With House of Lords membership once again on the political agenda, Dr Ben Coates of our Lords 1558-1603 section explores how one aristocratic family’s murderous internal struggles played out in Parliament in the sixteenth century…

On 26 Feb. 1549 a private bill ‘to dis[in]herit William West, [for] attempting to poison’ his uncle Thomas West, 9th Lord De La Warr, received a first reading in the House of Lords. The De La Warr estates were entailed on the male line and, as the 9th Lord had no children, his heirs were his half-brother, Sir Owen West, who had no sons, and then William West, the son of his next half-brother Sir George West. It was also assumed that William would inherit the De La Warr barony, although the peerage was a barony by writ and consequently not tied to the heirs male (indeed it had passed to the West family in the fifteenth century through the female line).

Sir George West had died in 1538, when William was still a child. De La Warr had then taken his nephew ‘into his keeping and service … tendering him as his natural son to his great cost’, employing him to serve him at his table. However, the baron alleged that, on reaching the age of 18, William had grown impatient of waiting for his inheritance and plotted to kill his uncle, though in the first instance this would have benefited Sir Owen, who survived until 1551. William procured poison, which he mixed with the drink he was to serve to De La Warr. However, one of the other servants, ‘perceiving certain powder about the brim of the … cup otherwise than was accustomed’, alerted the 9th Lord who, ‘having suspicion thereof and of nature somewhat abhorring the same, refrained to drink thereof’.

William was imprisoned in the Tower of London and evidently signed a confession. Surprisingly however, attempted murder was not in itself a felony at this date, and consequently De La Warr decided to proceed against his nephew via private legislation. The bill passed rapidly through the upper House, but, for reasons unknown, the Commons redrafted it. The new bill was given a first reading on 14 Mar. 1549, but proceeded no further because the session ended that same day. De La Warr tried again when a new session began in the following November; once more his bill quickly passed the Lords, but the Commons again insisted on redrafting it. Moreover, the lower House wanted to hear William’s side of the story. Consequently he was brought from the Tower on 23 Jan. 1550, when he insisted that he was not guilty and had only signed the confession out of fear. However, three witnesses (possibly servants of De La Warr) testified against him. This appears to have convinced the Commons of his guilt and they passed the bill, which was duly enacted. William was then released from the Tower the following June.

The 1550 act did not break the entail. Instead it empowered De La Warr to appoint trustees to hold the estates during William’s lifetime, after which they would pass to the next male heir. It also banned William himself from inheriting the barony, but without disbarring his heirs. Despite William’s attempt to murder him, De La Warr felt bound to make provision ‘towards the maintenance of’ his nephew’s ‘living and degree’. Consequently, when the baron made his will in 1554 he provided for William ‘of my charity and nothing of his desert’. He granted his nephew a £350 annuity and the use of three houses, two in Sussex and one in London. He also referred obscurely to William’s other ‘vices and evil demeanours’ which, ‘for that he is of my blood’, he had ‘passed over in silence’.

De La Warr died shortly after making his will, and William subsequently persuaded his uncle’s trustees to surrender their interest to him. In February 1556 Mary I formally granted William possession of his uncle’s lands, describing him as ‘Lord La Warr’. Nevertheless, he was not summoned to Parliament. The following summer, having been indicted for plotting against Mary, William tried to claim the privilege of a peer to be tried by his fellow noblemen. However, the heralds ruled that he was a commoner, not because of the 1550 act, but because, as a barony by writ, the De La Warr title had descended de jure to the heir general, the 9th Lord’s niece. William withdrew his claim in order to enter a ‘not guilty’ plea, but was convicted of treason regardless. He was pardoned in April 1557.

Shortly after being pardoned, William crossed the Channel as part of the English forces sent by Mary to aid her husband, Philip II of Spain, against the French. William took the opportunity to present a petition to Philip containing ‘such matter … as is neither true nor justifiable’, which suggests that he had renewed his claim to the De La Warr peerage. He was imprisoned on his return to England, but released in March 1558. A year later, following the accession of Elizabeth I, William signed himself merely ‘Wyllyam West’, when he wrote to the secretary of state, Sir William Cecil, lobbying for an act to reverse his conviction for treason. He was also described merely as William West in the subsequent statute, which was passed in 1563. However, this was presumably a legal necessity, as he had been convicted of treason as a commoner. Elsewhere William called himself De La Warr in the 1560s, indicating that he had not abandoned his claim to the peerage.

The issue of William’s status came to a head when he was appointed joint lord lieutenant of Sussex in November 1569, alongside Anthony Browne, 1st Viscount Montagu and Thomas Sackville, 1st Lord Buckhurst. In the commission William was named as a commoner and was ranked last; but if he had indeed inherited the De La Warr peerage (which dated back to 1299), he should have been placed above Buckhurst, whose barony had been created in 1567. Queen Elizabeth probably did not want her kinsman Buckhurst to be relegated to third place in the commission. The problem was solved in February 1570, when William was prevailed upon to accept the De La Warr title as a new creation, which positioned him below Buckhurst in the hierarchy.

Following William’s death in 1595 his son, Thomas West, 2nd Lord De La Warr, claimed the precedence of the old De La Warr barony. This question was referred to the Lords in 1597, when the upper House found in his favour, a verdict which effectively set aside the rights of the heir general. The 1550 act was thereafter almost forgotten until it achieved contemporary relevance in the twentieth century. In 1955, Tony Benn cited it as a precedent when he sought to introduce a bill enabling him to renounce the inheritance of the Stansgate peerage – and even facetiously offered to attempt to poison his father.

BC

Further reading:

Sessional Papers. Printed by Order of the House of Lords (1955), iii. 31-2

K.J. Kesselring, Making Murder Public (2019)

L.O Pike, Constitutional Hist. of the House of Lords (1894)

Chronicle. of England … by Charles Wriothesley, II ed. W.D. Hamilton (Camden Society new series xx)

J. H. Round, Peerage and Pedigree (1910)

J. Adams, Tony Benn (1992)