WENTWORTH, Thomas (1613-65)

Thomas Wentworth, styled Lord Wentworth, was closely associated with his father Thomas Wentworth, earl of Cleveland, in royalism, war and debt throughout his life. He appears to have participated with his father in the extravagance with which they signalled their status at the court of Charles I. In 1631 he and his father borrowed £5,000 from Sir John Weld and as security conveyed to him their lands in Toddington, Bedfordshire, the family seat. CCC, 2157–8. Three years later, father and son borrowed over £12,000 from the widow of Paul Bayning^†, Viscount Bayning, and from Mary, countess of Home [S], and offered as security their other principal manors of Hackney and Stepney in Middlesex. Eg. 3006, f. 6. Such transactions and the liabilities they imposed were to bedevil the Wentworths for the rest of their lives.

Wentworth first sat in Parliament as knight of the shire for Bedfordshire in the Short Parliament, but was summoned to the Lords by a writ of acceleration in his father’s barony of Wentworth on 3 Nov. 1640, the first day of the Long Parliament. He first took his seat there three weeks later. He was appointed a commissioner of array for Bedfordshire in 1642 and joined the king’s army almost immediately upon the outbreak of war. In November 1645 he took over the general command of the Prince of Wales’s army in the west for a short time before his ineffectual command and haughty manner led to his replacement by Ralph Hopton^‡, Baron Hopton. Clarendon, Rebellion, iii. 288, iv. 98, 107, 130–1; CSP Dom. 1644, p. 1. By October 1647 Wentworth had fled England and joined the exiled court on the continent, where over the course of the 1650s he became a leading courtier and counsellor of Charles II, being appointed a gentleman of the bedchamber, a Privy Councillor and Charles II’s envoy to the court of Denmark and to smaller German principalities. Eg. 2980, f. 2; Eg. 2534, f. 184; Eg. 2535, ff. 67, 79, 359–60, 381; Eg. 2550, f. 11; CSP Dom. 1655, p. 174; 1657–8, pp. 298, 324, 335; HMC 4th Rep. 548, 554. In 1656, as part of the treaty with Spain, Wentworth raised and commanded a regiment of foot guards, a body of former royalist officers and soldiers. While in the Netherlands, he had met and, by March 1658, had married Philadelphia Carey, a member of that branch of the Carey family, descendants of Henry Carey^†, Baron Hunsdon, who had settled in the Netherlands and had served with the Dutch army for at least three generations.

Wentworth returned to England with Charles II on 25 May 1660. All the posts and offices that he had held in the court in exile were reconfirmed in the new setting of Westminster. His chief responsibilities continued to be military. His regiment remained garrisoned at Dunkirk while he was in England, but at the sale of that town to France in 1662 his troops were brought back to England. CSP Dom. 1661–2, pp. 313, 465, 496, 508, 525; J. Childs, Army of Charles II, 11–12, 233. John Evelyn recorded his observations of a procession of the king’s Guards on 4 July 1663, ‘where the old earl of Cleveland trailed a pike and led the right-hand file in a foot company commanded by the Lord Wentworth his son, a worthy spectacle and example, being both of them old and valiant soldiers’. Evelyn Diary, iii. 357. As a further mark of favour, in November 1663 the king granted Wentworth a ‘free gift’ of £500. CSP Dom. 1663–4, p. 358. Wentworth still had hanging over him the many debts he had incurred before the civil wars; with his financial situation further exacerbated by sequestration, he was dependent on such generosity from the king and the continued payment of his pension. Ibid. pp. 596, 610.

Wentworth took his seat on 1 June 1660 and attended one-third of the meetings of the Convention but was named to no committees apart from the large sessional committees for privileges and petitions. From 28 Aug. until 17 Nov. 1660 he held the proxy of Edward Herbert, 3rd Baron Herbert of Chirbury. His attendance was slightly better during the first session of the Cavalier Parliament in 1661–2, in which he came to 45 per cent of the sittings. Here he was named to seven committees, including some dealing with subjects about which, as an old royalist soldier, he would have had strong feelings: the pains and penalties to be inflicted on those exempted from the Act of Indemnity (25 July 1661); the repeal of the acts and ordinances of the Long Parliament (24 Jan. 1662); the jurisdiction of the court of admiralty (15 Mar. 1662); and the provision of the fund for indigent royalist officers (25 Apr. 1662).

