WESTON, Richard (1608-c.1652), of Rugeley, Staffs. and the Inner Temple, London.

Weston’s family had settled in the parish of Rugeley, about seven miles east of Stafford, by 1544.10VCH Staffs. v. 156. His father, Sir Richard Weston†, represented Lichfield in 1621 and, after a long career as an Inner Temple barrister, was created a baron of the exchequer in 1634.11‘Sir Richard Weston’, Oxford DNB. As one of the seven judges who found in favour of the king in John Hampden’s* 1637 Ship Money case, Sir Richard became an obvious target in the Long Parliament’s assault upon the ‘abuses’ of the personal rule.12HP Commons 1604-1629. But though the Commons prepared articles of impeachment against Weston and his fellow judges in 1641, their prosecution stalled in the Lords and they escaped punishment.

Richard Weston junior, like his father, became an Inner Temple barrister, and in about 1640 he was appointed recorder of Stafford.13Wm. Salt. Lib. S.MS.369, p. 164. He probably owed his return for the borough in the elections to the Short Parliament to his family’s proprietorial interest in the Stafford area and – assuming he had been appointed recorder by March 1640 – the backing of the corporation.14Supra, ‘Stafford’. It may also be significant that he and his father were on close terms with one of the town’s ruling dynasties, the Cradocks.15PROB11/171, f. 366; ‘Stafford’, HP Commons 1604-1629.

Returned for Stafford again in the elections to the Long Parliament that autumn, Weston seems to have figured relatively little in the House’s proceedings. However, the clerk of the House’s failure to distinguish between him and his fellow MPs, the Essex brothers Benjamin and Nicholas Weston, makes it impossible to form any clear impression of his (brief) career in the Long Parliament. Richard, as a north midlands man, was probably the ‘Mr Weston’ who ‘related the deplorable condition the northern parts were in, between the two armies of the English and Scots’, on 9 February 1641.16Procs. LP ii. 398. One or several of the Westons was also named to seven committees between late 1640 and August 1641, including those to consider the abuses committed by the courts of high commission and star chamber and to draw up charges against Archbishop William Laud and other Caroline prelates.17CJ ii. 44b, 52a, 95a, 101a, 136b, 229a. Given that Richard was the only lawyer of the three men – having been called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1633 – he may have been the Mr Weston referred to in May 1641 as chairman of the committee on the court of high commission.18CJ ii. 148a. But if he did indeed have associations with the reformist cause in the Commons, then – like his two fellow Westons – he voted against the attainder of the earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†) on 21 April 1641.19Procs. LP iv. 42; Verney, Notes, 58-9. All three men also took the Protestation on 3 May.20CJ ii. 133a.

Weston’s political career during 1642 is again impossible to reconstruct with any accuracy. He may have been the Mr Weston who moved on 1 February 1642 that any person advising the king to act without Parliament should be deemed an enemy of the state.21Verney, Notes, 151. And in May 1642, one of the Westons was referred to as chairman of the committee on postmasters.22CJ ii. 561b. The only occasion in 1642 on which the Stafford MP can be positively identified at Westminster was on 16 June, when the parliamentary diarist Sir Simonds D’Ewes recorded that Richard Weston ‘the lawyer’ moved that the future regicide Sir Thomas Mauleverer, who had been among 51 Members declared absent at the call of the House, be given leave to make his excuses to a Commons committee.23PJ iii. 89. If he was indeed the Weston who chaired the committee on postmasters, he was still attending the Commons on 12 July.24CJ ii. 666b. But at some point over the summer or early autumn he left Westminster; according to one authority, he joined the king’s army in August 1642. This same authority asserts that Weston was disabled from sitting by order of the Commons on 30 October 1642.25Wedgwood, Staffs. Parlty Hist. ii. 62. Unfortunately, there is no record of any such order by the Commons. Indeed, the House did not even sit on 30 October, being a Sunday. By his own admission, Weston had enlisted in the king’s army by 9 October 1642.26HMC 5th Rep. 142. Moreover, he was certainly disabled from sitting in the House at some point before September 1645.27CJ iv. 286a. But precisely when is a mystery.

Weston attended the Oxford Parliament in January 1644 and signed its letter to Robert Devereux, 3d earl of Essex, urging him to compose a peace.28Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 573. In August 1644, he was listed among the royalist officers who petitioned the king, requesting an explanation for the cashiering of Viscount Wilmot (Henry Wilmot*), the lieutenant-general of horse.29Mems. of Prince Rupert, iii. 17. Weston had been appointed lieutenant-governor of Berkeley Castle, near Bristol, by March 1645, when George Lord Digby* recommended him to Prince Rupert for the place of governor, describing him as ‘a very gallant ... modest man’.30Wm. Salt. Lib. S.MS.45 (entry for 26 Mar. 1645); Mems. of Prince Rupert, iii. 66. Weston has been identified as the lieutenant-colonel of that name who was captured by the parliamentarian forces besieging Colchester during the second civil war; and he was probably the Richard Weston who was detained by the council of state in May 1650 for holding correspondence with the enemies of the commonwealth.31A Diary of the Siege of Colchester (c.1648); CSP Dom. 1650, p. 165; P. R. Newman, Royalist Officers in England and Wales (New York, 1981), 406;

According to his son and heir Philip, Weston was ‘slain by misfortune in the Isle of Man, being then in arms for the king’ in about 1652.32Vis. Staffs. ed. Grazebrook, 303. His place of burial is not known, and no will is recorded. None of his immediate family sat in Parliament.