Name Thomas 1st | Died August 17, 1405 | |
Children Reginald West, 6th Baron De La Warr Grandchildren Richard West, 7th Baron De La Warr Great grandchildren Thomas West, 8th Baron De La Warr | ||
Thomas West, 1st Baron West (1365 – 19 April 1405)
Contents
Biography
He was the only son of Sir Thomas West (1312–3 September 1386) of Hempston Cauntelow in Devon (named after its lords the Cantilupe family whose heiress Eleanor de Cantilupe married Sir Thomas West (1251-1344)), by his wife Alice FitzHerbert (died 1395) a sister and co-heiress of Sir Edmund FitzHerbert. Sir Thomas West (d.1386) had fought in the Battle of Crécy and the subsequent siege of Calais under the command of Richard FitzAlan, 10th Earl of Arundel. The younger Thomas almost certainly served alongside his father under King Richard II; one of them was in active service in Calais in 1386, the year of his father's death. A knight banneret, he served in Ireland with the Duke of Aumale in 1399, and attended Richard's young Queen Isabella of Valois homeward to Calais in 1401.
When West was seventeen, he and his mother and sister Eleanor were assaulted and robbed, by Nicholas Clifton, who carried his sister off; he was probably the same Nicholas Clifton who later married her.
West was knighted in 1399, and summoned to Parliament as Baron West in 1402, by which time he held the manor of Harby, Nottinghamshire. He inherited the manor of Newton Tony, Wiltshire, from his father, and the manors of Midsomer Norton, Somerset, and Hinton Martell, Dorset, from his mother. He was later granted joint custody of Beaulieu Abbey. He died in 1405 and was interred at Christchurch Priory, Dorset.
Marriage and issue
West married, before 2 May 1384, Joan La Warre, widow of Ralph de Wilington (d. 16 August 1382) of Sandhurst, Gloucestershire, and daughter of Roger la Warr, 3rd Baron De La Warr (d. 27 August 1370), and his second wife, Eleanor Mowbray, daughter of John de Mowbray, 3rd Baron Mowbray, by Joan of Lancaster, daughter of Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster. Joan la Warre was a half sister of John la Warr, 4th Baron De La Warr, and when he died without issue she became heiress to her younger half-brother, Thomas la Warr, 5th Baron De La Warr. They had three sons and a daughter: