suc. grandfa. 25 Apr. 1672 as 12th Bar. STOURTON.
First sat 5 Feb. 1673; last sat 6 Mar. 1679
b. c.1644, 1st s. of Edward Stourton and Mary, da. of Robert Petre†, 3rd Bar. Petre. m. settlement 20 Aug. 1664 (with £5,000), Elizabeth (d. Apr. 1688), da. of Sir John Preston, bt.1 9s. (3 d.v.p.). d. 7 Aug. 1685; admon. 3 Mar. 1686.
Associated with: Stourton House, Wilts.
William, 12th Baron Stourton was one of two children born during the brief marriage of Edward, eldest son of William Stourton, 11th Baron Stourton. His father died in the king’s service at Bristol in 1644. His mother appears to have died within six months of her second marriage to Sir Thomas Longueville, which probably took place in or about 1650. It is unclear where he spent his childhood. He may have been one of the grandchildren mentioned as being with his grandfather, the 11th Baron Stourton, in 1646 but his uncle,William Petre, 4th Baron Petre, claimed that he had had to maintain both his sister and her children after Edward Stourton’s death.2
Stourton’s marriage to Elizabeth Preston, and her marriage portion of £5,000 brought hopes of financial stability to a family whose finances had been seriously damaged by the Civil Wars, but their success in raising six sons to adulthood and the consequent need to make suitable provision for them added still further to the strain on the family finances. The full extent of the alienation of lands to provide for the younger sons is unknown apart from the settlement of the Stourton lands at Bonham on Thomas Stourton†, the second surviving son, who later succeeded as 14th Baron Stourton, and lands at Buckhorn Weston on Charles Stourton (1669-1739). Charles Stourton served as an army officer under James II and may have retained close links with the Jacobite court after the Revolution.3 Another son, John (1673-1748), became a monk of St Gregory’s Douai and titular cathedral prior of Bath.4
Stourton was present nearly every day of the first session of 1673. He failed to attend the very brief second session of that year but was again present nearly every day of the 1674 session and first session of 1675. Thereafter his attendance began to drop; to 75 per cent of the second 1675 session, just over 70 per cent for the 1677-8 session, 60 per cent in the first session of 1678 and 54 per cent in the second session of 1678. Somewhat puzzlingly, although barred from the House by his inability to take the oaths prescribed under the Test Act, he was listed as present on the first day for which the 1679 Parliament was summoned.
Despite his relatively high level of attendance little is known of Stourton’s parliamentary activities. He entered no proxy. He was regularly named to committees but no pattern of personal interest has been detected, and he is not known to have been active in them. He was not named to manage any conferences and there is no record of any speech that he may have made. He voted in favour of the address to the Crown for a dissolution of Parliament in November 1675 and was marked as a worthy papist by Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury, in 1677, suggesting that he held ‘country’ sympathies. On 26 May 1677 he invoked privilege of Parliament to protect his servant Charles Barnes from a civil suit; the offender had also uttered ‘words very derogatory to the privileges of the House of Peers and the said Lord Stourton’. On 4 Apr. 1678 he voted Philip Herbert, 7th earl of Pembroke, guilty of manslaughter. Not surprisingly, he is known to have opposed the provisions of the 1678 Test Act, but he escaped suspicion during the hysteria of the Popish Plot, perhaps because, unlike his maternal uncle, Lord Petre, his and his family’s connections tended to be with Benedictines rather than Jesuits.
His exclusion from Parliament was deeply felt and his monumental inscription in Stourton church commemorates his steadfast refusal to renounce his faith in order to remain an active member of the House. Stourton died, presumably unexpectedly since he was intestate, at the age of 40 and was succeeded by his son, Edward Stourton, 13th Baron Stourton.
R.P.