ASHBURTON, JOHN DUNNING, 1st BARON (1731 1 783) English lawyer, was born at Ashburton, Devonshire, on Oct. 18, 1731. At first articled to his father, he was admitted, at the age of 19, to the Middle Temple, and called to the bar in 1756, where he came very slowly into practice. He went the western circuit for several years without receiving a single brief. In 1762 he was employed to draw up a defence of the British East India Company against the Dutch East India Company, which had memorialized the Crown on certain grievances. This masterly document procured him at once reputation and emolument. In 1763 Dunning distinguished himself as counsel on the side of Wilkes, whose case he conducted throughout. His powerful argu ment against the validity of general warrants in the case of Leach v. Money (June 18, 1763) established his reputation, and his prac tice from that period gradually increased to such an extent that in 1776 he is said to have been in the receipt of nearly £so,000 per annum. In 1766 he was chosen recorder of Bristol, and in Dec. 1767 he was appointed solicitor-general. The latter appoint ment he held till May 177o, when he retired with his friend Lord Shelburne. In 1771 he was presented with the freedom of the City of London. From this period he was considered as a regular member of the opposition, and distinguished himself by many able speeches in parliament. He had entered parliament as mem ber for Calne in 1768. In he brought forward a motion that the "influence of the Crown had increased, was increasing, and ought to be diminished," which he carried by a majority of eighteen. He strongly opposed the system of sinecure officers and pensions; but in 1782, when the marquis of Rockingham became prime minister, Dunning was appointed chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, a rich sinecure. About the same time he received his peerage. Under Lord Shelburne's administration he accepted a pension of £4,000 a year. He died at Exmouth on Aug. 18, Besides the answer to the Dutch memorial, Lord Ashburton is supposed to have assisted in writing a pamphlet on the law of libel, and to have been the author of A Letter to the Propri etors of East India Stock, on the subject of Lord Clive's Jaghire, occasioned by his Lordship's Letter on that Subject (1764). He was at one time suspected of being the author of the Letters of Junius.