Thomas West, 1st Baron West

Thomas West, 1st Baron West (1365 – 17 August 1405) was the only son of Sir Thomas West, of de Hampton Cantilupe (1312–1386), and Alice FitzHerbert (died 1395) the sister and heiress of Sir Edmund FitzHerbert. His father 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 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 homeward to Calais in 1401.

When Thomas 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.

He had married Joan de Willington (née la Warr), half-sister to John la Warr, 4th Baron De La Warr, before 2 May 1384, when they were pardoned for marriage without license. When John died without issue, Joan became heiress to her younger half-brother, Thomas. The pair had three sons: Thomas (b.1391), John (died c.1393) and Reginald (born c.1394).

He was knighted in 1399 and summoned to Parliament as Lord West in 1402, by which point he held the manor of Harby, Nottinghamshire. He had inherited Newton Tony, Wiltshire, from his father; and 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, Lambeth.

Sources

• Cokayne's Complete Peerage; by G. E. Cokayne, V. Gibbs and H. A. Doubleday