WEST, Edmund (1608-83), of Marsworth, Bucks.

The Buckinghamshire Wests traced their origins back to Edlesborough, a village on the border between Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire.28Vis. Bucks. 1566 ed. W.C. Metcalfe (Exeter, 1883), 46; Vis. Bucks. 1634, 125. In the early 1560s they had moved several miles westwards when this MP’s grandfather, Nicholas West, a clerk-in-chancery, purchased an estate at Marsworth which thereafter became the family seat.29VCH Bucks. iii. 393. Having inherited the estate in 1586, Nicholas’s eldest son, Edmund senior, settled it in 1610 on his wife, Theodora Tyrrell, daughter of a former MP for Buckingham, and their young son, Edmund junior, the future MP.30VCH Bucks. iii. 393. Eight years later Edmund senior died.31C142/376, no. 95. His widow then married Gregory Pratt and her son might have spent part of his childhood on Pratt’s estates at West Ryston in Norfolk. Coming of age in the late 1620s, Edmund West seems to have spent the 1630s living at Marsworth. He is known to have been a friend of Richard Grenville*, who appointed him and Thomas Tyrrell* to act as the trustees to manage his estates at Wotton Underwood in 1639.32PROB11/320/115.

During the civil war West proved to be one of Parliament’s most active supporters in Buckinghamshire. His role as a tax collector in 1641 had already demonstrated his willingness to hold local office.33SP28/151. In July 1642, at the height of the Militia Ordinance dispute, Parliament appointed him as a Buckinghamshire deputy lieutenant.34LJ v. 178b. In that capacity he complained to the Commons that one of the Buckinghamshire MPs, Sir Alexander Denton*, was interfering with the efforts to raise forces within the county.35Add. 18777, f. 41. By August 1642 West himself had been appointed as a captain of horse in the parliamentarian army, although he seems to have served as such only briefly.36SP28/1a, f. 124; Peacock, Army Lists, 52; BHO, Cromwell Assoc. database. It is not clear whether this was separate from his captaincy in the Buckinghamshire militia, which he was holding several months later.37Bucks. Contributions for Ireland, 112. He combined these roles with membership of the three key local parliamentarian committees, the county standing committee, the sequestrations committee and the assessment commission.38CJ iii. 43b, 108b; A. and O.; SP28/126, ff. 176-192v; SP28/151: acct. of Thomas Scot, 1644-6, pp. 101, 127, 319. Buckinghamshire was of key strategic importance as it lay between London and the royalist headquarters at Oxford. Towns such as Newport Pagnell and Aylesbury became major garrison towns. Ensuring that those towns were well defended, while, at the same time, limiting the impact of this military presence on the local population was a recurring headache for the local parliamentarian officials. In October 1643 West was one of the local gentlemen sent by Parliament to its commander-in-chief Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, to discuss the state of the garrison at Newport Pagnell and the following month Parliament sent him to investigate the garrison at Aylesbury.39CJ iii. 295a, 306a. It is unclear whether he was also the Captain West to whom supplies of gunpowder and match was sent in March 1645 for use by the garrison at Henley-on-Thames.40CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 333. That at some stage during 1644 he lent £50 to the county committee to aid the local war effort indicates his commitment to a parliamentarian victory.41SP28/126, f. 539.

West’s prominence as a local supporter of Parliament placed him in a strong position in the Buckinghamshire by-elections in the autumn of 1645. The result was that he was elected for two different seats. His first success came in late September or early October, when he was chosen to fill a vacancy at Wendover created two years previously by the expulsion of Sir Robert Croke*. It would have helped that he owned some land on the outskirts of the town.42SP28/148, ff. 236v, 240, 249. But he did not take his seat at Westminster, with a view to standing for one of the county seats the following month. He plotted with Thomas Fountaine* and the deputy registrar of the court of admiralty, Thomas Wyan, to ensure that that election was called when it suited him and with the militia and other military units in attendance at Aylesbury.43HCA30/864: E. West to T. Wyan, 4 Oct. 1645. This had the desired effect; West and his ally, George Fleetwood*, won the election on 5 November. West took his seat in the Commons the next day.44CJ iv. 287a, 335a.

