WEST, William (1612-70), of Middleton, Lancaster, Lancs.

West evidently came from relatively humble stock, for his father was styled yeoman, as was his first wife’s grandfather. His father was sufficiently wealthy nonetheless to lease and then purchase a messuage in Pudding Lane (now Cheapside), Lancaster, and to send William, his eldest son, down to London to be admitted a student at Gray’s Inn.38Lancs. RO, DP 522/4/1, pp. 97-113, 159. Although West never became a barrister, he acquired sufficient legal training to practise as an attorney, and he was prosperous enough by the late 1630s to purchase a sizeable estate at Middleton, a few miles south-west of Lancaster.39Lancs. RO, DP 522/4/1, pp. 54-9. He was probably the William West of Lancaster, gentleman, whom the county sheriff, Roger Kirkbye*, appointed as one of his deputies in March 1638 – and, if so, West may well have been involved in the collection of Ship Money in Lancashire.40Lancs. RO, DDP/59. West did have Yorkshire connections through his first wife, but he should not be confused with the William West who served as a magistrate and sewers commissioner in Yorkshire before the civil war. It was probably this West, or a relation, who became an ensign in the regiment that the Yorkshire parliamentarian Sir Henry Cholmley* raised in the summer of 1642.41E. Peacock, Army Lists (1863), 37.

West, too, took up arms for Parliament – a decision probably linked to his godly religious convictions – serving as an officer under the Lancashire parliamentarian Colonel George Dodding. Dodding’s regiment, formed late in 1642, garrisoned Lancaster during the civil war. Commissioned as a captain of foot in May 1644, West had been appointed governor of Lancaster Castle by September 1645.42Add. 59661, ff. 3, 10, 11, 13, 18; Gratton, Lancs. 286. The garrison at Lancaster, and presumably West, marched to join the parliamentarian armies at York in June 1644, and he may have fought at the battle of Marston Moor.43Add. 59661, f. 15.

West’s friends at Westminster evidently included William Ashhurst*, who, in May 1648, appointed him his deputy as clerk of the crown for Lancashire.44Lancs. RO, DP 522/4/1, p. 7; Duchy of Lancaster Office-Holders ed. R. Somerville, 104. He was possibly the ‘William West’ who signed a declaration that spring from some of the county’s diehard Presbyterian officers, announcing, in effect, their refusal to join the forces being raised by Lancashire’s MPs Raphe Assheton II and Alexander Rigby I to resist the invading Scots. The officers professed their abhorrence not only of royalists but also of sectaries – and, by implication, of the New Model army – and their adherence ‘to the Solemn League and Covenant of the three kingdoms in every branch of it and ... that we love, desire and should much rejoice in the regal and regular government of his Majesty that now is’.45Lancs. Civil War Tracts, 248-51; J.R. Mawdesley, ‘Clerical Politics in Lancs. and Cheshire during the Reign of Charles I, 1625-49’ (Sheffield Univ. PhD thesis, 2014), 272-3. But given West’s later alignment with the opponents of the Presbyterian interest both locally and at national level, his association with this group seems out of political character. Indeed, by November, he was serving as a captain under Assheton, whose regiment had fought alongside Oliver Cromwell’s* men at the battle of Preston in August.46Lancs. RO, DP 522/4/1, pp. 19-20. Assheton considered West to be ‘able and honest’ and, as such, recommended him to Lancashire’s newly-appointed high sheriff, Humphrey Chetham, for the office of county clerk, which West had held under several of Chetham’s predecessors. One such former sheriff also recommended West to Chetham, praising him as ‘a man well known in this county for divers good services in several respects … he was the first that improved that place [of county clerk] for the benefit of the sheriff, from £8 or £10 to £40 or £50’.47Chetham’s Lib. Allen deeds, parcel A nos. 34, 39.

