Humphrey Weld

Humphrey Weld (22 January 1612 – 1685), DL, JP was an English lawyer, member of the Royal household, public official, landowner and property administrator who was elected to the House of Commons for Christchurch in Hampshire in 1661. Weld was a crypto-recusant who kept his religious allegiance secret in order to stay in public office during a turbulent political period in English history. He was appointed Cup-bearer to the Catholic Queen Henrietta Maria 1639-44 and later as Gentleman of the Privy Chamber 1668-85 under her son, Charles II. He served as a magistrate and in numerous other public roles in London, Middlesex, Cambridgeshire, Hampshire and in Dorset, where he was governor of Portland Castle. In 1641 he bought the Lulworth Estate in Dorset where he started the "Lulworth" line of the (recusant) Weld family which has continued for over 350 years. Background Weld was the first surviving son of Sir John Weld of Arnolds, Edmonton, Middlesex and Frances née Whitmore of Apley Park, Shropshire. The Whitmores and the Welds intermarried over several generations. His paternal grandfather and namesake was Sir Humphrey Weld, a merchant originally from Shropshire and Lord Mayor of London. Weld graduated in Law from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1629 and was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1631. Between 1633 and 1636 he went on a Grand Tour of Europe. Weld's parents and sisters were apparently committed Protestants, but he and his two brothers married into prominent Roman Catholic families and changed their religious adherence. Life On his return to London from the Continent, Humphrey Weld was quickly appointed to the Queen's household as Cup-bearer in 1639 and began his official career. In 1641 he was assessed as a recusant for the London Poll tax. Correspondence between Weld and the secular English Catholic priest, Peter Biddulph, alias 'Fitton' (b. 1600), stationed in Rome, suggests they would have first met in Europe and kept a long association based on the older man's religious influence and connoisseurship of art which led to Weld himself becoming a collector.