Thomas Wentworth

Personal details

Thomas Wentworth was born in London on 13 April 1593, eldest son of Sir William Wentworth, 1st Baronet, of Wentworth Woodhouse in Yorkshire family, and his wife Anne. He was educated at St John's College, Cambridge, became a law student at the Inner Temple in 1607, and in 1611 was knighted. He married firstly Margaret, daughter of Francis Clifford, Earl of Cumberland and Grisold Hughes.

Early parliamentary career

The young Sir Thomas Wentworth, 2nd Baronet, entered the English Parliament in 1614 as Yorkshire's representative in the "Addled Parliament", but it was not until the parliament of 1621, in which he sat for the same constituency, that he took part in a debate. His position was ambivalent. He did not sympathise with the zeal of the popular party for war with Spain, favoured by George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, James I's foremost advisor and favourite, but James's denial of the rights and privileges of parliament seems to have caused Wentworth to join in the vindication of the claims of the House of Commons, and he supported the protestation which dissolved the third parliament of James.

In 1622 Wentworth's first wife Margaret Clifford died. Wentworth, according to his friends, was deeply grieved by her death; but in February 1625 he married Arabella Holles, daughter of John Holles, 1st Earl of Clare and Anne Stanhope: a marriage which was generally believed to be a true love affair on both sides. He represented Pontefract in the Happy Parliament of 1624, but appears to have taken no active part. He expressed a wish to avoid foreign complications and "do first the business of the commonwealth".

In the first parliament of Charles I, in June 1625, Wentworth again represented Yorkshire, and showed his hostility to the proposed war with Spain by supporting a motion for an adjournment before the house proceeded to business. He opposed the demand for war subsidies made on Buckingham's behalf—after the death of James I, Buckingham had become first minister to Charles—and after Parliament was dissolved in November he was made High Sheriff of Yorkshire, a position which excluded him from the parliament which met in 1626. Yet he had never taken up an attitude of antagonism to the King. His position was very different from that of the regular opposition. He was anxious to serve the Crown, but he disapproved of the King's policy.

In January 1626 Wentworth asked for the presidency of the Council of the North, and was favourably received by Buckingham. But after the dissolution of the parliament, he was dismissed from the justiceship of the peace and the office of custos rotulorum of Yorkshire—which he had held since 1615—probably because he would not support the court in forcing the country to contribute money without a parliamentary grant. In 1627, he refused to contribute to the forced loan, and was subsequently imprisoned.

The Petition of Right and its aftermath

In 1628, Wentworth was one of the more vocal supporters of the Petition of Right, which attempted to curb the power of the King. Once Charles had grudgingly accepted the Petition, Wentworth felt it appropriate to support the crown, saying, "The authority of a king is the keystone which closeth up the arch of order and government". He was consequently branded a turncoat.

In the parliament of 1628, Wentworth joined the popular leaders in resistance to arbitrary taxation and imprisonment, but tried to obtain his goal without offending the Crown. He led the movement for a bill which would have secured the liberties of the subject as completely as the Petition of Right afterwards did, but in a manner less offensive to the King. The proposal failed because of both the uncompromising nature of the parliamentary party and Charles's stubborn refusal to make concessions, and the leadership was snatched from Wentworth's hands by John Eliot and Edward Coke. Later in the session, he quarrelled with Eliot because Wentworth wanted to come to a compromise with the Lords, so as to leave room for the King to act unchecked in special emergencies.

On 22 July 1628, not long after the prorogation, Wentworth was created Baron Wentworth, and received the promise of the presidency of the Council of the North at the next vacancy. This implied no change of principle. He was now at variance with the Parliamentary Party on two great subjects of policy, disapproving both of the intention of Parliament to take the powers of the executive and also of its inclination towards Puritanism. When once the breach was made it naturally grew wider, partly from the energy each party put into its work, and partly from the personal animosities which arose.