West emerged as an active and dedicated member of Lancashire’s governing elite under the Rump. He served as a magistrate and militia commissioner and was involved in settling and maintaining a ‘godly and orthodox’ ministry in the county during the early 1650s.48SP28/211, ff. 659, 662, 672; Lancs. RO, QSO/2/23; Lancs. and Cheshire Church Surveys ed. Fishwick, 118, 125, 133, 158, 170; Craven, ‘Lancs.’, 26, 28, 39, 71, 176. Appointed a major of foot in the Lancashire militia in August 1651, he quickly rose to the rank of colonel, and he was apparently part of the force that occupied Scotland after Oliver Cromwell’s* victory at Dunbar in September 1650 – he would later describe the Anglo-Scottish conflict of 1650-1 as ‘the justest war that ever was begun’.49Add. 59661, f. 22; CSP Dom. 1650, p. 509; 1651, p. 103; Burton’s Diary, iv. 211; Gratton, Lancs. 301; Craven, ‘Lancs.’, 109. Having returned to Lancashire by 1652, he encountered and was deeply impressed by the Quaker evangelist George Fox. West and his fellow Lancashire magistrate Thomas Fell* succeeded that year in frustrating the attempts of the county’s Presbyterian ministers and their friends on the bench to prosecute Fox at both the quarter sessions and assizes. Like Fell, West did not become a Quaker himself. But he was described by the early Quakers as ‘very cheerful and loving to all Friends, and wherever he sees any of us, whoever be with him, he is not ashamed to speak to us’.50Supra, ‘Thomas Fell’; Jnl. of George Fox, i. 62, 70, 72, 76-7, 104, 108, 290, 412; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 230; Craven, ‘Lancs.’, 43, 225-6. He certainly shared the Quakers’ contempt for worldly vanities, warning one of his relations against the spiritual dangers of ‘banqueting and feasting and such heathenish baubles’.51Add. 59661, f. 29. However, his godly scruples did not prevent him acting as an attorney in 1652-3 in the purchase of property on behalf of his pre-war associate, the sequestered Lancashire royalist Robert Blundell of Ince.52Lancs. RO, DDIN 64/119-20; 65/40; 69/14; T.E. Gibson, Lydiate Hall and its Associations (Edinburgh, 1876), 120; Blackwood, Lancs. 128.

It was probably West’s reputation for protecting the ‘Saints’, and perhaps also his service alongside Cromwell’s forces during the late 1640s and early 1650s, that recommended him to the council of officers to represent Lancashire in the Nominated Parliament. His writ to attend the Parliament – signed and sealed by Cromwell – referred to West’s ‘love to and courage for God and the interest of His cause and of the good people of this commonwealth’.53Lancs. RO, DP 522/4/1, unpag. As this document was dated 6 June 1653 – which is when Cromwell signed the majority of such writs – it is clear that West was not among those who were nominated at a later stage than the main body of Members, as one authority has speculated.54Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 136, 139.

Although West was a novice as a Parliament-man, he quickly established himself as a versatile and hard-working MP. He was named to 15 committees in the Nominated Parliament (from which he made ten reports to the House), served as a teller in seven divisions and was an active member of the Committee for the Army*, to which he was appointed late in July.55CJ vii. 287a, 292a, 292b, 300b, 302b, 305a, 310b, 357b; SP28/98, ff. 61, 365. His most revealing tellerships were those on 20 and 30 August in support of including glebe lands in a bill for the sale of lands forfeited for treason.56CJ vii. 305a, 310b. It is possible that West’s main concern here was financial. However, it may well be significant that in the second of these divisions he partnered Samuel Hyland, who championed efforts by the more radical Members to abolish tithes and other non-voluntary and impropriate means of maintaining the ministry.57S. Hyland, An Exact Relation of…the Late Parliament (1654), sig. A2, A2v, 12, 18-21 (E.729.6); Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 302. West has been identified among the radicals appointed to a committee set up on 19 July ‘to consider the propriety [property rights] of incumbents in tithes’ – a task that the House specifically referred to West and two other MPs – and it was almost certainly his support for further reformation in church and state that led to an unsuccessful attempt by some Members to block his appointment to a committee established the next day (20 July) for reforming the law, which was another major battleground between the radical and moderate elements in the House.58CJ vii. 286a, 286b; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 160, 240-1, 265. West was the only religious radical on a five-man committee set up on 27 July to consider a petition from a ‘company of godly persons’ (i.e. sectaries) in Essex, requesting protection from ‘outrages and affronts’ to their meetings.59CJ vii. 290a; Several Procs. of Parl. no. 2 (26 July-2 Aug. 1653), 14 (E.708.13). An anonymous pamphleteer listed West among those MPs who were opposed to a publicly-maintained ministry.60Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 430. And the interest that he showed in Anna Trapnel – the self-styled prophetess of the Fifth Monarchy, who in September 1653 pronounced the doom of the Nominated Parliament and the Lord’s rejection of Cromwell – is perhaps further evidence that he was not the most orthodox of puritans.61A. Trapnel, The Cry of a Stone (1654), 2 (E.730.3).

