WESTON, Henry (1612-66), of Ockham, Surr.

Weston’s father was a younger son from an old and prolific Surrey family which had owned land in the county since the reign of King John.25Vis. Surr. (Harl. Soc. xliii), 215-18. His ancestor William Weston (d. 1347) had represented the county in Parliament at least four times and that man’s grandson, William Weston of West Clandon, was a knight of the shire eight times between 1380 and 1419.26HP Commons 1386-1421. The seventeenth century MP’s uncle, whose name he shared, did not sit in Parliament but was a justice of the peace and a member of other local commissions, with close ties to the Mores of Loseley and other local gentry families.27PC2/40, p. 192; SP16/243, f. 83; SP16/353, f. 107; SP16/405, f. 65v; Surr. Hist. Centre, G97/16/5; LM/350/4/1; 350/18; 350/78. He married a daughter of Sir Lawrence Stoughton† of Stoughton, consolidated Weston lands in Ockham and built a substantial house there, but died childless in July 1638. The immediate heir was his brother Edward, but before the Kentish clergyman himself died less than three years later he had settled the property on his elder son Henry.28Vis. Surr. (Harl. Soc. xliii), 218; Manning and Bray, Surr. iii. 109, 123; PROB11/186/63; Coventry Docquets, 352.

By 1641 the future MP already had an MA, had embarked (briefly) on study at Gray’s Inn and had married (at the fashionable St Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster) into a knightly family from Sussex.29Al. Oxon.; G.I. Admiss. i. 215; Suss. N. and Q. xi. 18; Vis. Suss. (Harl. Soc. liii), 203-4. Family connection and personal abilities probably account for his early prominence in local administration. From the outbreak of war he adhered to Parliament, while his father-in-law Sir William Ford and brother-in-law (Sir) Edward Ford, sheriff of Sussex 1642–3 and married to a sister of Henry Ireton*, were active royalists.30A. and O.; CJ iii. 180a; Newman, Royalist Officers, 140; CCC 932; CCAM 664; ‘Ford, Sir Edward’, Oxford DNB.

In February 1648 Weston was named an elder in the Presbyterian classis centred on Guildford, about seven miles south-west of Ockham, alongside his late uncle’s brother-in-law, Nicholas Stoughton*, local grandee Sir Richard Onslow* and the latter’s son Arthur Onslow.31Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, ii. 433. Following Stoughton’s death in early March, Weston was recruited into the Long Parliament as a replacement. He probably enjoyed the support of the Onslows and the ailing senior Guildford Member, his neighbour Sir Robert Parkhurst I*, but a challenge from an outsider occasioned a double return, referred on 20 June to the committee of privileges; it was not until 29 June that his election was declared ‘good’.32CJ v. 608b, 615b. In the few months before Pride’s Purge he made no mark at Westminster and he did not sit in the Rump.

The regicide may have prompted Weston to retire from public life for some months: he had been omitted from the commission of the peace by early 1650.33C193/13/3. However, he was re-appointed a magistrate in March 1652 and named that year as an assessment commissioner.34C231/6, p. 230; A. and O. He seems to have been considered reasonably active.35CSP Dom. 1655, p. 37. His brother-in-law Ford, who had been discharged from sequestration just before Weston entered Parliament, was on good terms with Oliver Cromwell*, despite his involvement in royalist plots, and it was through Ford that in November 1653 Weston obliged the future protector by presenting to the rectory of Speldhurst Thomas Draper, a native of the Isle of Ely.36Add. 12098, f. 6 ; Matthews, Calamy Revised, 171; Al. Cant. (Thomas Draper).

It is not clear whether Weston took his seat again when excluded Members of the Long Parliament returned to Westminster in February 1660. He was named to local commissions that spring and continued to hold office after the Restoration, most notably as sheriff of Surrey for the year 1660-1.37A Perfect List (1660), 54; C181/7, pp. 8, 94, 104, 131, 157, 187, 203, 233, 271, 311, 325, 342, 359, 384; VCH Surr. iii. 361. In his will of 12 October 1666 he left all ‘my manuscripts, papers and writings, and all my books’ to his eldest surviving son John, except ‘such bibles, prayer books and other religious books as my wife shall make choice of for herself and her younger children’; the executors were his son-in-law Thomas Vernon, a London merchant, and William Inwood of Cobham, Surrey.38PROB11/322/409. He died shortly afterwards and was buried at Ockham on 23 October.39Ockham par. reg. John Weston† first entered Parliament for Guildford in 1689 and was later elected three times for Surrey.40HP Commons 1660-1690; HP Commons 1690-1715.