A common name but below are some leads that I hope you can help me follow-up.
He left a detailed will that doesn't help trace his ancestry but was buried at St Aldates (Oxford) and the monumental inscription there mentions that he was a Gentleman Pensioner (a ceremonial bodyguard to the King, -he was appointed in 1674 probably sponsored by his brother-in-law, John KIRKE. The current Axe Keeper of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms adds that he held this post at the coronation of James II but has no other information). At the time of his death 08 Jan 1695 [OS] he was aged 79 years. He bought the manor of Hampton Poyle Oxford for 5000 GBP in 1648.
He married a distant cousin of mine, Mary KIRKE, at St Andrew Undershaft, City of London, 11 Sep 1638 but the parish register provides no other helpful information. The Kirkes were a prosperous merchant family (the Kirkes had lived in Dieppe and Mary and her brothers were born there but in 1638 their trading was mainly in wine and salted cod between London, North America and southern Europe) who in the late 1620s and in the 1630s lived on Lime Street, Bishopsgate. In the Act of Parliament for her naturalisation in 1651, her husband John WEST is mentioned as a gentleman of London.
So John WEST presumably came from a well-to-do family with links to London. He must have been born about 1615... any ideas?