The issue that probably took up most of West’s time in the Nominated Parliament was how to improve the commonwealth’s precarious finances, which had been strained to breaking point by the war with the Dutch. On 1 August 1653, he was added to a committee for inspecting the treasuries and managing the excise, and he was one of the most active members of a committee set up on 13 August ‘for raising of monies for supply of the necessities of the commonwealth’.62CJ vii. 293b, 300a. Six of his ten reports to the House concerned proposals and draft legislation that this committee thought would be of financial benefit to the commonwealth – most notably, a bill to enable the commissioners for compounding to sell off two thirds of estates belonging to recusants, which would not only raise money but also, it was hoped, tend to ‘the extirpation of popish priests and Jesuits’.63CJ vii. 302a, 307a, 314b, 317b, 318b, 320a. West also reported a bill for settling lands on Charles Stanley, 8th earl of Derby, and (from the committee for Irish affairs) on a bill for the sale of forfeited estates.64CJ vii. 293b, 305a, 314a, 349b.

West’s most important report to the House arose from his nomination, in first place, to a committee established on 19 August 1653 to consider ‘a new body of the law’, which superseded the 20 July committee for legal reform.65CJ vii. 304b; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 269-70. The first two bills introduced by this committee were considered unsatisfactory by the radical element in the House and were rejected. The third bill, however, which West reported himself on 3 November, proposed not only major reforms to common law litigation but also (most controversially) the abolition of the court of chancery. According to Hyland, this bill would have made going to law a much faster and cheaper process, and he welcomed it accordingly. Re-committed that same day, it was still undergoing amendment when the moderates at Westminster brought the Nominated Parliament to an end in December.66CJ vii. 346a; Hyland, Exact Relation, 13-15; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 297-8.

West apparently had little difficulty accommodating himself to the protectorate. He was appointed one of the ejectors for Lancashire in August 1654, and he was an active member of the county’s commission that assisted Major-general Charles Worsley* and (following his death in 1656) Tobias Bridge* during the mid-1650s.67HEHL, EL 8179, 8184, 8186; Cheshire RO, DSS 1/7/66/53, 62, 72; TSP iv. 733; v. 242. In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament of 1659, he was returned in first place for Lancaster, where he enjoyed a strong interest as the borough’s most prominent local gentleman. His standing in the area had recently been augmented with his purchase in 1658 of Middleton Hall, which completed the protracted process whereby he supplanted the royalist knight Sir George Middleton as lord of Middleton manor.68Lancs. RO, DP 522/4/1, unpag.