Unsurprisingly, West’s immediate concern was the conduct of the war in and around Buckinghamshire. His first task in Parliament was to help obtain payment of the £3,000 from the excise revenues which had been allocated to the garrison at Abingdon.45CJ iv. 335a, 351a, 362a. Only with the surrender of Oxford in July 1646 did it become possible to scale down troop numbers in Buckinghamshire. Even then, West was a leading supporter of the decision to station a cavalry force there in any case, although he probably also supported the idea that some of the troops in the area should be sent to Ireland.46CJ iv. 625b, 633a. In April 1647 Parliament ordered West to ensure £100 from the Buckinghamshire assessments was paid to one of the army messengers.47CJ v. 150a; LJ ix. 162b-163a. Two days later he obtained approval from the Lords for the bill to allow the levying of assessments which had remained uncollected in Buckinghamshire because of the disruptions during the war.48LJ ix. 149b; CJ v. 152b-153a.

A payment made to West in late October 1645 by the treasurers for Buckinghamshire for 185 copies of the Directory for Public Worship suggests that he had bought those books on behalf of the county committee when he went up to London as the new MP.49SP28/126, f. 535. It is probable that he supported the Presbyterian-style forms of worship favoured by the Westminster Assembly. He backed the principle of a preaching ministry, sitting on the committee on that subject in April 1646, and approved of the visitation of Oxford University in 1647, serving as one of the commissioners who heard appeals against the purge of the dons.50CJ iv. 502a; v. 51b, 83a; A. and O.

The election of West and Fleetwood as the Buckinghamshire MPs in November 1645 had been immediately disputed, although both men had been allowed to continue sitting while the matter remained unresolved. Only on 26 July 1647 did the Commons eventually rule that their return had been valid. As West was still technically also the MP for Wendover, he announced that he would sit as the knight of the shire.51CJ v. 258a-b. It may well have been while the Commons were agreeing to this and moving the by-election writ for Wendover that the crowd of London petitioners assembled in the lobby outside. Having dealt with West’s business, the Commons then turned its attention to the mob outside which was threatened to storm the Chamber.52CJ v. 258b. Whether West was one of the Independent MPs who withdrew later that week is not known.

He certainly took an interest in the demands made by the army officers that December as he was named to the committee created to decide which parts of their Humble Representation the Commons should discuss, although his stance on the matter is unclear.53CJ v. 376b; An Humble Representation from his Excellencie Sir Thomas Fairfax (1647, E.419.16). Later that month he may have supported the bill to increase the powers of the Westminster militia committee in the hope that it would offset pressure on Parliament from the Presbyterian-controlled City militia.54CJ v. 413a. If so, that same concern that Parliament be allowed to retain its independence was evident the following month. West, Charles Fleetwood* and Simon Mayne* warned the Commons of the petition being organised in Buckinghamshire, presumably requesting a reversal of its vote of no addresses (to the king), The Commons specifically thanked West for doing so.55CJ v. 435b. In June 1648 West may have made a special trip to Westminster to get the Commons to suppress Samuel Wickham’s royalist pamphlet, A Motive to all Loyal Subjects; West was the first MP added to the committee for suppressing libels after this work was referred to it, which strongly suggests that he was the person who had raised the issue, and yet he was then given leave to go to the country.56CJ v. 614b. This might indicate that he had previously been absent and that, having made a rare appearance in the House, he took the opportunity to ask that his absences to be formalised. If so, he may well have remained away for much of the period preceding the purge of the House later that year.

