William Paston, 2nd Earl of Yarmouth

William Paston, 2nd Earl of Yarmouth FRS (1654 – 25 December 1732) of Oxnead, Norfolk and Turnham Green, Chiswick, Middlesex was a British peer and politician.

Early life Born in 1654, he was the eldest surviving son of six sons and three daughters of Robert Paston, 1st Earl of Yarmouth and his wife, Rebecca, née Clayton and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. He succeeded his father as 2nd Earl of Yarmouth in 1683, inheriting his estate and Oxnead Hall.

His paternal grandparents were the antiquarian and arts collector Sir William Paston, 1st Baronet of Oxnead and, his first wife, Lady Katherine Bertie (a daughter of the 1st Earl of Lindsey). His maternal grandfather was Sir Jasper Clayton, a haberdasher from London.

Personal life In 1671, he had married the widowed Charlotte Jemima Henrietta Maria Howard (née FitzRoy) (–1684), the illegitimate daughter of Charles II and Elizabeth Killigrew Boyle, wife of Francis Boyle (afterwards Viscount Shannon in Ireland). With her first husband, dramatist James Howard, she had a daughter, Stuarta Werburge Howard, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Mary II who died unmarried. Before her death in London on 28 July 1684, they had four children who survived childhood, though only one survived him:

Charles Paston, Lord Paston (1673–1718), who married Elizabeth Pitt. Lady Charlotte Paston (1675–1736), who married Thomas Herne of Haveringland Hall, Norfolk, son of Clement Herne, in 1703. After his death, she married Maj. Thomas Weldron, son of Walter Weldon, in 1732. Lady Rebecca Paston (1681–1726), who married Sir John Holland, 2nd Baronet, MP for Norfolk who was a grandson of Sir John Holland, 1st Baronet. Hon. William Paston (1682–1711), a Captain in the Royal Navy who died unmarried. The widow of Sir Robert Wiseman, she was a daughter of Dudley North, 4th Baron North and sister to Francis North, 1st Baron Guilford, Roger North, and John North.

Lady Yarmouth died in 1830 and Lord Yarmouth died, heavily in debt, on 25 December 1732 at Epsom, Surrey, aged seventy-eight. As his sons, his brothers and their male heirs had predeceased him, his titles became extinct. His heavily mortgaged estate had to be sold.

Descendants Throug his eldest son Charles, he was a grandfather of Hon. Elizabeth Paston (d. 1724), who also predeceased Lord Yarmouth.

Through his daughter, Lady Charlotte, he was a grandfather of Paston Herne, whose illegitimate daughter, Anne Herne, married Sir Everard Buckworth (later Buckworth-Herne), 5th Baronet, and was the mother of Sir Buckworth Buckworth-Herne-Soame, 6th Baronet.