March 1725 it had been proposed to raise Sir William Thompson, then recorder of London, to the position of lord chancellor of Ireland, and to secure for West the vacant position of recorder. This scheme failed, and on the following 29 May West was made lord chancellor of Ireland. He landed in that country at the close of July, and was in due course made a privy councillor. On 2 April 1726 he was appointed one of the three lord justices of Ireland during the absence of the lord lieutenant.
West died on 3 Dec. 1726, and was buried in St. Anne's Church, Dublin, on 6 Dec. His death was much regretted, especially by the lawyers who practised before him. He married, in April 1714, Elizabeth, second daughter of Bishop Burnet, with whom he received the dowry of 1,500l. He had issue one son Richard (1716–1742) [q. v.] and one daughter Molly. He left scarcely sufficient to pay his debts, and a pension, vested in trustees, was obtained from the crown for the widow. Archbishop Boulter writes on 3 Jan. 1726–7 that ‘Mrs. West's conduct since the death has so far given countenance to some whispers which were about before.’ This probably gave rise to the rumour that with John Williams, his secretary, she had been faithless to her husband, and that she had caused his death with poison. The lord chancellor's father is said to have outlived his son, and to have died intestate, so that the daughter-in-law could not substantiate her right to any part of the old man's property. In these circumstances George II renewed the pension (which had lapsed on the death of George I) for the widow and her daughter. Williams afterwards married the daughter. Mrs. Williams, when a widow and fast drifting into penury, was taken by Josiah Tucker, dean of Gloucester, to his house.
West was eminent for ‘legal and constitutional learning.’ He wrote: 1. ‘A Discourse concerning Treasons and Bills of Attainder’ (anon.), 1716; 2nd ed. 1717. This was answered in ‘Rocks and Shallows Discovered, or the Ass kicking at the Lyons in the Tower.’ On 5 Jan. 1715–16 Lintot purchased for 4l. 6s. a half-share of West's work on treasons (Nichols, Lit. Anecdotes, viii. 295). 2. ‘An Enquiry into the Origin and Manner of creating Peers’ (anon.), 1719, reprinted with his name in 1782. This was attacked, it is said by James St. Amand, in ‘Animadversions on the Enquiry into creating Peers, with some Hints about pyrating in Learning, in a Letter to Richard W–st,’ 1724. The work of West was based on No. 536, vols. xi. and xii. in the Petyt manuscripts in the Inner Temple Library, entitled ‘De creatione nobilium,’ 2 vols. fol.
Apart from his tragedy of ‘Hecuba,’ his contributions to lighter literature included some papers in the ‘Freethinker’ of Ambrose Philips and others.
A full-length portrait of West in his official robes was presented to the Inner Temple by his grand-nephew, Richard Glover, M.P. for Penryn, and hangs in the parliament chamber. This Glover was a son of Richard Glover [q. v.] (author of ‘Leonidas’), whose mother was West's sister. Another portrait by an unknown painter is in the National Gallery, Dublin.
[Benchers of Inner Temple, p. 64; Notes and Queries, 4th ser. xi. 462–3, xii. 14–15, 5th ser. i. 236, iv. 228, 315; Smyth's Irish Law Officers, p. 39; Boulter's Letters, i. 105–45; O'Flanagan's Chancellors of Ireland, ii. 38–45; Archbishop Nicolson's Letters, ii. 610; information from Inner Temple Admissions, per Mr. J. E. L. Pickering.]
WEST, RICHARD (1716–1742), poet and friend of Thomas Gray, born in 1716, was the only son of Richard West (d. 1726) [q. v.] He was educated at Eton with Thomas Ashton, Gray, and Horace Walpole, forming a ‘quadruple alliance’ of friendship, and was known among them as ‘Favonius.’ In youth he was ‘tall and slim, of a pale and meagre look and complexion,’ and he was then reckoned a more brilliant genius than Gray. The rest of the friends went to Cambridge, but West matriculated from Christ Church, Oxford, on 22 May 1735 at the age of nineteen.
West was from his youth marked out for the profession of the bar, through the influential positions of his father and his uncle, Sir Thomas Burnet [q. v.] On 21 Feb. 1737–8 he was at Dartmouth Street, Westminster; by the following April he had left Oxford, and was studying at the Inner Temple, where he had been admitted on 17 July 1733. Gray came to London in September 1738 to join him at the bar, but was drawn off into travelling with Horace Walpole. West then thought of the army as a profession, but his strength was failing, and in September 1741 Gray found his friend ill and weary in London.
In March 1742 West was at Pope's (or Popes), two miles to the west of Hatfield in Hertfordshire, the seat of David Mitchell. A few days later he was racked by a ‘most violent cough,’ and he died at Pope's on 1 June 1742. He was buried in the chancel of Hatfield church, immediately before the altar-rails, and a gravestone to his