Once the king had been executed, West initially had few qualms about sitting in the Commons. On 22 February 1649 Laurence Whitaker* informed the Commons that West had formally dissented from the vote of 5 December 1648.57CJ vi. 148b. Thereafter, however, West’s attendance was probably intermittent. He was certainly back in Buckinghamshire in August 1649 when he signed a number of warrants relating to the assessment collections.58SP28/126, ff. 355, 356v, 357v. He made an isolated appearance in the Journal in February 1650 when he was included on the committee to decide how to choose the remaining members of the new council of state.59CJ vi. 363b. His next appearances date from the early summer of that year. The most significant of his committee appointments at that time was to the committee to consider ways of suppressing the more extreme forms of religious heterodoxy.60CJ vi. 409a, 423b, 427a. This indicates that he was among Rumpers who feared that some were endangering the new religious freedoms by taking them to extremes. He was again present in the House later that year, although he also spent time in Buckinghamshire organising the subscriptions to the Engagement, and it is not until the spring of the following year that he can be shown to have been attending regularly.61CJ vi. 499a, 516b; National Art Lib. V. and A. Forster MS 58, no. 32. It is possible that he was there during April 1651 in order specifically to participate in the debates on the bill to impress soldiers for service in Ireland. On 17 April he and Richard Darley* were asked to chair the related committee and the following day he recommended amendments to the bill.62CJ vi. 563a, 563b. He later sat on the committee which examined the bill to make provision for the families of those soldiers who had been killed on Oliver Cromwell’s* campaigns in Ireland and Scotland.63CJ vi. 569b. He also backed moves to complete the disposal of Charles I’s possessions.64CJ vi. 556a, 576b. At that point the Rump still had another 21 months to run before it would be closed down by Cromwell in April 1653. That West played much part in those proceedings seems doubtful. The only evidence of his attendance is his nomination to the committee to consider the East India Company bill in February 1652.65CJ vii. 100a. Perhaps he had lost interest or was becoming disaffected by the policies the Rump had adopted.

West’s removal as a justice of the peace in July 1653 is the clearest evidence that he had developed doubts about the policies of the commonwealth.66C231/6, p. 148. He seems to have found the protectorate more agreeable, and by the spring of 1656 he was serving on the Buckinghamshire commission to assist Charles Fleetwood as major-general for the region.67TSP iv. 583. That same year he was restored to the Buckinghamshire bench, and in 1657 he retained his place on the county’s assessment commission.68A. and O. He seems not to have stood in the elections for the 1654 and 1656 Parliaments and generally kept a low profile until the recall of the Rump in 1659 propelled him back into national politics.

West may not have been in London in early May 1659 when the council of officers summoned the Rump back into being. It was not until later that month, when he was included on the committees on the bill to appoint admiralty and navy commissioners (18 May) and for the relief of those affected by the fire at Southwold in Suffolk (19 May) that he had definitely reappeared at Westminster.69CJ vii. 656b, 658b. The following week he was also appointed to the committees to settle the Westminster and Southwark militias.70CJ vii. 664a. This interest in the state of the militia was only the most obvious way in which he asserted himself in the Rump at this time. Named to the committee on the militia bill created on 1 July, he reported from it on the proposed amendments, including the crucial list of commissioners, one week later.71CJ vii. 700b, 701a, 706a. His name was the first to be suggested when the Commons recommitted the proposed provisos to the bill and he later sat on the committee appointed to check that the text of the bill had not been mistranscribed.72CJ vii. 729b, 734b. Later, after a brief return visit to Buckinghamshire during the second week of August to implement these militia reforms in his own locality, he sat on the committee on the militia bill for the Isle of Wight (12 Aug.).73CJ vii. 749b, 757b.

Another security measure in which he seems to have taken a close interest was the bill requiring householders in and around London to supply the authorities with the names of any lodgers, as on 13 July he reported to the House on the amendments being proposed by the committee on that bill.74CJ vii. 710b, 715a, 725a. Moreover, his role as a reporter on the bills to ensure that the second instalments were paid on a number of confiscated estates, including those which had been owed by the bishops and cathedral chapters, strongly suggests that he was the principal promoter behind those measures.75CJ vii. 711a, 731a-b, 756a-b, 758a. Other measures he backed confirm that he saw the confiscated estates as a major source of revenue that the Rump should exploit as much as possible.76CJ vii. 748b, 791b. He had no sympathy with those who joined Sir George Boothe* in the pro-Stuart Presbyterian uprising that summer and he would later support the bill to allow the confiscated estates of these rebels to be sold off.77CJ vii. 805a. That West was now more evidently taking a lead in promoting specific pieces of legislation suggests that, with the Rump even smaller than it had been in the early 1650s, he was making a bigger impact in its proceedings. That October, when the army officers submitted their Humble Representation and Petition, West and Thomas Chaloner* were given the job of preparing that part of the Commons’ reply which sought to reassure them by showing how much had been done to help wounded soldiers.78CJ vii. 795b; The Humble Representation and Petition of the Officers (1659, E.1000.5). Whether he then supported the actions which provoked the army officers into closing the Parliament is not clear.