His principal concern in the Convention and in the 1661–2 session is likely to have been to ensure the passage of the private acts allowing the Wentworth lands in Stepney, Hackney and Bedfordshire to be sold to pay his and his father’s long-standing creditors. Although these bills are usually annotated in the Journals as ‘the earl of Cleveland’s bill’, the provisions were clearly to satisfy the creditors of both Cleveland and Wentworth. They first petitioned the House to bring in a bill on this matter on 2 July 1660, but the bill ‘for the settling of all the manors and lands of the earl of Cleveland for settling the debts of him and his son, Lord Wentworth’ was not read in the House until 13 August. It was passed in the House on 31 Aug. and received the royal assent on 29 Dec. 1660, after the Commons had considered it for some time following the summer recess. Another bill ‘for the confirmation and explanation of an Act for settling some of the manors of the earl of Cleveland’ was brought up from the Commons and received its first reading in the House on 11 July 1661, in the first session of the Cavalier Parliament. It was passed by the House only four days later and received the royal assent on 30 July. A full account of the scope and progress of these bills in 1660 and 1661, and of the controversy that could be generated by them, is given in the biography of Thomas Wentworth, earl of Cleveland. Wentworth had another private bill under consideration in 1661–2, the bill to naturalize his Dutch-born wife, Philadelphia. This was read first in the House on 13 Dec. 1661 and Lady Wentworth formally took the oaths of supremacy and allegiance before the House a week later. On 11 Jan. 1662 the bill was passed without amendment, was sent to the Commons for its approval and received the royal assent on 17 May. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/1, p. 89.

Wentworth came to just over half of the meetings of the session of spring 1663, where he was named to seven committees, including that established on 9 July for the bill to settle the Post Office revenue on James Stuart, duke of York. He was part of a delegation which on 2 July presented to the committee considering the dispute between John Paulet, 5th marquess of Winchester, and his son Charles Powlett, styled Lord St John (later duke of Bolton), the most recent conditions and offers of Lord St John. Wentworth was then made part of a larger team assigned to treat with the marquess and his son in order to resolve the matter. Ibid. pp. 409–10. Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, in drawing up his forecast of how the House would divide over the attempt by George Digby, 2nd earl of Bristol, to impeach Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, could not be sure which side Wentworth would take. Wentworth came to 69 per cent of the meetings of the following session, in spring 1664, and was nominated to two committees in the space of only a few days: for an estate bill on 19 Apr. and for the bill against gaming two days later. He held the proxy of his distant kinsman William Wentworth, 2nd earl of Strafford, from 29 Mar. until the end of the session.

Wentworth came to 31 meetings of the 1664–5 session before he last sat in the House on 23 Feb. 1665. Even within that period he was named to four committees, including a navigation bill, a fen drainage bill and two estate bills. He died unexpectedly on 1 Mar., one day before the session was prorogued, leaving behind him a widow and one daughter, Henrietta Maria, a mountain of debts and no will. Wentworth’s estate was left to the administration of his widow, Philadelphia, Lady Wentworth, who was granted an irregularly paid pension of £600 and with economies was able to salvage some of the estate, including the principal residence of Toddington Manor. PROB 6/40, f. 71; CSP Dom. 1664–5, pp. 413, 434. When her grandfather the earl of Cleveland died in 1667, Henrietta Maria, the heir general, became suo jure Baronness Wentworth. In the late 1670s she became the mistress of James Scott, duke of Monmouth, despite the constant offers of marriage which she received from the scions of other prominent noble houses. Verney ms mic. M636/30, E. to J. Verney, 16 July 1677; M636/37, Dr W. Denton to Sir R. Verney, 21 May 1683. She joined Monmouth in his exile in the Netherlands after 1683 but returned to England only after his execution, where she died in April 1686. At her death the title passed to her aunt Anne, widow of John Lovelace, 2nd Baron Lovelace, and then to Anne’s granddaughter Martha, at whose childless death in 1745 the title became extinct.