As yet Wentworth was not directly involved in the government of the country. However, following the assassination of Buckingham, in December 1628, he became Viscount Wentworth and not long afterwards president of the Council of the North. In the speech delivered at York on taking office, he announced his intention, almost in the words of Francis Bacon, of doing his utmost to bind up the prerogative of the Crown and the liberties of the subject in an indistinguishable union. "Whoever", he said, "ravels forth into questions the right of a king and of a people shall never be able to wrap them up again into the comeliness and order he found them". His tactics were the same as those he later practised in Ireland, leading to the accusation that he planned to centralise all power with the executive at the expense of the individual in defiance of constitutional liberties.

Lord Deputy of Ireland

The 1st Viscount Wentworth, as he had become, became a privy counsellor in November 1629. On 12 January 1632 he was made Lord Deputy of Ireland, arriving in Dublin on 23 July the following year. He had recently suffered the loss of his beloved second wife Arabella in childbirth. Despite his genuine grief for Arabella, his third marriage to Elizabeth Rhodes in 1632 was also a happy one; but through a strange lapse of judgement, he did not announce it publicly for almost a year, by which time damaging rumours about the presence of a young woman in his house (who was reputed to be his mistress) had gained wide circulation. Wedgwood remarks that it was typical of Wentworth to be oblivious to the bad impression which actions like this might make on the public. Gossip later linked his name with that of Eleanor Loftus, daughter-in-law of The 1st Viscount Loftus, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, but although a strong bond existed between them, and her death in 1639 caused him much grief, there is no evidence that their relationship went beyond friendship.

In his government here he proved to be an able ruler. "The lord deputy of Ireland", wrote Sir Thomas Roe to Elizabeth of Bohemia, "doth great wonders and governs like a king, and hath taught that kingdom to show us an example of envy, by having parliaments and knowing wisely how to use them." He reformed the administration, summarily dismissing the inefficient English officials. He succeeded in so manipulating the parliaments that he obtained the necessary grants, and secured their cooperation in various useful legislative enactments. He started a new victualling trade with Spain, promoted linen manufacture, and encouraged the development of the resources of the country in many directions. The Court of Castle Chamber, the Irish counterpart of the Star Chamber, which up to that time had only operated intermittently, was transformed into a regular and efficient part of the Irish administration.

Customs duties rose from a little over £25,000 in 1633–34 to £57,000 in 1637–38. Wentworth raised an army, put an end to piracy, imposed Arminian reforms onto the Calvinist-dominated Church of Ireland, and launched a campaign to win back Church lands lost during the Reformation. His strong administration reduced the tyranny of the wealthy over the poor. Yet these measures were all carried out by arbitrary methods which made them unpopular. Their aim was not the prosperity of the Irish but the benefit to the English exchequer, and Wentworth suppressed the trade in cloth "lest it should be a means to prejudice that staple commodity of England." Castle Chamber, like its model Star Chamber, was accused of brutal and arbitrary proceedings. Individual cases of unfairness included those of Robert Esmond, a ship's captain, and cousin of Laurence Esmonde, Lord Esmonde, accused of customs evasions, whom Wentworth was alleged to have assaulted, so causing his death, Lord Chancellor Loftus and Lord Mountnorris, the last of whom Wentworth caused to be sentenced to death to obtain the resignation of his office, and then pardoned. Promises of legislation such as the concessions known as 'The Graces' were not kept.

Recall and impeachment

Wentworth was recalled to England in September 1639. He was expected to help sort out the problems that were growing at home: namely, bankruptcy and war with the Scottish Covenanters, and became the King's principal adviser. Unaware how much opposition had developed in England during his absence, he recommended the calling of a parliament to support a renewal of the war, hoping that by the offer of a loan from the Privy Councillors, to which he contributed £20,000, he would save Charles from having to submit to the new parliament if it proved truculent.

