Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 60.djvu/375

 copy was published by Samuel Hartlib [q. v.], with a dedication to the council of state, and with the date 1605 (evidently a mistake for 1650, and so corrected in manuscript in many copies). Hartlib did not at this time know who the author was.

Subsequently, on 2 May 1651, and again on 10 Oct. of the same year, Hartlib wrote to Sir Richard, whom he had been ‘credibly informed’ was the author of the ‘Discours,’ asking him for some further information on the subject of clover cultivation, and requesting him to ‘make compleat and sufficiently enlarged’ for the benefit of all ‘his former treatise.’ As Sir Richard took no notice, Hartlib republished the pamphlet in 1652 from a more correct copy, adding transcripts of his two letters to Sir Richard. Hartlib's ‘Legacy of Husbandry’ (a collection of anonymous notes on agricultural matters written by Robert Child, Cressy Dymock, and others, which Hartlib edited and published at the same time as he pirated Sir Richard's work) has sometimes been erroneously attributed to Sir Richard Weston. This error would not need comment were it not for the fact that in 1742 one T. Harris published a very incorrect copy of this ‘Legacy,’ which he attributed to Sir Richard Weston, and then proceeded to support this assertion by foisting Sir Richard's name into the text.

Early in May of the same year (1652) in which the second edition of the ‘Discours’ was published, Sir Richard Weston died at the age of sixty-one, and was buried in Trinity Chapel, Guildford, on 8 May. He married Grace, daughter of John Harper of Cheshunt, who died in February 1668–9, and was buried with her husband. He had by her seven sons and two daughters. The eldest son, however, died in infancy, and Sir Richard was succeeded by his second son, John.

[Manning and Bray's History of Surrey, 1804 i. 134, 1814 iii. 60, 63, 89, 122, 123, 218, App. liv. lv. lvi.; Harrison's Annals of an Old Manor House, 1893, pp. 93–107; Manuscript Pedigree of the Westons of Sutton (Brit. Mus.); several biographical hints can be gathered from the ‘Discours.’]  WESTON, RICHARD (1620–1681), judge, son of Edward Weston of Hackney, and born in 1620. He matriculated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in 1639, but left without taking a degree. He was admitted a student of Gray's Inn on 10 Aug. 1642, and was called to the bar in 1649. He was made reader of Gray's Inn in Lent 1676, serjeant-at-law on 23 Oct. 1677, king's serjeant on 5 Feb. 1678 (whereupon he was knighted), and puisne baron of the exchequer on 7 Feb. 1680.

As early as 1662 his arguments in court had attracted attention and were noticed by Sir T. Raymond in his ‘Reports of Cases.’ He was judge in several important trials between 1678 and 1680. In the midsummer assizes at Kingston in 1680 he boldly checked Jeffreys, who, as counsel, was browbeating the other side in their examination of witnesses, and thereby made an implacable enemy for himself. He had the courage in 1680 to grant a habeas corpus to Sheridan, whom the House of Commons had committed, when some of the judges held back from so doing.

In December 1680 the commons voted an impeachment against him founded upon certain expressions used by him in his charge to the jury at Kingston. While inveighing against Calvin and Zwinglius he had said of those theologians: ‘Now they were amusing us with fears, and nothing would serve them but a parliament .... for my part I know no representative of the nation but the king.’ The crime with which he was charged was that his words were ‘scandalous to the reformation, and tending to raise discord.’ The dissolution of parliament delayed the bringing in of the impeachment, and the death of Weston took place before the succeeding parliament proceeded to the business. He died in Chancery Lane on 23 March 1681, and was buried on the 26th at Hackney. He married Frances, second daughter of Sir George Marwood of Little Buskby, but probably had no children. His widow, whose name does not appear in the will, was his sole executrix.

[Foss's Judges of England; North's Examen, pp. 566–7; Foster's Gray's Inn Register of Admissions; Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. p. 479, 11th Rep. ii. 43, 157–8, 204, 213; Woolrych's Jeffreys, pp. 64–6; Cobbett's State Trials, vol. viii. cols. 191–2; Dugdale's Visitation of Yorkshire (Surtees Soc.) p. 160; Burnet's Hist. of his Own Time, 1823, ii. 251; Lysons's Environs ii. 499; P.C.C. 18, North.]  WESTON, RICHARD (1733–1806), agricultural writer, born in 1733, describes himself on the title-page of some of his anonymous works as ‘A Country Gentleman,’ but appears to have been, in reality, a thread-hosier of Leicester. In 1773 he was living at Kensington Gore, but his later years were spent at Leicester, where he was secretary of the local agricultural society.

Weston's first important work was his ‘Tracts on Practical Agriculture and Gardening,’ 1769, which he dedicated to the Society of Arts. This work is remembered