West resumed his seat in the Commons at the very end of December, almost as soon as the Rump was allowed to reassemble a second time.79CJ vii. 800a. Like many of his colleagues, he probably regarded it as the only sure remaining bulwark against the return of Charles II. His active involvement in its proceedings suggests that he wanted it to succeed once again as a viable governing body. On 31 December he was one of the four MPs appointed by the Speaker, William Lenthall*, to count the votes in the ballot for the ten places allocated to non-MPs on the new council of state.80CJ vii. 801a. He was near the top of the list of those appointed to decide whether the clerks should be pardoned for having entered the record of Cromwell’s dismissal of the Rump in 1653 into the Journal.81CJ vii. 805a. The Rump’s legitimacy depended on the claim that their dismissal had been illegal. West drafted Parliament’s letter of thanks to Major-general Thomas Morgan after Morgan backed the Rump.82CJ vii. 808b. In acting as teller in the division on 7 January on whether the House should vote on the proposal that Richard Ingoldsby* should be given a military commission, West was probably supporting Ingoldsby, who had succeeded him as MP for Wendover in 1647.83CJ vii. 805b. West’s nomination to the committee on the bill which sought to prevent certain MPs taking their seats indicates that he approved of the restricted nature of the Rump’s composition.84CJ vii. 807a. He was also included on the committees to appoint new commissioners of the great seal, judges, law officers, admiralty commissioners and an Army Committee to assist the Rump to reassert control.85CJ vii. 806a, 808b, 811a. He was then chosen to sit on the Army Committee and admiralty commission, the two bodies which were to control the military.86CJ vii. 824a, 825b. These would have been important appointments had they not almost immediately been overtaken by the arrival in London of George Monck*.

Monck’s ultimatum that the Rump readmit the secluded Members marked the beginning of its end. There are some indications that, however reluctantly, West agreed to go along with those demands. On the face of it, he supported the moves against John Lambert* and the other former members of the committee of safety.87CJ vii. 837a, 842a. He probably accepted the re-admission of the secluded Members once it had already been implemented.88CJ vii. 848b. He seems even to have supported the generous land grants made to Monck.89CJ vii. 855a. Like everyone else, West must have known that these moves would lead to the final dissolution of the Long Parliament and to the restoration of the monarchy.

West probably viewed the return of Charles II with mixed feelings. In the 1660s West was omitted from some of the key county commissions. His hopes were now no doubt focussed on his eldest son, Edmund junior, who pursued a career as a professional barrister and who rose to become a bencher of the Inner Temple and a serjeant-at-law.90CITR ii. 306, iii. 49; Masters of the Bench of the Hon. Soc. of the IT 1450-1883 (1883), 43; Baker, Serjeants at Law, 198, 447, 543. Edmund junior also served George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham, as steward of some of his Buckinghamshire manors.91Bucks. RO, D 175/15-16. Financial difficulties may also explain why West senior played little part in public life. Faced with substantial debts, in his will of January 1678 the revenues from the lands he had promised his wife as her jointure were allocated instead to repaying his creditors, leaving his wife just with an annuity of £100. Fortunately, a bequest from one of his sisters had already provided portions for his two unmarried daughters. Edmund junior, as sole executor, was to be left with the task of settling the debts, while West’s half-brother, Sir Roger Pratt, the noted architect, and his brother-in-law, Sir Charles Cotterell†, were to act as overseers.92PROB11/372/320. However, by the time West died in 1683, these arrangements were out of date. Edmund junior predeceased his father in February 1682, so it was the younger son, Roger, who inherited the family estates and the problem of paying off the money.93Lipscomb, Buckingham, iii. 415; W. Musgrave, Obituary prior to 1800 ed. G.J. Armytage (Harl. Soc. xlix), 236; VCH Bucks. iii. 393. The male line of the family died out with Roger in 1700, without providing further MPs.94Lipscomb, Buckingham, iii. 415; Bucks. Dissent and Par. Life 1669-1712 ed. J. Broad (Bucks. Rec. Soc. xxviii), 140; RCHME Bucks. ii. 194. The following year one of Edmund’s daughters, Ann Hassell, placed an epitaph over her father’s grave in the church at Marsworth; it assured the reader that ‘A history of virtues were his days/Adorn’d with all acts that can merit praise’.95Le Neve, Monumenta, iv. 194-5; Lipscomb, Buckingham, iii. 415.