The King created him Earl of Strafford in January 1640 (the Wentworth family seat of Wentworth Woodhouse lay in the hundred of Strafford (Strafforth) in the West Riding of Yorkshire) and in March he went to Ireland to hold an Irish parliament, where the Catholic vote secured a grant of subsidies to be used against the Presbyterian Scots. An Irish army was to be levied to assist in the coming war. When Strafford returned to England, he found that the Commons were holding back from a grant of supply, so he tried to enlist the peers on the side of the King, and persuaded Charles to be content with a smaller grant than he had originally asked for.

From April to August 1640, on his return from Ireland, Strafford occupied the newly built Leicester House, Westminster, in the absence of its owner Lord Leicester.

The Commons insisted on peace with the Scots. Charles, on the advice of—or perhaps by the treachery of—Henry Vane the Elder, returned to his larger demand of 12 subsidies; and on 9 May, at the privy council, Strafford, though reluctantly, voted for a dissolution. The same morning the Committee of Eight of the privy council met again. Vane and others were for a mere defence against invasion. Strafford's advice was the contrary. "Go on vigorously or let them alone ... go on with a vigorous war as you first designed, loose and absolved from all rules of government, being reduced to extreme necessity, everything is to be done that power might admit ... You have an army in Ireland you may employ here to reduce this kingdom". He tried to force the citizens of London to lend money, and supported a project for debasing the coinage and seizing bullion in the Tower of London (the property of foreign merchants). He also advocated the purchase of a loan from Spain by the offer of a future alliance. Strafford was now appointed to command the English army, and was made a Knight of the Garter, but he fell ill at a crucial moment. In the great council of peers, which assembled on 24 September at York, the struggle was given up, and Charles announced that he had issued writs for another parliament.

The failure of impeachment and the Bill of Attainder

However tyrannical Strafford's earlier conduct may have been, his offence was outside the definition of high treason. Although a flood of complaints poured in from Ireland, and Strafford's many enemies there were happy to testify against him, none of them could point to any act which was treasonable, as opposed to high-handed. The copy of rough notes of Strafford's speech in the committee of the council, obtained from Sir Henry Vane the Younger, were validated by councillors who had been present on the occasion, including Henry Vane the Elder, who did ultimately corroborate them (but nearly disowned his own son for having found and leaked them in the first place), and partially by Algernon Percy, Earl of Northumberland. This was not evidence which would convict in a court of law, and all parties knew this. Strafford's words, particularly the crucial phrase this kingdom, had to be arbitrarily interpreted as referring to the subjection of England and not of Scotland, and were also spoken on a privileged occasion. Strafford took full advantage of the weak points in his attack on the evidence collected. Over and over Strafford pointed to the fundamental weakness in the prosecution: how could it be treason to carry out the King's wishes? The lords, his judges, were influenced in his favour. The impeachment failed on 10 April 1641. Pym and his allies increased public pressure, threatening members of Parliament unless they punished Strafford.

The Commons, therefore, feeling their victim slipping from their grasp, dropped the impeachment, and brought in and passed a bill of attainder on 21 April by a vote of 204 to 59. Owing to the opposition of the Lords, and Pym's own preference for the more judicial method, the procedure of impeachment was adhered to. Few of the Lords felt much personal liking for Strafford, but there were a fair number of "moderates", notably Francis Russell, Earl of Bedford, who thought that barring him from ever serving the King again was sufficient punishment. The families of his first two wives, the Cliffords and Holleses, used all their influence to gain a reprieve: even Denzil Holles, 1st Baron Holles, who was implacably hostile to the King, put aside political differences to plead for the life of his favourite sister's husband. Strafford might still have been saved but for Charles I's ill-advised conduct. A scheme to gain over the leaders of the parliament, and a scheme to seize the Tower of London and to liberate Strafford by force, were entertained concurrently and were mutually destructive. The revelation of the First Army Plot on 5 May 1641 caused the Lords to reject the submissions in defence of Strafford by Richard Lane and to pass the attainder. Strafford's enemies were implacable in their determination that he should die: in the Earl of Essex's phrase "stone dead hath no fellow", while the view of Oliver St. John was that Strafford should be regarded not a man, but as a dangerous animal who must be "knocked on the head". Nothing now remained but the King's signature.

