Thomas Weston

Thomas Weston (1584 – ) was a London merchant who first became involved with the Leiden Separatists who settled Plymouth Colony in 1620 and became known as the Pilgrims.

Early life Weston was baptized on December 21, 1584, at Rugeley, Staffordshire, England. He was the son of Ralph Weston and Anne Smith. He was admitted to the Ironmongers Company of London in 1609

Career In 1615, he persuaded Edward Pickering to become his agent in Holland and together they began to import a variety of nonconformist religious tracts that were seditious. In 1619, he and his agent Philomen Powell began importing tons of alum for which they did not pay custom duties. He and some of his associate Merchant Adventurers had been brought before the Privy Council and ordered to cease unlimited trade in the Netherlands. Soon after, he left England and travelled to Leiden, Holland, where his agent Pickering had married a Puritan woman belonging to a group of separatists who were in exile due to their religious views; these Puritans were hoping to gain passage to America.

Weston became involved with the Leiden Separatists who left England aboard the Mayflower and settled Plymouth colony in 1620. The colony was financed and begun under his direction, but he quit the enterprise in 1622. The children were then given over to the custody of three senior Pilgrim officials for the voyage to the New World. Three of the four children died the first bitter winter in Plymouth. Only Richard More survived. He left New England for Virginia, and by 1640, Maryland. Weston's activities in regard to the Plymouth colony are detailed in William Bradford's history - "So, Mr. Weston had come hither again, and afterward shaped his course for Virginia, and so for the present I shall leave him."

According to C.M. Andrews in the book Colonial Period, these remarks were recorded about Weston: "Weston, after squeezing all he could out of the Pilgrims, became a planter and burgess in Virginia, where he made trading and fishing voyages to the Maine coast. After being arrested more than once for breaking the Colony's laws, he went to Maryland, acquired new property, and returned to England.

Death

He died in London of the plague between May 5, 1647 and November 29, 1648. He was presumably still alive when William Barwick of Bristol deposed that Weston had come to London in June 1645 on the ship , and also before November 23, 1647 when Christopher Weaver allowed a generous bequest to his daughter, the widow Elizabeth Weston, for "her better advancement in marriage." William Bradford recorded: "He died afterwards at Bristol, in the time of the wars, of the sickness in that place."