother, Thomas, as 6th Earl of Ashburnham, Viscount St. Asaph and Baron Ashburnham.