Death and aftermath

Strafford met his fate on 12 May 1641 at Tower Hill, receiving the blessing of Archbishop Laud (who went on to be likewise imprisoned in the Tower, and executed on 10 January 1645). He was executed before a crowd estimated, probably with some exaggeration, at 300,000 on 12 May 1641 (as this number was roughly the population of London at the time, the crowd is likely to have been a good deal smaller). As the common hangman of London, Richard Brandon carried out Strafford's execution, and incidentally also of Archbishop Laud in January 1645.

Following news of Strafford's execution, Ireland rose in sanguinary rebellion in October 1641, which led to more bickering between King and Parliament, this time over the raising of an army. Any hope that Strafford's death would avert the coming crisis soon vanished: Wedgwood quotes the anonymous protest "They promised us that all should be well if my Lord Strafford's head were off, since when there is nothing better". Many of Strafford's Irish enemies, like Lord Cork, found that his removal had put their estates, and even their lives, at risk. When Charles I himself was executed eight years later, among his last words were that God had permitted his execution as punishment for his consenting to Strafford's death: "that unjust sentence which I suffered to take effect". In 1660, the House of Lords voted to expunge the record of Strafford's attainder from its official Journal, with the intention of repudiating its legal validity.

Assessment

In the course of his career, he made many enemies, who pursued him, with a remarkable mixture of fear and hatred, to his death. Yet Strafford was capable of inspiring strong friendships in private life: at least three men who served him in Ireland, Christopher Wandesford, George Radcliffe and Guildford Slingsby, remained his loyal friends to the end. Wentworth's last letter to Slingsby before his execution shows an emotional warmth with which he is not often credited. Sir Thomas Roe speaks of him as "Severe abroad and in business, and sweet in private conversation; retired in his friendships but very firm; a terrible judge and a strong enemy". He was a good husband and a devoted father. His appearance is described by Sir Philip Warwick: "In his person he was of a tall stature, but stooped much in the neck. His countenance was cloudy whilst he moved or sat thinking, but when he spoke, either seriously or facetiously, he had a lightsome and a very pleasant air; and indeed whatever he then did he performed very gracefully". He himself jested on his own "bent and ill-favoured brow", Lord Exeter replying that had he been "cursed with a meek brow and an arch of white hair upon it, he would never have governed Ireland nor Yorkshire". Despite his terrifying manner, there is no real evidence that he was physically violent: even the most serious charge against him, that he ill-treated Robert Esmonde, causing his death, rests on disputed testimony.

Family

Strafford was married three times:

Margaret Clifford (died 1622), daughter of Francis Clifford, 4th Earl of Cumberland.

Arabella Holles (died October 1631), daughter of John Holles, 1st Earl of Clare. Married in February 1625. they had issue including:

William Wentworth, 2nd Earl of Strafford

Anne, born October 1627, who married Edward Watson, 2nd Baron Rockingham

Arabella, born October 1630, who married Justin McCarthy, Viscount Mountcashel.

Elizabeth Rhodes, daughter of Sir Godfrey Rhodes. Married in October 1632; she died in 1688.

Strafford's honours were forfeited by his attainder, but his only son, William, who was born on 8 June 1626, received them all by a fresh grant from Charles I on 1 December 1641. In 1662 Parliament reversed his father's attainder, and William, already 1st Earl of Strafford of the second creation, became also 2nd earl of the first creation in succession to his father.

Strafford and Arabella's two daughters outlived him: Through his daughter Anne, Strafford was the ancestor of the prominent eighteenth-century statesman Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham. Strafford had a daughter, Margaret, with his third wife. The hatred felt by so many for Strafford did not extend to his widow and children, who were generally regarded with compassion: even at the height of the Civil War Parliament treated "that poor unfortunate family" with consideration.

Portrayals

Thomas was the subject of a verse play by the poet Robert Browning entitled Strafford (1837).

Strafford was portrayed by Patrick Wymark in the historical drama film Cromwell (1970).