West was named to only four committees in this Parliament – all in April 1659 – and it is likely that he made his biggest impact not as a committeeman but on the floor of the House, where he delivered several lengthy speeches.69CJ vii. 623a, 637a, 638a, 639a. His contributions in debate suggest that he was not the most ardent supporter of the protectoral constitution, the Humble Petition and Advice. On 14 February, in a debate on the bill recognising Richard Cromwell as protector, he conceded that Richard was ‘without guile and without guilt’, but he took exception to the assertions of the court party that he was the ‘undoubted’ chief magistrate, and he feared that unless measures were taken to vest control of the militia in Parliament, the voters would complain that MPs had given ‘unlimited power to a single person’.70Burton’s Diary, iii. 270-1. Later in this debate, he moved that the House widen its voting on the protector’s powers to include his negative voice.71Burton’s Diary, iii. 278. He took a similarly critical stance on the question of the Cromwellian Other House, urging on 4 March that it be ‘bounded and approved by this House’ before any business was transacted with it. He also had reservations about the possibility of re-admitting the pre-Cromwellian nobility. In marked contrast to most republican MPs, however, he did not object to the presence of ‘swordsmen’ among the members of the Other House. Indeed, he argued that ‘if anything make them capable, it is being soldiers’.72Burton’s Diary, iv. 12-13. When he seconded his friend (or close acquaintance) the republican MP John Weaver on 12 March in warning the House that ‘sad consequences may ensue’ if it did not redress the army’s grievance over pay, it was as a well-wisher to the soldiery rather than an anxious enemy.73Burton’s Diary, iv. 139; Add. 59661, f. 27. He made common cause with the republicans again on 21 March, when he questioned whether the Members returned for Scottish constituencies had a legal right to sit in the House. It is not clear whether his insistence that he was not against them sitting, so long as they did so on a legal footing, was genuine or merely a smokescreen to disguise the fact that, like republican MPs, he objected to them as Cromwellian placemen.74Burton’s Diary, iv. 211.

The gulf between West and the Presbyterian interest and court party in Richard Cromwell’s Parliament became even clearer on 16 April 1659 in a debate sparked by a Quaker petition to the House, highlighting the suffering of Friends in prison. ‘I cannot justify them in their affronts to the ministers’, declared West, but he thought it proper that their petition be referred to a committee ‘to hear their grievances, which is the right of the commoners of England’. However, the next speaker, Nicholas Lechmere, doubted whether any Member besides West would have the nerve to attend such a committee.75Burton’s Diary, iv. 443. Although West admitted that he was accounted ‘no favourer of ministers’, he insisted that ‘I love good ones [he probably meant those who were not ‘rigid’ Presbyterians] in my heart and shall ever honour such as seek the honour of God’.76Clarke Pprs. iv. 33.

West helped to secure northern Lancashire for the Rump during the Presbyterian-royalist rebellion of Sir George Boothe* in August 1659 and was rewarded with a commission as a colonel in the county’s militia.77Clarke Pprs. iv. 31-3; CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 69, 566; CJ vii. 749a, 772a. He was also appointed a sequestration commissioner for Lancashire.78SP23/264, f. 96. In the elections to the 1660 Convention, he was returned for Lancaster again and was listed by Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, as a likely supporter of a Presbyterian church settlement.79G.F.T. Jones, ‘The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention’, EHR lxxix. 337. Remarkably for a man of West’s puritan and radical credentials – which were such that he was arrested by way of precaution at least once during the early 1660s – he was re-appointed to the Lancashire bench in 1661, having been omitted from the first commission of peace after the Restoration.80Lancs. RO, QRS/55; HP Commons 1660-1690. Indeed, he was one of the county’s most active magistrates during the 1660s.81Lancs. RO, QSR/55-9; B.G. Blackwood, ‘The Lancs. Gentry, 1625-60: a Social and Economic Study’ (Oxford Univ. DPhil. thesis, 1973), 200. Presumably, his legal knowledge and diligence made him indispensable, although his apparent friendship with the locally influential royalist Richard Kirkby† (son of Roger), whose sister he married in the late 1660s, may also have helped.82HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Richard Kirkby’, ‘William West’.

West died late in 1670 and was buried at Lancaster on 7 December.83Lancaster ed. Brierley, 286. In his will, which features a godly preface, he asked to be interred ‘in the burial place of my ancestors, near the vestry door on the north side of the choir ... as conveniently may be, with such decency as shall seem meet ... but without pomp or feasting’.84Lancs. RO, WRW/A, William West of Middleton 1670. He died childless, and his will confirmed a deed of settlement made in September, whereby he had entailed his estate on his kinsman Henry West of Heaton, a lawyer of the Middle Temple and (according to one authority) a Quaker.85Add. Ch. 19547; Bodl. Rawl. D.863, f. 38; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘William West’.