Charles West, MP

Family and Education bap. 16 June 1645, 1st s. of Charles, 5th Baron de la Warr (d.1687) by Anne, da. and h. of John Wilde† of Droitwich, Worcs. m. (1) 2 Feb. 1677 (with £10,000), Mary, da. and h. of Ferdinando Huddleston of Millom Castle, Cumb., s.p.; (2) 26 Dec. 1678, Elizabeth, da. and coh. of Sir Edmund Pye, 1st Bt., of Bradenham, Bucks., s.p.1

Offices Held

Commr. for assessment, Hants 1665-79.

Biography West was descended from a king’s yeoman who sat for Warwickshire in 1324, though most of his estate lay in Hampshire and Wiltshire. The family acquired Wherwell Abbey, three miles from Andover, at the dissolution of the monasteries. West’s father supported Parliament in the Civil War, but in 1659 tried to persuade Richard Cromwell to declare for the King. A court peer after the Restoration, Danby listed him among his supporters in the Lords. West was returned for Andover after a contest during the last session of the Cavalier Parliament. Shaftesbury marked him ‘doubly vile’, and on 27 Dec. 1678 he acted as teller for the adjournment of the debate on Sir George Jeffreys; but he made no speeches and was appointed to no committees. He did not contest either election in 1679, but regained his seat in 1681, when, in conjunction with John Collins, he defeated two exclusionists. He left no trace on the records of the Oxford Parliament, and died in his father’s lifetime on 22 June 1684. He was buried at Bradenham, under an inscription in which his widow described him as the wonder of his age for generosity, justice, temperance and humility. His nephew sat for Grampound as a Whig from 1715 to 1722.2

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690 Author: John. P. Ferris Notes 1. J. J. Park, Hampstead, 303; Millom Reg. 125; Hutchinson, Cumb. i. 528; Nottingham’s Chancery Cases (Selden Soc. lxxix), 613. 2. VCH Hants, iv. 411; D. Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 268; T. Langley, Hundred of Desborough, 175.