WEAVER, Robert (c.1632-c.1686), of Yatton, Aymestrey, Herefs.

Weaver belonged to a junior branch of a minor gentry family that had settled in or near Herefordshire by the mid-fourteenth century. His great-grandfather had established himself at Aymestrey in the north of the county – close to the border with Radnorshire, in Wales – by the middle of Elizabeth’s reign; and his great-uncle, Richard, had represented Hereford in six Parliaments between 1621 and his death in May 1642.19Supra, ‘Richard Weaver’; B. Burke, The General Armory of Eng. 1085; Robinson, Mansions and Manors, 19-20; L. E. Weaver, Hist. and Gen. of a Branch of the Weaver Fam. 23-4, 49; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Richard Weaver’. Richard’s son Edmund was returned as a recruiter for Hereford in 1646.20Supra, ‘Edmund Weaver’. Weaver’s father, Thomas, who served as sheriff of Radnorshire in 1647, may well have been associated with the region’s godly faction centred upon the Harleys of Brampton Bryan, just to the north west of Aymestrey.21List of Sheriffs (L. and I. ix), 269; McParlin, ‘The Herefs. gentry’, 168. Thomas Weaver died late in 1647 a wealthy man, bequeathing legacies totalling £1,400 and numerous properties in Herefordshire and Radnorshire.22PROB11/202, ff. 70-1.

Weaver was among a group of Herefordshire’s self-styled ‘saints’ that wrote to Oliver Cromwell* in May 1653, congratulating him on the dissolution of the Rump, exulting that the ‘great and long desired reformation is near the birth’ and offering their ‘purses, lives and all that is dear to us’ in his service. The other signatories to this letter included John Herring*, Benjamin Mason* and Wroth Rogers*.23Original Letters, ed. Nickolls, 92. Six of the men who signed this letter, including Weaver, had been added to the Herefordshire bench by October.24McParlin, ‘The Herefs. gentry’, 167. Weaver was very probably the magistrate of that name who attended a sermon by the radical and anti-Cromwellian John Williams* at New Radnor church in February 1654 – and it is likely, too, that he was among those who stormed out as a result of Williams’s ‘railing much against the present times and government’.25Infra, ‘John Williams’; TSP ii. 128. In August 1656, Weaver was one of five men added to the Herefordshire commission for ejecting scandalous ministers – all but one of whom had signed the 1653 letter to Cromwell.26CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 72; McParlin, ‘The Herefs. gentry’, 190. Perhaps an even more telling indication of his support for the protectoral regime was his marriage that autumn to the youngest daughter of the Cromwellian grandee Edward Whalley.27St Andrew, Holborn par reg. This alliance with the Whalleys almost certainly accounts for Weaver’s addition to the Westminster bench in March 1657 – Whalley’s main place of residence was King Street, Westminster – and his appointment at some point during the later 1650s to the lucrative office of a commissioner for alienations.28C231/6, p. 363; CSP Dom. 1660-85, p. 3. It would also explain his apparent lack of urgency in establishing his legal career, for he had yet to perform the required ‘exercises and pleadings in law’ when he had been called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in November 1656.29LI Black Bks. ii. 414.

In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, Weaver was returned for New Radnor boroughs, New Radnor lying just a few miles over the Welsh border from his principal properties in Herefordshire. At some point soon after the election, Robert Harley, who had represented New Radnor in the Long Parliament, deposed that Weaver had seized upon a seemingly amicable exchange between them at Whalley’s house in King Street to have him imprisoned in the Tower on suspicion of sowing sedition.30Add. 70007, ff. 106-8. Harley alleged that Weaver had used his place as a Westminster magistrate, and his intimacy with Whalley and his brother-in-law William Goffe*, to have him

carried away with great violence and threats, from amongst a people for whom I had served in the Long Parliament, viz. the corporation of New Radnor, and who intended to send me for them to his [Richard Cromwell’s] Parliament. Since [then] it hath appeared why Mr Weaver did do this, for by his threatening letters and messages which he obtained from divers great lords and major generals he hath procured himself to be sent from Radnor to this Parliament ... [Yet] notwithstanding the letters and messages he [Weaver] had got, the people would not have chosen him had I been in a condition of serving ... as doth appear that notwithstanding my violent and disgraceful carrying away and the many threats used to the people, and not one of my relations being present [on election day] ... yet Weaver did obtain his election but by 2 voices as I am credibly informed.31Add. 70007, ff. 107r-v.

Although Harley claimed that Weaver ‘doth never sit in the House of Commons’, in fact he received at least two appointments in this Parliament – to the committee of privileges (28 January) and to a committee for supplying Wales with a learned and pious ministry (5 February).32Add. 70007, f. 107; CJ vii. 594b, 600b. It is likely, however, that most – indeed, probably all – of the references in the Journal to ‘Mr Weaver’ relate to the republican Member for Stamford, John Weaver. The ‘Mr Weaver’ whose speeches were recorded by the parliamentary diarist Thomas Burton was clearly an experienced Commons-man (as John Weaver was) and a firm opponent of the protectoral government.

Omitted or removed from all offices and local commissions during the first half of 1660, Weaver made no further recorded impression upon public life. His second wife was the wealthy widow of a ship’s captain from Rotherhithe, Surrey.33PROB11/328, ff. 64v-65. Weaver died in 1686 or very early in 1687 and was probably buried at Aymestrey.34PROB11/386, f. 264v. In his will, he charged his estate with legacies totalling £800 and an annuity of £40.35PROB11/386, f. 264. He was the last of his line to sit in Parliament.