WENTWORTH, Thomas (1591-1667)

Thomas Wentworth’s great-grandfather was created Baron Wentworth of Nettlestead, Suffolk, in 1529; Thomas inherited his peerage as 4th Baron Wentworth and the family estates in Suffolk and Middlesex at the age of two, following the early death from plague of his father, Henry Wentworth^†, 3rd Baron Wentworth. In 1614 he improved his estate further when he inherited the manor of Toddington in Bedfordshire from his great-aunt Jane, dowager Baroness Cheney. From this time he made Toddington his principal residence and so prominent did he become in local society that in 1618 he was made custos rotulorum of Bedfordshire.

Wentworth found favour from his near-contemporary Charles I, and perhaps more importantly from George Villiers^†, duke of Buckingham, whose close companion he became. On 5 Feb. 1626, at the time of the coronation, Wentworth was raised in the peerage as earl of Cleveland. Thereafter, Cleveland began to indulge in an extravagant lifestyle that plunged him deeply into debt. Eg. 3006, f. 6; HMC 7th Rep. 112; CCC, 2157. On 27 Apr. 1641 a bill was introduced into Parliament permitting him to mortgage or sell land in his manors of Stepney and Hackney to pay his debts. HMC 4th Rep. 30, 33, 34, 36, 39, 57, 59, 60, 84; PA, HL/PO/JO/10/1/43 for 26 Nov. 1640. He also secured an interim order allowing for the immediate sale of these properties to purchasers nominated by Cleveland himself. The bill never got further than the committee stage and the arrangement provided for by the order of 27 Apr. quickly broke down in the confused circumstances of the Civil War. Cleveland did enter into one arrangement which was to prove important in later years: in 1641, under the terms of this order, he mortgaged to William Smith^‡ much of his land in Stepney and Hackney. In the years following, when Cleveland was incapable of seeing to his Middlesex interests, Smith bought out the interests of other creditors so that his own claim on the Cleveland property in Middlesex amounted to £32,568. EcHR, 2nd ser. v. 196.

Cleveland became a leading royalist military commander during the Civil War, proving himself ‘a man of signal courage, and an excellent officer upon any bold enterprise’, remembered as ‘a nobleman of daring, courage, full of industry and activity, as well as firm loyalty, and usually successful in what he attempted’. Clarendon, Rebellion, iii. 288, 352, 366–8, 403, 434–5; P. Warwick, Memoires of the reigne of King Charles I, 300. Captured in 1644, he escaped by June 1649 to join Charles II and the royalist effort on the continent and he performed signal, though ultimately futile, service at Worcester in 1651, where he was once more captured and imprisoned until his release in 1656. HMC Var. v. 153; D. Lloyd, Memoires (1668), p. 571.

Following the 1651 act providing for the sale of royalists’ lands, almost all of Cleveland’s property in Middlesex and Bedfordshire was dispersed. William Smith, who held the greatest interest in Stepney and Hackney, was granted the lordships and the greater part of the two manors. Smith in turn conveyed the manors to Sir Richard Blackwell^‡, a commissioner for prize goods who became indebted for nearly £13,000 to the exchequer for his underhanded practices in that office. Consequently, the exchequer put the Middlesex estates back in the trust of William Smith, who was to manage them to pay Blackwell’s debts. From 1653 to 1660 Smith proceeded to sell off portions of the estate piecemeal. It has been suggested that ‘no other royalist with land in south-eastern England was so financially embarrassed’ as Cleveland – his debts, with interest, at the time of the sales have been estimated to have amounted to £112,082 – and consequently probably no other royalist saw his property so scattered and dispersed during this time. EcHR, 2nd ser. v. 195–9.

Cleveland first sat in the Convention House of Lords on 23 May 1660, and on Charles II’s entry into the capital six days later he led a group of gentry from Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire, ‘a thousand gentlemen, all in buff, laced with silver’, to greet the returning monarch. HMC 5th Rep. 181, 184; HMC Le Fleming, 25; Lloyd, Memoires, 571. In the succeeding weeks he was honoured with re-appointment to the offices which he had enjoyed before the civil wars – captain of the gentlemen pensioners and custos rotulorum and joint lord lieutenant of Bedfordshire. In this latter role he was active in setting the county on guard against the rumoured insurrection in the north in autumn 1663. Bodl. Carte 75, f. 125. He also felt free to intervene in elections. After his fellow lord lieutenant Robert Bruce, Baron Bruce (later earl of Ailesbury), proceeded to the upper House in 1664, Cleveland took measures, in concert with John Egerton, 2nd earl of Bridgwater, lord lieutenant of Buckinghamshire, to move the polling place for the Bedfordshire by-election from Ampthill to Bedford, to thwart the candidacy of Sir Henry Chester^‡ and to support that of Bridgwater’s nephew, Sir John Napier^‡. HP Commons, 1660–90, i. 125; HMC 15th Rep. VII, 172; WSHC, Ailesbury mss 1300/514. In 1662 Cleveland was further commissioned colonel of a regiment of cavalry, which appears to have seen service in the Dutch war in the summer of 1666. Verney ms mic. M636/21, Dr W. Denton to Sir R. Verney 28 June and 5 July 1666; CSP Dom. 1665–6, p. 469. John Evelyn recorded how on 4 July 1663 he saw a procession of His Majesty’s Guards, ‘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 [Thomas Wentworth, Baron Wentworth, a colonel of the Regiment of Foot Guards], a worthy spectacle and example, being both of them old and valiant soldiers’. Evelyn Diary, iii. 357.

