The Doubtful arms of Staffordshire - Weston and an elaborate fabrication

The final one of our five notes on the "Doubtful arms of Staffordshire" is that of  *Sir Symond Weston, of Lichfield.

Ermine, on a chief Azure five bezants, a martlet Gules for difference.

* An evident interpolation, for Sir Simon was not a knight in 1583, and his father, James Weston, was then living. The latter made his will in 1589, and therein names his son James, then under twenty-four years of age, and his son and heir Simon. It may be here mentioned that the elaborate pedigree of Weston printed in Harwood’s “Erdeswick” was fabricated in 1632 for Richard, Lord Weston, then Lord Treasurer of England. (Vide Mr. Chester-Waters’s “Memoirs of the Chesters of Chicheley.”) It should be added that Sir Simon does not appear in the lists of doubtful coats given in Lord Hatherton’s MS. and in the Harl, MSS. 1077, 1173.

There is no crest recorded alongside that specific blazon in the primary visitation entry for Sir Symond (Simon) Weston of Lichfield. In The "Visitacion of Staffordschire" made by Robert Glover, 1583, the entry records only the shield (arms): Ermine, on a chief Azure five bezants, a martlet Gules for difference. Genealogical notes on the 1583 Visitation point out that this entry is a later interpolation. Sir Simon Weston (c. 1565–1637) was not knighted until August 1599, and his father James Weston was still alive at the time of the 1583 visitation.

While no crest is attached to Sir Simon's interpolated Visitation entry, broader heraldic armories (such as Burke's General Armory and later 17th-century grants) record crests for the closely related Weston of Lichfield and Weston of Rugeley branches, which used either the bezant coat or the older Staffordshire eagle coat. For the Weston family of Lichfield bearing Ermine, on a chief Azure five bezants (the arms confirmed/granted in 1632 to Richard Weston, 1st Earl of Portland, who claimed descent from the Staffordshire Westons), the recorded crest is typically an eagle rising reguardant Sable (sometimes blazoned as an eagle's head erased Or, beaked Gules). For Sir Simon's direct cousin Sir James Weston (1573–1634), Baron of the Exchequer and also of Lichfield, the family bore Or, an eagle displayed reguardant Sable with the crest: An eagle's head Or, beaked Gules, a crescent for difference.

The Controvercy:

The 1632 pedigree controversy centres on a lavish vellum genealogy commissioned by Richard Weston, 1st Earl of Portland, which claimed his Essex family descended from the ancient Staffordshire Westons of Lichfield and Rugeley, and through them, from the noble Neville Earls of Westmorland.

Compiled by herald Henry Lilly (Rouge Croix) and certified by Sir William Segar (Garter King of Arms) around 1632/1633, the manuscript (now British Library Add. MS 18667) became famous in Victorian genealogy as a textbook example of an "elaborate fabrication". Later archival evidence, however, has largely vindicated the Staffordshire connection.

The Claims of the 1632 Pedigree

As Lord High Treasurer to King Charles I and newly created Earl of Portland, Richard Weston sought an illustrious ancestry to match his political rise. The certified pedigree asserted that his grandfather, Justice Richard Weston of Skreens in Essex (d. 1572), was the second son of John Weston of Lichfield, making Justice Weston the brother of James Weston (Sir Simon Weston's father) and Robert Weston, Lord Chancellor of Ireland.

John Weston of Lichfield had married Lady Cecily Neville, sister of Ralph Neville, 4th Earl of Westmorland, giving Portland direct noble blood. Through the Lichfield line, Portland descended from the medieval lords of Weston-under-Lizard in Staffordshire, tracing back to the Norman Conquest.

"An Elaborate Fabrication"

In 1878, genealogist Robert E. C. Waters published Genealogical Memoirs of the Extinct Family of Chester of Chicheley, launching a scathing critique that shaped standard reference works like the Dictionary of National Biography for over a century. Waters argued that Portland's grandfather had no connection to Staffordshire at all. Instead, he claimed the Judge descended from a minor Essex family, William Weston of Prested Hall in Feering, and that Henry Lilly had simply grafted the Essex upstart onto the prominent Lichfield family because they shared a surname.

Critics pointed to the suspicious entry for Sir Simon Weston in the 1583 Visitation of Staffordshire as retroactive tampering designed to harmonize Lichfield records with Portland's new pedigree. Waters dismissed the marriage of John Weston of Lichfield to Lady Cecily Neville as a complete invention to manufacture a Plantagenet/Neville connection.

Modern Reassessment & Evidence

Subsequent research into Tudor and Stuart records has overturned much of Waters's dismissal. Long before the 1632 pedigree was drafted, John Weston of Lichfield, Justice Richard Weston of Essex (on his 1572 tomb), Lord Chancellor Robert Weston, and Sir Simon Weston all bore the exact same distinctive arms (Ermine, on a chief azure five bezants). In 1625, seven years before the pedigree was commissioned, Richard Weston explicitly referred to Sir Simon Weston of Lichfield in correspondence as his "uncle" (a common 17th-century term for an older cousin or kinsman), proving the two branches actively recognized their blood relationship.

While the direct Staffordshire kinship between the Essex Westons and Sir Simon Weston of Lichfield is now accepted by historians, the exact parentage of Cecily Neville remains debated, as primary Neville family records do not independently confirm a daughter marrying into Lichfield.

Sir Simon Weston (d. 20 February 1637) was buried in St. Mary's Church in Lichfield Market Square, where a large mural monument commemorating him and his immediate family was erected on the north side of the chancel.

Because St. Mary's underwent major demolitions and rebuildings in the 18th and 19th centuries, the surviving antiquarian records, most notably Sir William Dugdale’s 17th-century Church Notes and Stebbing Shaw’s History and Antiquities of Staffordshire, provide the primary evidence for the monument's original text and heraldry.

The Weston Mural Monument (St. Mary's, Lichfield), originally positioned on the north wall of the chancel, memorialised three generations of the Lichfield branch: Sir Simon's father James Weston, Esq. (Registrar of the Diocese and MP for Lichfield), Sir Simon Weston himself, and Sir Simon's daughter Elizabeth (Weston) Ridgeway, wife of Robert Ridgeway, 2nd Earl of Londonderry.

Antiquarian accounts of the monument note that its sculpted shields prominently displayed the Weston bezant coat (Ermine, on a chief Azure five bezants) quartering Neville (Gules, a saltire Argent). This public display in Lichfield served as a visible assertion of the family's descent from John Weston of Lichfield and his wife Cecilia Neville, the exact lineage later contested in the 1632 Earl of Portland pedigree controversy.

The medieval fabric of St. Mary's in the Market Square was pulled down and rebuilt in 1717 - 1721, and altered again during Victorian restorations in 1842 -1843 and 1868 -1870. Many early modern chancel monuments were displaced, lost, or heavily restored during these rebuildings, meaning the antiquarian transcripts remain vital for verifying the exact 17th-century blazons.