Refrain from including an Eastern predecessor (8)
I believe the answer is:
forebear
'predecessor' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'refrain from including an eastern' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'from' could be 'o' (I've seen this in other clues) and 'o' is present in the answer.
'an' could be 'a' and 'a' is found in the answer.
'eastern' could be 'e' and 'e' is located in the answer.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for forebear that I've seen before include "One of an earlier generation" , "Person from whom you are descended" , "predecessor?" , "Ancestor" , "one from the past" .)