WESTON, Richard II (1577-1635), of Roxwell Park, Essex and Nayland, Suff.

Weston was born at Chicheley, his mother’s house, of a distinguished Catholic family, whose pedigree has been somewhat obscured by an elaborate seventeenth-century fabrication. Through his local family influence he was returned for Maldon in 1601. He became, under the Stuarts, a national figure concerned with problems of diplomacy and finance. Clarendon described him as a ‘man of big looks and of a mean and abject spirit’. He received the last rites from a Catholic priest, died on 13 Mar. 1635 and was buried in Winchester cathedral.CP; DNB; Morant, Essex, ii. 71; Vis. Essex(Harl. Soc. xiii), 125, 318; C142/286/167.