Anthony Evelyn Melbourne Ashley PC (24 July 1836 – 16 November 1907) was a British barrister and Liberal politician. He was private secretary to Lord Palmerston and later published a biography of him. After entering Parliament at a by-election in 1864, Ashley served under William Ewart Gladstone as Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade from 1880 to 1882 and as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1882 to 1885.

Ashley was the third child and second son of Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury and Lady Emily Cowper, eldest daughter of Peter Cowper, 5th Earl Cowper and sister of William Cowper-Temple, 1st Baron Mount Temple. He was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge.^[1]

On William Cowper-Temple's death in 1888, he inherited a 10,000 acre estate on the Mullaghmore Peninsula in Sligo, around Classiebawn Castle. He would spend part of every year there.

Ashley was private secretary to Lord Palmerston from 1858 to 1865 and worked as a barrister on the Oxford Circuit from 1865 to 1874. He sat as Liberal Member of Parliament for Poole from 1874 to 1880^[2] and for Isle of Wight from 1880 to 1885^[3] and served under William Ewart Gladstone as Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade from 1880 to 1882 and as Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1882 to 1885. He was also an Ecclesiastical and Church Estates Commissioner from 1880 to 1885, a Verderer of the New Forest and High Sheriff of Sligo in 1889. In 1891 he was sworn of the Privy Council.^[4] His publications include the Life of Lord Palmerston.

He later stood unsuccessfully for the Liberal Unionist Party in the Glasgow Bridgeton by-election in 1887 and 1888 Ayr Burghs by-election

On 28 July 1866, Ashley married Sybella Charlotte Farquhar, daughter of Sir Walter Farquhar, 3rd Baronet. They had two children:

• Wilfred William Ashley, later Baron Mount Temple (1867–1939), who married Amalia Mary Maud Cassel, daughter and only child of financier Sir Ernest Cassel. After his first wife's death in 1911, he married in 1914 Muriel Emily ("Molly") Forbes-Sempill, the former wife of Rear-Admiral The Hon. Arthur Forbes-Sempill, daughter of The Rev. Walter Spencer of Fownhope Court, Herefordshire, and sister of Margery, Viscountess Greenwood.
• Lillian Blanche Georgiana Ashley (1875–1939), who married Hercules Pakenham.

Following Sybella's death on 31 August 1886, he married Lady Alice Cole, daughter of William Cole, 3rd Earl of Enniskillen on 30 June 1891. They had one son:

• Anthony Henry Evelyn Ashley (1895–1921), who was educated at Harrow, Magdalen Colleg and a Captain 2nd Battalion Coldstream Guards; he died of wounds received in action in 1916.

Ashley died in November 1907, aged 71. Lady Alice Ashley died on 25 August 1931.