Great House · also Bank, finance & insurance
House Ashdown
Also called Ashdown · Hartfell and Ashdown · the Ashdowns · Ashdown cousins
The newest and least ornamental of the four Great Houses, whose power is credit: stores, advances and disciplined correspondence exercised through the Council of the Banks rather than land. It began as a provisioning concern that lent to the Crown in the treaty wars and was paid in charters.
The money half of Sarrum's two houses: stores, credit, provisioning and paper. It holds the staple houses, interests in several banks, the largest single holding in the line and about a third of the ring of farms, and finances Crown provisioning contracts. The latest of the belt's four houses to reach great-house rank, holding leverage through stores, advances, warehousing interests and the credit by which the county's movement survives a poor season.
Named with it
- Duke Stephen Ashdown (head
- holds the Lords seat)
- Grace Ashdown (kinswoman
- chair on the Sarrum Bank Council)
- Sir Robert Ashdown
- David Ashdown (bears the house name
- runs the Society for Corrected Antiquities)
- Grace Ashdown (presides over the Bank Council
- constitutionally distinct from the headship of the house)
- Grace Ashdown (sits on the Council of the Banks
- the house's public face in the county)
- Anne Vell
- Grace Ashdown (younger daughter
- heads the Ashdown bank in her own right)
- seat in the Lords)
- commands the bank
- chair of the Bank Council)
- Sir Godfrey Ashdown (cadet
- holds Ashwell)
- Ancel Mortmain
Ties
- cold but permanent relationship with House Hartfell
- Grace Ashdown chairs the Bank Council
- one of the four houses of the belt
- linked to the Sarrum Bank Council through Grace Ashdown
- recurrent petitioner in the Collegium's assay courts
- interested party in the Oxford chapter court
- one of the eleven banks of the Council of the Banks
- stands with House Halden, and in commercial matters with Marr and Vane
In the chronicle
At the table
Still omitted from conservative school lists; Westminster and banking copies append it. Outsiders often mistake Grace for the effective head. Elder Ashdown circles upheld Robert II in the War of the Two Kings. Can withhold credit. Its factors are unceremonious and are found wherever a warehouse receipt, advance or bond has made them necessary. Disliked in three counties and needed in all of them; it cannot make the Bank Council act and has twice paid when the council called in estate paper. It has no black story; the foreclosure of 4571 stands in its place. Answered a Crown approach over line rates in 4611 with silence. Its instrument is growing while the other three houses hold.