WENTWORTH, Thomas, Lord Wentworth (1613-65), of Toddington, Beds.

Wentworth was born into an aristocratic family which had been raised to the peerage by Henry VIII in 1529. The family had originated in Suffolk, for which the 1st Baron Wentworth (Thomas Wentworth†) had been elected as knight of the shire in 1529, but had moved its principal residence to Bedfordshire in 1614, when Thomas, 4th Baron Wentworth, inherited the estate from his great-aunt, Jane, widow of 1st Baron Cheyne (Henry Cheyne†).1J.H. Blundell, Toddington: Its Annals and People (1925). Their new seat was at Toddington in the southern half of the county.2J.H. Blundell, ‘The inventory of Toddington manor house, 1644’, Pub. Beds. Hist. Recs. Soc. xi. 129-36. The future MP was invested as a knight of the Bath, aged barely thirteen, the day before Charles I’s coronation in 1626 and four days later his father was promoted to become earl of Cleveland. Such education as Thomas received seems to have been undertaken privately. He travelled abroad during in the early 1630s, with it being reported in February 1631 that he was at Brussels on his way to The Hague having previously spent time in France.3CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 516.

By the mid-1630s Wentworth was attending the English court. There he quickly achieved some notoriety as a duellist, fighting Thomas Weston (later 4th earl of Portland) in April 1635 and Paul Bayning, 2nd Viscount Bayning, in May 1636. Vigorous and impetuous, his exploits earned him a spell in the Tower of London in June 1636 for duelling and intemperate words.4CSP Ven. 1632-6, pp. 379, 382; CSP Dom. 1636-7, pp. 8, 66; HMC Var. vii. 415. His dispute with Bayning was doubtless over money. Wentworth and his father were now very heavily in debt, having borrowed £10,000 from Bayning in 1634. A second loan of £2,000 had then been contracted by them from the countess of Home in 1635. Both loans were secured on Cleveland’s estates at Stepney and Hackney.5HMC 7th Rep. 112; CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 310. Their total debts together amounted to £19,200.6CSP Dom. 1637-8, p. 130. Mindful of the need to raise money, Wentworth’s father was by 1639 trying to arrange a marriage for him with Barbara, daughter of the prominent civil lawyer, Sir John Lamb, dean of the arches and loyal supporter of the archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud. But the earl was determined to exact a high price from Lamb for the privilege of marrying his daughter into a family of rank and the marriage negotiations foundered on what Sir John Lamb termed ‘most unreasonable terms on their part’.7CSP Dom. 1639, pp. 320-1, 426; 1638-9, p. 261; CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, pp. 614, 746-7. In 1640 Cleveland had to apply to Parliament for a private Act to enable him to sell lands to pay off his own and his son’s debts, but this was challenged by another of his creditors, Tristram Woodward, and the bill stalled in the Lords.8LJ iv. 208a-b, 229a-b, 302b, 332a-b; HMC 4th Rep. 30, 33, 36, 39, 60, 61, 84; VCH Beds. iii. 440-1. It was revived 20 years later in the Convention.9HMC 7th Rep. 98, 112, 125, 153. With the outbreak of war with the Scottish Covenanters in 1639, Wentworth began what was to be a long career as a soldier, serving as captain of a troop in the campaigns of 1639 and 1640.10HMC Rutland, i. 506; CSP Dom. 1640-1, pp. 5, 257-8; 1641-3, p. 261. His service in the first bishops’ war evidently failed to impress the lord admiral, the 4th earl of Northumberland (Algernon Percy†), who remarked that the mobilisation of officers in 1640 had been ordered with such urgency ‘else I think some of them would have spent their summer as Lord Wentworth did last year’.11CSP Dom. 1640, p. 305.

The family’s wealth and social standing placed it at the pinnacle of Bedfordshire’s social elite, ranking with the Greys, earls of Kent, and well above the parvenu Scots, the Bruces, earls of Elgin. Wentworth’s father had served as lord lieutenant of the county since 1625 and exercised considerable electoral influence within the county. That influence helped ensure Wentworth’s election as knight of the shire for Bedfordshire for both the 1640 Parliaments. In the case of the Long Parliament election, he did have to see off a challenge from Sir Roger Burgoyne* which resulted in a double return. This took place in Wentworth’s absence, as he was still stationed with his troops in the north of England and did not travel south until the middle of November.12CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 258. This meant that he never took his seat in the Commons in the Long Parliament. On 3 November, the same day that the new Parliament was assembling at Westminster, the king issued writs of summons to several heirs to earldoms to allow them take their seats in the House of Lords by right of their father’s baronies. Wentworth was one of those thus honoured. He took his seat in the Lords on 25 November. The assumption that Wentworth would help strengthen the court interest there was well founded and, once civil war had broken out, he held a series of senior commands in the king’s army.

After many years of loyal service to Charles I and then to the exiled and restored Charles II, Wentworth predeceased his father, dying intestate and without a male heir on 1 March 1665.13PROB6/40, f. 44; HMC 6th Rep. 364. His body was buried in the Wentworth vault in the parish church at Toddington six days later.14Beds. Par. Regs. ed. Emmison, xxiii. 69; W. Horley, ‘Toddington vault’, Beds. N. and Q. iii. 380-1. He was succeeded in his barony of Wentworth by his only daughter, Henrietta Maria (1660-86). The earldom of Cleveland became extinct on his father’s death in 1667.