WESTON, Nicholas (1611-56/7), of Covent Garden, Mdx.

Weston, baptised at Putney in May 1611, was the third son of the man who became Charles I’s lord treasurer, and one of the most prominent Catholics at court in the early 1630s. He was awarded a degree at Cambridge in 1629 as a nobleman’s son, and may have travelled on the continent, as did his elder brother, Jerome Weston†, who then went on diplomatic missions to Paris and Turin, and his younger brother Benjamin Weston*.10CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 68; 1631-3, pp. 304, 383. Following Jerome’s appointment as governor of the Isle of Wight in November 1633, Nicholas Weston was made a burgess of both Yarmouth and Southampton in August 1634.11Add. 5669, f. 97v; Southampton RO, SC3/1/1, f. 200. He also attended his brother (now 2nd earl of Portland) on his trip to the Isle of Wight in the late summer of 1639, Sir John Oglander recording that they ‘killed deer, spent wine and made good cheer’, and that they ‘drank and shot, shot and drank, till they were scarce compos mentis’, rather than looking to the affairs of the island.12Royalist’s Notebook ed. Bamford, 98-9.

In spring 1640 Portland’s influence secured for Weston a seat in Parliament. As early as 28 December 1639 the borough of Newtown agreed that John Meux* would have the first seat but that the earl could nominate for the second, and Weston was duly elected on 22 March 1640.13I.o.W. RO, JER/BAR/3/9/8, pp. 17-18. He made no recorded impression on the proceedings of the Short Parliament, but was again returned in the autumn, although on that occasion a poll was forced when Weston was opposed by puritan grandee Sir Thomas Barrington*. Weston defeated Barrington on 14 October, and took his seat alongside Meux.14I.o.W. RO, JER/BAR/3/9/8, p. 20; Letters Arch. and Hist. Rel. to the I.o.W. ii. 161-2.

Weston’s career in the Long Parliament is difficult to assess, since the Journal rarely differentiates between him, Richard Weston*, son of Sir Richard Weston†, baron of the exchequer, and (from February 1641) his own brother Benjamin. In the early weeks of the session, a Mr Weston was named to committees relating to the courts of star chamber and high commission, the new Canons, and Emmanuel College, while one of the three men was named to a committee for the bill to abolish trials by battle in March 1641, to the committee to consider the bill for the security of the true religion, the safety and honour of the king’s person, the rights of the subject and the discovery of recusants (6 May), and to the committee regarding the controversial puritan Peter Smart (29 July).15CJ ii. 44b, 52a, 101a, 136b, 229a. One of the three men was also mentioned as chairman of the committee relating to high commission in mid-May, although this may have been Richard, the only one with a legal background.16CJ ii. 148a. All that can be said with certainty about Weston’s activity in Parliament during this period was that he, like his brother and Richard Weston, voted on 21 April against the attainder of Thomas Wentworth†, 1st earl of Strafford, and that he took the Protestation in the wake of the discovery of the army plot (3 May).17Procs. LP iv. 42; CJ ii. 133b.

Both Weston brothers probably attracted some suspicion thereafter, and in the year that followed neither left a visible impression on the Commons. It is likely that Weston absented himself from the House in the face of determined pressure for reform. On 16 June 1642, however, he was teller alongside Sir John Strangways* in a division which split the chamber into royalist and parliamentarian camps, representing those who unsuccessfully opposed a motion to readmit only those absent Members whose excuses were approved by a Commons committee.18CJ ii. 626b; PJ iii. 87. Thereafter he withdrew from the House and returned to Hampshire. One account claimed that he and others hired a hackney carriage outside Parliament on 11 August to take them to Portsmouth, where he joined George Goring* in securing and holding the town for the king.19True Newes from Portsmouth (1642), sig. A3v (E.112.1). On 14 August he wrote that John Lisle* had ‘poisoned this county’, and that John Bulkeley* had issued orders ‘to command all people not to give any assistance to Portsmouth’.20I.o.W. RO, NBC 45/16a, pp. 433-4. On the 15th the Commons summoned Weston to attend the House, but on the 16th, having learned of his service to the royalist cause in Hampshire, they disabled him from sitting in Parliament.21CJ ii. 720a, 722b-723a. Two days later he signed the declaration of Isle of Wight gentlemen that was in effect a repudiation of Parliament’s position.22Three Declarations (1642), 5-6; I.o.W. RO, OG/BB/426. When the royalist garrison at Southsea Castle commanded by Thomas Wentworth*, Lord Wentworth, surrendered on 7 September, Weston was among the prisoners sent to London.23A Declaration of the Taking of Portsmouth (1642), 5-7 (E.117.10); A True Relation of the Passages at Portsmouth (1642), 5, 7, 10 (E.118.22).

Thereafter, Weston’s activity is unclear. On 31 March 1643 he and his brother Portland (who had been imprisoned by Parliament the previous August) were granted passes to travel into Surrey for ten days, but whereas his brother went on to join the king at Oxford and sit in the Parliament there, there is no evidence that Weston followed suit.24LJ v. 682b. Instead it is plausible that he took advantage of his brother Benjamin’s readmission to the Commons (Oct. 1643) and eventual emergence as an Independent, to reach a reasonably comfortable accommodation with Parliament.25CJ iii. 256b, 271b, 281b; A. and O. He appears never to have been forced to compound for delinquency, and in July 1644 it was recorded that the payment of his assessment (£1,000), had not been pursued.26CCAM 436. Having been assigned by Portland part of the family interest in land in the Lincolnshire fens – a family interest Benjamin worked hard in the Commons to preserve – Nicholas Weston received a sympathetic reception from the Lords in 1644 for his petition for protection against the rioters who threatened his property in Whittlesea, and obtained a further promise of assistance to that end in April 1646.27LJ vi. 625b; viii. 275b; SP20/1, pp. 985, 1040.

Thereafter Weston disappears from view. He was living in Covent Garden at the time of his death, probably late in 1656. He does not appear to have left any children, and administration of his estate was granted to a creditor, Thomas Hawley, on 12 January 1657.28PROB6/33, f. 9v.