John Assheton was an Anglican priest at "Shiltelington" (perhaps Shillington, Bedfordshire

Shillington, Bedfordshire

Shillington is an English village and civil parish located in the county of Bedfordshire. In the south of the parish, the hamlet of Pegsdon is almost encircled by Hertfordshire, and since 1985 the parish has included the village of Higham Gobion to the west...

) who is the first recorded English anti-Trinitarian.

Almost nothing is known about Assheton except the record of recantation to Thomas Cranmer

Thomas Cranmer

Thomas Cranmer was a leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and, for a short time, Mary I. He helped build a favourable case for Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon which resulted in the separation of the English Church from...

 in 1548. In his abjuration Assheton details his former objection to the Trinity

Trinity

The Christian doctrine of the Trinity defines God as three divine persons : the Father, the Son , and the Holy Spirit. The three persons are distinct yet coexist in unity, and are co-equal, co-eternal and consubstantial . Put another way, the three persons of the Trinity are of one being...

, to the person and personality of the Holy Spirit, to the pre-existence of Christ

Pre-existence of Christ

The pre-existence of Christ refers to the doctrine of the ontological or personal existence of Christ before his conception. One of the relevant Bible passages is where, in the Trinitarian view, Christ is identified with a pre-existent divine hypostasis called the Logos or Word...

, but not to the virgin birth. This then appears to be what would later be called a Socinian position, not an Arian

Arianism

Arianism is the theological teaching attributed to Arius , a Christian presbyter from Alexandria, Egypt, concerning the relationship of the entities of the Trinity and the precise nature of the Son of God as being a subordinate entity to God the Father...

 or fully Unitarian

Unitarianism

Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement, named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being....

 one.

Assheton has been identified as the subject of the 1549 work The Fal of the late Arrian by the Catholic historian John Proctor, at least tentatively, by historians including Diarmaid MacCulloch

Diarmaid MacCulloch

Diarmaid Ninian John MacCulloch FBA, FSA, FR Hist S is Professor of the History of the Church at the University of Oxford and Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford...

. MacCulloch also describes Assheton (Ashton) as a Cambridge man, with connections to nobility as a chaplain.