Sir William Forester KB (10 December 1655 – February 1718), of Dothill Park, Apley Castle, and Watling Street in Wellington, Shropshire was a Whig politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons between 1679 and 1715.
In 1683 he was almost implicated in the Rye House Plot against Charles II, when a search revealed 50 muskets and pike heads were found hidden in an oven, and a large quantity of gunpowder buried on his estate.
He paid off a heavy fine, allegedly helped by selling off valuable timber grown on the Wrekin.
[5] He was an opponent of Charles' successor James II, suffering a spell of imprisonment in the Tower of London after the Monmouth Rebellion, and being exiled in Holland until he returned to England accompanying William III in 1688.
He was returned as MP for Wenlock at the 1689 English general election and was granted a sinecure place as Clerk of the Green Cloth in 1689, which he held to 1717.