Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr

"Lord Delaware" redirects here. For the current Lord De La Warr, who acceded to the title in 1988, see William Sackville, 11th Earl De La Warr. For other peers styled Lord De La Warr, see Earl De La Warr. For the traditional ballad, see Lord Delaware (ballad).

The Right Honourable

Thomas West

Lord Governour and Captain General of the Virginia Colony
3rd Baron De La Warr
Portrait, c. 1605
Born(1576-07-09)9 July 1576
England
Died7 June 1618(1618-06-07) (aged 41)
Atlantic Ocean, en route to Jamestown, Virginia, from
London, England
BuriedJamestown, Virginia
Noble familyDe La Warr
Spouse(s)
Cecilia Shirley, Lady De La Warr
​
​
(m. 1596)​
FatherThomas West,
2nd Baron De La Warr
MotherAnne Knollys
Signature

Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr (/ˈdɛləwɛər/ ⓘ DEL-ə-wair;[1][2][3] 9 July 1576 – 7 June 1618), was an English nobleman, for whom the bay, the river, and, consequently, a Native American people and U.S. state, all later called "Delaware", were named. A member of the House of Lords, from the death of his father in 1602 until his own death in 1618, he served as the governor of Virginia from 1610 to 1611.

There have been two creations of Baron De La Warr, and West came from the second. He was the son of Thomas West, 2nd Baron De La Warr, of Wherwell Abbey in Hampshire, and Anne Knollys, daughter of Catherine Knollys; making him a great-grandson of Mary Boleyn, the sister of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII. He was born at Wherwell, Hampshire, England, and died at sea while travelling from England to Virginia. Counting from the original creation of the title, West would be the 12th Baron.[4]

Early life

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As the eldest son of the 2nd Baron De La Warr, Thomas West received his education at Queen's College, Oxford. He served in the English army under Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, and, in 1601, was charged with supporting Essex's ill-fated insurrection against Queen Elizabeth I, but acquitted of those charges.[5] He was a Member (MP) of the Parliament of England for Lymington in 1597.[6]

He succeeded his father as Baron De La Warr in 1602.[7] It was said that he became a member of the Privy Council, but this has been disproved.[8] In 1645 Dame Cicly petitioned the House of Lords to continue the pension that King James had granted her husband.[9] There is only one supposedly contemporaneous portrait of Thomas, from 1605, but its authenticity has been questioned on the basis of the sitter's attire and physical attributes.[10]

Governor of Virginia

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Dramatized illustration of Lord De La Warr and soldiers entering James Fort through the south gate, 1610

Lord De La Warr was the largest investor in the London Company, which received two charters to settle colonists in the New World, and furnished and sent several vessels to accomplish that aim. He was appointed governor-for-life and captain-general of the Virginia, to replace the governing council of the colony under the presidency of Captain John Smith.[11] Subsequently, in November 1609, the Powhatans killed John Ratcliffe, the Jamestown Colony's Council President, and attacked the colony in what became the First Anglo-Powhatan War.[12] As part of England's response, De La Warr recruited and equipped a contingent of 150 men and outfitted three ships at his own expense, and sailed from England in March 1610.[13]

In 1610 captain Samuel Argall named Delaware Bay in honor of Lord De La Warr. Shortly afterwards Dutch settlers along the bay gave it a different name, but the name Delaware Bay was restored when the English took control of the area in 1665.[14] Lord De La Warr contracted malaria or scurvy in 1611. He left the colony on a ship captained by Argall headed to the West Indies to recover but was blown off course by a storm, ending up in Faial Island, Azores.[15] West returned to London, England in June, 1611.[16] He requested a private audience from King James I to explain why he wasn't governing in Virginia.[15] He was summoned by the Virginia Company where he explained his health conditions ("flux", cramps, gout, and scurvy) in detail and his diet of oranges and lemons in the Azores helped him recover.[15]

Later that year, De La Warr published a book titled The Relation of the Right Honourable the Lord De-La-Warre, Lord Governour and Captaine Generall of the Colonie, planted in Virginea.[17] The work was mockingly subtitled: A Short Relation made by the Lord De-La-Warre, to the Lords and others of the Councill of Virginea, touching his unexpected returne home, and afterwards delivered to the General Assembly of said Company..., written by Company employee Samuel Calvert.[18]

In the autumn of 1616, Baron De La Warr and his wife Lady Cecilia introduced John Rolfe and his wife, Pocahontas, into English society. The visitors from Virginia were in London to raise funds for the Virginia Company of London and to encourage colonization of Virginia. De La Warr remained the nominal governor, and after receiving complaints from the colonists about Argall's tyranny in governing them on his behalf, he set sail for Virginia again in 1618 aboard the Neptune to investigate those charges. He died at sea on 7 June.[5][16]

Burial

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It was thought for many years that Lord De La Warr had been buried in the Azores or at sea.[5] By 2006, researchers had concluded that his body was brought to Jamestown for burial. In October 2017, archaeologists excavated remains from underneath one of the churches at Historic Jamestowne. While two sets of remains were De La Warr's relatives, Sir Ferdinando Wainman and Captain William West, none were identified as Lord De La Warr.[19][20]

