Frances (Balchen) West

Frances Balchen was a daughter of Dame Susan and Sir John Balchen (1670-1744), Knt., an admiral in the Royal Navy who ended his long and illustrious career as Governor of Greenwich Hospital (1743) before being lost at sea near Guernsey during a final expedition in October 1744. The date of her marriage to Temple West (1713-1757), a naval officer and nephew of Richard Temple, Viscount Cobham, is unknown, but it was probably prior to June 1738 when West took command of a frigate operating in the Channel and off the coast of Portugal. Early in 1741 Temple West was transferred to the Sapphire and by May 1741 he was commanding the Dartmouth on the Mediterranean alongside his wife's brother George Balchen (d.1745), captain of the Folkestone. During a visit to Florence in November 1742, West impressed Horace Mann as "a man of admirable good sense quiet and easy. He subsequently became Vice-Admiral of the red and of the blue, lord commissioner of the Admiralty, and a member of Parliament for Buckinghamshire, before dying at the age of forty-three on August 9, 1757. The widowed Frances West paid to have a monument erected in his memory in Westminster Abbey. The date of her death is unknown.