Cleveland was a fairly regular member of the House after his first sitting on 23 May 1660, despite being excused for a period of about a week from 15 June ‘in regard of his ill health’. In total he came to 62 per cent of the sittings, but was most assiduous during the summer of 1660 when the petition he and his son had submitted on 2 July was under consideration. They wished to bring in another bill to enable them to sell the Stepney and Hackney land to help them pay their debts and argued that the many conveyances of their property from May 1642, done in contravention of the agreement of April 1641 and without their knowledge or consent, were invalid. A committee of 21 peers was established to consider this petition. HMC 7th Rep. 112; PA, HL/PO/JO/10/1/293, 2 July 1660. The committee heard witnesses and creditors throughout July and, perhaps to help Cleveland in his effort, another former royalist officer and colleague, John Belasyse, Baron Belasyse, who also had the reversion to Cleveland’s office of captain of the gentlemen pensioners, registered his proxy with the earl on 25 July; Cleveland retained control of it for the remainder of the Convention. CSP Dom. 1660–1, p. 61; Bodl. Carte 222, ff. 150–1. Counsel was able to convince the committee that Cleveland retained the right to redeem the mortgages and on 30 July, the committee chairman, John Finch, Baron Finch, reported to the House that Cleveland and Wentworth should be allowed to bring in their bill to settle the estates of Stepney and Hackney.

The bill was first read before the House on 13 Aug. 1660 and committed two days later. PA, HL/PO/JO/10/1/293, 2 July 1660; HL/PO/JO/10/1/298, 13 Aug. 1660. The committee met several times in late August and heard the arguments of the principal purchasers of Cleveland’s land but resolved in the end that ‘it is a mortgage throughout, looking on it as it was in 1641 when the bill was brought in first’. The only person for whom the committee made explicit exemption was Edward Montagu, 2nd earl of Manchester, who had purchased part of the estate in 1639–40. On 29 Aug. Finch again reported from committee that the bill was fit to pass with some amendments, as it did on its third reading two days later. It made its way through the Commons after the summer recess, and the lower chamber returned it to the House largely rewritten, with a few more names added to the schedule of creditors and a proviso confirming the absolute sale and exemption from the act of that part of Cleveland’s estate purchased by Manchester. PA, HL/PO/JO/10/1/302, for 27 Dec. 1660. None of these changes seem to have perturbed the House for they accepted them without debate or further amendment and passed the bill as soon as it was brought up on 27 Dec. 1660; the bill received the royal assent at the dissolution of the Convention two days later. The bill named five trustees, worthies of both London and Bedfordshire, to manage Cleveland’s lands in both Middlesex and Bedfordshire ‘free of encumbrance’ to raise money for his debts. It also gave Cleveland a window of seven years to redeem the mortgages on his lands.

The issue was raised again in the first session of the Cavalier Parliament in 1661–2, when the Commons introduced a bill ‘for Confirmation and Explanation of an Act for settling some of the manors and lands of the earl of Cleveland in trustees to be sold’. This bill should perhaps be seen in the context of Cleveland’s increasingly confident claim to his rights in Stepney, even against the crown’s attempts at encroachment. CSP Dom. 1660–1, p. 594; 1661–2, pp. 49, 72. It went through the upper House quickly: brought up from the Commons on 10 July 1661, it was committed two days later and reported without amendment on 15 July. It received the royal assent, which had been solicited of the king by Cleveland himself, on 30 July 1661. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/1, p. 57; CSP Dom. 1661–2, p. 72.

Apart from promoting a contentious private act which questioned the validity of legal and property transactions made during the Interregnum, Cleveland himself was not a particularly active member of the House. He continued to attend fairly regularly over the first few sessions of the Cavalier Parliament, coming to almost three-quarters of the sittings of the first session of 1661–2, but his attendance gradually decreased over time – he was present for a little over half of the sittings in spring 1663; exactly half in spring 1664; and two-thirds in 1664–5. He was infrequently named to committees on legislation, being appointed to only 17 in the whole period from the beginning of the Convention to the end of the 1664–5 session, including those for the militia bills (19 July 1661 and again on 18 July 1662), the duchy of Cornwall bill (22 Nov. 1661), the Antholne Level bill (4 Mar. 1662), the temporalty subsidy bill (17 July 1663) and the bill for the transport of felons (2 Apr. 1664). Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, predicted that Cleveland would oppose the attempt of George Digby, 2nd earl of Bristol, to impeach Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, in July 1663 and would support the lord chancellor. On the other hand, Cleveland registered his proxy with Clarendon’s rival Henry Bennet, Baron (later earl) of Arlington, on 21 Oct. 1665, in the middle of the session convened in Oxford, which Cleveland did not attend at all.