Personal life

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Coat of Arms of Thomas West

On 25 November 1596, De La Warr married Cecily Shirley (born c. 1579 died c. 1662), the daughter of Sir Thomas Shirley of Wiston, Sussex, and his wife Anne, daughter of Sir Thomas Kempe.[21] They had 9 known children:

Lord De La Warr's brother, John West, later became governor and married Anne Percy, daughter of George Percy.[26]

Notes

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  1. ^ Németh, Robert Stuart (13 September 2006). "The De La Warr Pavilion". Building Opinions. Latest Homes. Archived from the original on 13 July 2013.
  2. ^ Billings, Warren M. "Thomas West, Twelfth Baron De La Warr (1576–1618)". Dictionary of Virginia Biography. Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved 23 March 2015.
  3. ^ "Delaware Place Names" (PDF) (Report). United States Geological Survey.
  4. ^ Thomas West, 12th Baron De La Warr at the Encyclopædia Britannica
  5. ^ a b c Pollard, Albert Frederick (1899). "West, Thomas (1577–1618)" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 60. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 344–45.
  6. ^ "West, Thomas III (1577-1618), of Wherwell, Hants" – via The History of Parliament. Reprinted from P.W. Hasler, ed. (1981). The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558-1603. Boydell & Brewer.
  7. ^ Fiske, John (1897). Old Virginia and Her Neighbours. Vol. 1. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company. pp. 146–47.
  8. ^ Rose, E.M. (2020). "Lord Delaware, First Governor of Virginia, 'the Poorest Baron of this Kingdom'". Virginia: Virginia Magazine of History 128.3. pp. 226–258. JSTOR 26926494.
  9. ^ House of Lords. Main Papers. (3 December 1645) "Petition of Dame Cicily Dowager De la Ware." Lords Journals, VIII. 21. In extenso. The National Archives Kew Retrieved 16 February 2023.
  10. ^ Rose, E.M. (Fall 2024). "From Baron to Bourgeois: Thomas West, Lord De La Warr, Governor of Virginia (1610–1618)" (PDF). The New American Antiquarian. 3: 49–80.
  11. ^ "The Jamestown Chronicles Timeline", 12 May 2016
  12. ^ Lamont, Edward M. (2014). The Forty Years that Created America: The Story of the Explorers, Promoters, Investors, and Settlers Who Founded the First English Colonies. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 121. ISBN 978-1442236608.
  13. ^ Brown, Alexander (1898). The First Republic in America. New York: Houghton, Mifflin. p. 126.
  14. ^ [ht11tp://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/1245/report.pdf Delaware Place Names] Archived 2017-08-11 at the Wayback Machine United States Geological Survey p. 35.
  15. ^ a b c Woolley, Benjamin. Savage Kingdom: Virginia and The Founding of English America (Text Only). United Kingdom, HarperCollins Publishers, 2012.
  16. ^ a b "West, Thomas, twelfth baron de la Warr (1576–1618)". Encyclopedia Virginia.
  17. ^ De La Warr, Thomas West, Baron (1611). The Relation of the Right Honourable the Lord De-La-Warre, Lord Governour and Captaine Generall of the Colonie, planted in Virginea at Archive.org.
  18. ^ "The relation of the right honourable the Lord De-La-Warre, lord gouernour and captaine generall of the colonie, planted in Virginea". 1611.
  19. ^ Ruane, Michael E. (27 October 2017). "Experts have uncovered remains at the first permanent English colony. But whose bones are they?". The Washington Post. Retrieved 22 May 2019.
  20. ^ Patel, Samir. "Jamestowne's VIPs". Archaeology. Kevin Quinlan. Retrieved 15 August 2024.
  21. ^ Cokayne 2000, p. 161
  22. ^ Cokayne 1983, p. 140, Hammond 1998, p. 128, Mosley 2003, p. 630.
  23. ^ Mosley 2003, pp. 630, 1075.
  24. ^ Mosley 2003, p. 1075
  25. ^ Cokayne 2000, p. 161, Mosley 2003, p. 1075.
  26. ^ Bradburn, Douglas; Coombs, John C. (2011). Early Modern Virginia: Reconsidering the Old Dominion. University of Virginia Press. p. 50. ISBN 978-0813931708.

References

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  • Cokayne, George Edward, ed. (1983) [c. 1900]. The Complete Baronetage. Vol. 2 (5-volume reprint ed.). Gloucester, UK: Alan Sutton Publishing. p. 140.
  • Cokayne, George Edward; et al., eds. (2000) [1910–1959]. The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct or Dormant. Vol. 4 (reprint in 6 volumes; new ed.). Gloucester, UK: Alan Sutton Publishing. p. 160.
  • Mosley, Charles, ed. (2003). Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage. Vol. 1 (107th ed.). Wilmington, DE: Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books). pp. 630, 1075.
  • Hammond, Peter W., ed. (1998). The Complete Peerage or a History of the House of Lords and All its Members From the Earliest Times, Volume XIV: Addenda & Corrigenda. Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton Publishing. p. 128.
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Parliament of England
Preceded by
Richard Blount
John Knight
 Member of Parliament for Lymington
1597–1598
With: Henry Wallop 		Succeeded by
Sir Francis Darcy
Thomas Ridley
Peerage of England
Preceded by Baron De La Warr
1602–1618 		Succeeded by
Henry West
Government offices
Preceded by Governor of Virginia
1610–1611 		Succeeded by
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