Sir Humphrey Forster, 2nd Baronet

Sir Humphrey Forster, 2nd Baronet (c. 1649 – December 1711) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1677 and 1695.

Forster was the son of William Forster of Aldermaston House and his wife Elizabeth Tyrell, daughter of Sir John Tyrell of Heron, Essex. He was grandson of Sir Humphrey Forster, 1st Baronet (of Aldermaston). He succeeded to this Baronetcy and the Aldermaston manor and leased rectory on the death of his grandfather in 1663, his father having died in 1661.^[1]

In 1677, Forster was elected Member of Parliament for Berkshire in a by-election to the Cavalier Parliament. He was re-elected MP for Berkshire in the first election of 1679 but not in the second. He was elected MP for Berkshire again in 1685. and then in 1690 and 1695. He was Sheriff of Berkshire in 1704^[2] and knighted around the same time.

Forster died at the age of about 62, when the Baronetcy became extinct and is buried in the church of St Aidan with his distant ancestors who received the earlier Forster baronetcy in Bamburgh, Northumberland and who held Bamburgh Castle for two centuries until the English Civil War.^[1]

Aldermaston legacy

His largest estate left the related Achard-Forster families in whose hands it had been since a 12th-century grant by Henry I of England in 1762, when it passed into a family due to a marriage, the Congreve family of the manor house, Congreve, Penkridge, Staffordshire. The estate had to be sold on a bankruptcy (following fire) and has been more than halved with a rebuilt manor house in Elizabethan style.

Forster married at St. Margaret's, Westminster on 26 November 1672, Judith, daughter of Sir Humphrey Winch, 1st Baronet and his wife Rebecca Browne, daughter of Martin Browne, Alderman of London.^[1]

Early in the 17th century the family funded a vestry south of the Church of St Mary the Virgin, Aldermaston and their own memorial vault beneath this. Four polished marble slabs in the floor commemorate:

• Humphrey's daughter, Rebekah, d. age 12 in 1676.
• Ann, daughter of William Forster, d. in infancy in 1664.
• John Forster, d. 1674
• Humphrey's mother, Lady Anne Forster, d. 1673.

On the south wall of the chancel are two stone slabs and lengthy family tablet from the vault entry, transcribed into the county history of 1923.^[3]

References

1. George Edward Cokayne Complete Baronetage, Volume 1 1900
2. History of Parliament Online- Forster, Sir Humphrey
3. 'Parishes: Aldermaston' in A History of the County of Berkshire: Volume 3, ed. P H Ditchfield and William Page (London, 1923), pp. 386-395. Accessed 10 December 2014