Family and Education

bap. 13 Nov. 1638, 1st s. of John Westbrooke. educ. I. Temple 1655, called 1663. m. 2 June 1663, Elizabeth (d. Oct. 1694), da. and coh. of Thomas Houghton of Mayfield, Suss., 5da. suc. fa. 1666.1

Offices Held

Commr. for assessment, Suss. 1663-80, 1689, j.p. 1671-d., commr. for recusants 1675; recorder, Portsmouth 1689-d.2

Biography

Westbrooke, a lawyer, seems to have been something of a trimmer. His interest at Bramber was already worth cultivating during the Exclusion elections. On 1 Sept. 1679 Henry Sidney was told that ‘Mr Westbrooke wishes us well, but durst not appear against his friends and neighbours the Gorings’. But it was as Member for Arundel, seven miles from Ferring, that he entered Parliament in 1685. He was appointed only to the committee on expiring laws. In 1688, he gave the same answers as John Lewknor II to the lord lieutenant’s questions on the repeal of the Penal Laws and Test Act. He was retained on the commission of the peace, but not recommended as a court candidate, and he did not sit again until 1698, when he seems to have been a court Whig. He died in February 1703, aged 64, and was buried at Ferring. No later member of the family entered Parliament.3

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Author: B. M. Crook

Notes

• 1. Manning and Bray, Surr. ii. 45; Add. 5699, ff. 103, 106; Vis. Suss. (Harl. Soc. lxxxix), 111, 112.
• 2. R. East, Portsmouth Recs. 421.
• 3. Sidney Diary, i. 116; The Topographer, iii. 161; PCC 203 Degg.