Baron Forester
Title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom

Baron Forester, of Willey Park in the County of Shropshire, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 17 July 1821 for Cecil Weld-Forester, who had previously represented Wenlock in the House of Commons. Born Cecil Forester, he assumed the additional surname of Weld by royal licence in 1811. His son, the second Baron, also represented Wenlock from 1790 in Parliament, and later served in the Tory administration of Sir Robert Peel as Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms (Government Chief Whip in the House of Lords) from 1841 to 1846.
He was succeeded by his younger brother, the third Baron. He sat as a Conservative Member of Parliament for Wenlock for 46 years, and was Father of the House from 1873 to 1874. His nephew, the fifth baron, also represented Wenlock in Parliament as a Conservative. Both his son, the sixth baron, and grandson, the seventh baron, served as mayor of Wenlock. As of 2017, the title is held by the latter's grandson, the ninth baron, who succeeded his father in 2004.
The family were anciently hereditary foresters of Wellington Hay in Mount Gilbert Forest, and lived at Wellington or at Watling Street Hall (later Old hall), where they had a half virgate of land held by keeping the Hay.
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This entry incorporates text from “Baron Forester” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.