Cleveland was probably busy during this time shoring up his interest in Stepney, the principal estate remaining to him. CSP Dom. 1663–4, pp. 376, 569, 610, 617, 669; 1664–5, p. 22. From early 1665 another obstacle in his affairs arose. The right to the debt of Sir Richard Blackwell^‡ to the exchequer, still outstanding at the Restoration, had been assumed by Charles II himself and then in 1662 been transferred by him to John Lindsay, 17th earl of Crawford [S], and Margaret, Lady Belhaven [S]. Cleveland’s 1660 act had included a ‘saving’ of the king’s rights and claims in the Middlesex properties. Crawford and Belhaven argued that Blackwell’s debt, now owing to them as a royal grant, was part of the king’s rights in the estate, exempted from the other provisions in the act, and therefore they refused to accept Cleveland’s payments to Blackwell as redemption of a mortgage, nor would they allow the trustees to settle the property on others. Cleveland pressed for an account to be made of the amount due from Blackwell, to prove that he had cleared his own debt to Blackwell. Throughout 1665 the dispute rumbled on in the court of exchequer, and the king’s ministers were urged to find a way to relieve Cleveland, ‘who has deserved so eminently in the king’s service’. CSP Dom. 1664–5, pp. 177, 290, 325, 409, 456; TNA, SP 29/137/100.

The matter moved into the House in the session of 1666–7, when on 19 Oct. 1666 Cleveland’s grandson John Lovelace, later 3rd Baron Lovelace, brought up from the Commons a bill to extend the time allowed to Cleveland to redeem the mortgages on his lands. The bill was first read on 23 Oct. but shortly after its commitment the next day it was met with a flurry of petitions and printed handbills from Crawford, Belhaven and others arguing that the bill would in effect destroy the original saving of the king’s rights and that it was a bald attempt by Cleveland to evade a decree against him expected imminently from exchequer. Cleveland naturally printed his response, falling back on the argument he had always used – that the lands had always only been mortgaged, according to the terms of the order of 1641, and thus could be redeemed by him. PA, HL/PO/JO/10/1/325/22; CSP Dom. 1666–7, p. 217.

This bill was much the most controversial of the three that Cleveland saw passed during his lifetime, and in the last days of October 1666 the arguments of Crawford and Belhaven were heard both in the select committee and at the bar of the House, causing ‘a small debate thereof’ in the latter. The bill was recommitted on 6 Nov. and four days later the committee chairman, James Compton, 3rd earl of Northampton, reported that an impasse had been reached because counsel for both parties refused to agree to an accommodation, let alone draw up an account of Blackwell’s outstanding debts. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/2, p. 107. On 26 Nov. the bill was recommitted again and two days later the lord chief justice of common pleas and the lord chief baron of the exchequer were assigned to provide their advice to the committee. One sentence from the committee notes from 29 Nov. summarizes the confused situation the lords were being asked to resolve: ‘Lady Belhaven claimed a debt from the king, the king from Blackwell, Blackwell from Sir William Smith [he had been knighted in 1661], Sir William Smith from the earl of Cleveland.’ Eventually, on 4 Dec. 1666, Northampton reported that, benefitting from the advice of the legal experts ‘in the points that were difficult’, the committee offered the bill to pass without further amendment. There still ‘arose some debates concerning particulars of it’, but the bill did pass the House, made its way through the lower House and eventually received the royal assent on 18 Jan. 1667. Ibid. 118, 119.

Cleveland was present in the House from 1 Oct. 1666 for the proceedings on this bill and attended a total of 21 days until 17 Jan. 1667. The bill having received the royal assent, he probably no longer felt the need to attend the House and he never returned to it. Age and his military service were by this time taking their toll. On 12 Mar. it was reported that ‘the old earl of Cleveland, extremely decrepit by age and wounds, lies very desperate’ and close to death. He succumbed less than two weeks later, on 25 Mar. 1667. His coveted office of captain of the gentleman pensioners duly passed to Belasyse according to the reversion of 1660. Bodl. Carte 222, ff. 150–1; CSP Dom. 1666–7, p. 594. At his death all that could be found was a will dating from September 1640, when the condition of his estate and obligations were very different, and his estate was so encumbered that in June 1668 it was put into the administration of one of his creditors. His only son and heir, Wentworth, having predeceased him in 1665, the earldom of Cleveland became extinct, and quickly became a coveted title for others. In December 1667 it was reported that Arlington was to be made earl of Cleveland. Add. 36916, f. 56. Ultimately the title was granted to Charles II’s mistress, Barbara Villiers, countess of Castlemaine, who became in her own right duchess of Cleveland. The barony of Wentworth was inherited by Cleveland’s heirs general, first his granddaughter Henrietta, who as Lady Wentworth became infamous as the mistress of James Scott, duke of Monmouth. After her death in 1686 it passed to her aunt, Cleveland’s daughter and sole remaining heir general, Anne, widow of John Lovelace, 2nd Baron Lovelace. She also took out further letters of administration to settle the troubled estate in her name.