WEAVER, Richard (1575-1642), of Above Eign, Hereford, Herefs.

Weaver came from a minor gentry family that had gained a good position in Herefordshire by the middle of the sixteenth century. The younger son of a younger brother, he became a mercer in Hereford, where he acquired considerable property.7 Robinson, 15-16; PROB 11/189, f. 281. The first of his family to sit, he was elected by the borough to the third Jacobean Parliament. Shortly before the winter sitting Fitzwilliam Coningsby* was informed that Weaver was ‘retained to follow and solicit’ a bill to suppress weirs on the Wye, but nothing came of this, nor did Weaver leave any trace on the records of this Parliament.8 Herefs. RO, W15/2 (Vaughan to Coningsby, 14 Nov. 1621). Weaver was subsequently re-elected to every Parliament summoned during his lifetime, with the exception of that of 1628, when his service as mayor rendered him ineligible. He left no mark on the Common’s records, except in 1624, when he was added to the committee for the Apothecaries’ bill (14 May), perhaps in the interests of one of his tenants, Philip Aston, who had a shop in Hereford’s High Street.9 CJ, i. 704a; PROB 11/189, f. 281. During his mayoralty he was responsible for billeting 80 soldiers in the city for 17 weeks. This was widely unpopular, and in 1630 he appealed to the Privy Council for protection against the resulting law-suits.10 CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 268.

A tenant of the Vicars Choral for Hulcott farm and other property, Weaver donated to their library the works of the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellus.11 F.C. Morgan, ‘Hereford Cathederal: the Vicars Choral Library’ Trans. Woolhope Field Club, xxxv. 236. In his will, dated 15 Mar. 1642, he endowed the four almshouses for women which he had established in Bewall Street, Hereford, and provided for a weekly distribution of bread after morning prayers in All Saints parish church to the deserving poor.12 PROB 11/189, ff. 280v-1v. He died the following day, and was buried in the cathedral, where his gravestone records that he was ‘six several times freely and generally elected Member of the honourable House of Commons’. His son Edmund was returned to the Long Parliament as recruiter for Hereford in 1646.13 Rawlinson, 101.