WENTWORTH, Sir Peter (1593-1675), of Lillingstone Lovell, Oxon. and Wolston, Warws.

Peter Wentworth’s parliamentary pedigree was distinguished, and peopled by opponents of successive governments. His grandfather was Sir Peter Wentworth†, the unquenchable advocate of the liberties of the House in five Parliaments from 1571. His great uncle was Paul Wentworth†, an equally redoubtable puritan critic of the government of Elizabeth I. Two of Peter Wentworth’s uncles, Walter and Thomas, also sat in the Commons, the former for Tavistock in 1601: Thomas Wentworth was imprisoned in 1614 for an intemperate speech on impositions.31HP Commons 1558-1603, ‘Walter Wentworth’; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Thomas Wentworth’. The ancestry of the family was as distinguished as its puritanism, especially in the Tudor period. The Elizabethan Peter Wentworth was related to Lord Protector Somerset, and by marriage to Queen Katherine Parr, the earls of Essex and Leicester, and Elizabeth I’s puritan secretary, Thomas Wilson. The Wentworths had lived at Lillingstone Lovell since at least 1474, the time of this Member’s great-grandfather. It was an Oxfordshire parish, detached from the body of the county and counted in for most purposes with Buckinghamshire. Through his mother, Susanna Wigston, Peter Wentworth was also closely associated with Wolston, in Warwickshire. The Wigstons had owned the rectory and advowson of Wolston since 1549, and these properties descended to Peter Wentworth in 1608, during his minority. The Wigstons owned Wolston priory: the Marprelate tracts were printed there by John Penry in 1589. Thus on both sides of his family Peter Wentworth could draw upon a notable and combative puritan inheritance.32VCH Warws. vi. 274, 280; Dugdale, Warws. i. 37. According to his own protestations, however, his patrimony was modest, having been sold piecemeal over two generations.33CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 224.

Anti-Laudian and Ship Money sheriff, 1630-41

Despite the reputation of the Wentworths for outspoken contributions in Parliament, the genealogical prominence of the family among the English ruling class makes Peter’s elevation as a knight of the Bath at the coronation of Charles I unsurprising. Furthermore, the honour may have been a reward for services rendered to the king and to the 1st duke of Buckingham (George Villiers) when he attended the latter during his mission to France to secure for Prince Charles the hand of Henrietta Maria, a venture which Wentworth described as having been expensive for him.34CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 224. Despite the suggestion of his pliancy towards the monarchy at this time, he was evidently a contentious figure even in the 1630s. In 1635, Wentworth was living at Wolston.35Coventry Docquets, 171. In August that year, the privy council heard reports of a dispute between him and George Warner, lord of the manor of Wolston, over seating rights in the church there. Taken to be more than a mere local squabble over property rights, there were allegations that it formed part of a conspiracy by Warner and Sir John Lambe, an agent of Archbishop William Laud’s, to discredit Wentworth.

On the face of it, the dispute was about the inconvenient location of Warner’s pew in the south transept, as against Wentworth’s prominent one beneath the tower, but Warner’s grievance was his inability to see, rather than simply hear, the minister from his pew, and the quarrel seems suspiciously like resistance by Wentworth to Laudian innovation.36CSP Dom. 1635, pp. 350, 364; VCH Warws. vi. 279. It culminated in Wentworth’s pulling down of Warner’s seat.37CSP Dom. 1637, p. 17. Moreover, it was Wentworth’s shrieval year, and it was thought that Warner and Lambe sought to damage Wentworth during that time of maximum public exposure. Charged with collecting £3,500 in Ship Money in Oxfordshire, where because of his absence from Lillingstone Lovell he had little standing, Wentworth encountered resistance. He urged that some defaulters be made to account for themselves before the council, pour encourager les autres. By February 1636, several months after his term as sheriff had expired, £1,600 had been paid in, but Wentworth wrote to the council to justify his failure to bring in more. Over a year later, subordinate officials were laying the blame squarely on Wentworth’s lack of commitment to the task, noting that arrears of Ship Money were prominent in his own parish.38CSP Dom. 1635, pp. 475, 505, 509; 1635-6, pp. 216, 223, 224; 1636-7, pp. 36, 78, 291; 1637-8, pp. 232, 234-5, 278.

It was not until 1641 that Wentworth re-entered public life, as a local tax commissioner during the opening session of the Long Parliament. He was also named, with a mixed group of men who later took opposing sides in the civil war, to a commission under the great seal to investigate alleged militia abuses in Warwickshire.39LJ iv. 262b. He entered the Commons after a by-election in Tamworth on 18 December 1641. His inclusion in one of the lists of ‘Straffordians’, seven months ahead of his first appearance in the Commons, was evidently a clerical error.40Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 248; Rutton, Wentworth, 279. His election was prompted by the choice of William Strode I for Bere Alston, his accustomed seat, after having been returned for both boroughs in elections for the second Parliament of 1640. Wentworth’s first recorded appearance in the House was on 24 January 1642, when he acted as a teller for those in favour of replacing Endymion Porter* as captain of one of the Westminster trained bands. The motion was carried by 12 votes and was a successful blow against a courtier.41CJ ii. 390b; PJ i. 144, 151.

Envoy to the Lords and royal critic, 1642-3

Five days later, Wentworth was selected to ask the Lords for a conference on the words spoken by the 1st earl of Richmond (James Stuart, 2nd duke of Lennox [S]) in the upper chamber. During an uproar, Richmond had without reference to the Speaker demanded an adjournment, and was found innocent of any offence. The anti-court peers, among them the 4th earl of Northumberland (Algernon Percy†), the 4th earl of Pembroke (Philip Herbert*), the 3rd earl of Essex (Robert Devereux) and the 1st earl of Holland (Henry Rich†), entered a protestation against this judgment which was noted in the Commons. The denunciation of Richmond there as a pro-Spanish papist, episcopalian and Straffordian on 27 January provoked some defenders in the Commons, but the result of Wentworth’s endeavours to arrange a conference produced a call by MPs for Richmond’s ejection from the king’s counsel. While this was not accepted by the Lords, the demand was not censured by them, which was taken as a tacit endorsement of the criticism.42PJ i. 218; CJ ii. 403a; Clarendon, Hist. i. 544-8. This was to be the first of many occasions when Wentworth was selected to liaise with the Lords. He was not at this point exclusively identified with the king’s critics, however. When Sir George Wentworth I spoke violently against John Glynne*, Peter Wentworth defended him in the House (21 Feb.).43PJ i. 430.

Wentworth’s early committee appointments marked him out as an opponent of the king. He was named to committees against religious innovation, on investigating an alleged shipment of gunpowder from Dorset to help the Irish rebels, and on the militia.44CJ ii. 412b, 438a, 461a, 474b. His own standing with the militia force for Warwickshire was confirmed on 18 March when he was named in the House as a deputy lieutenant for the county.45CJ ii. 485b. On 1 April, Wentworth declared in the House that ‘we could not confide in the king nor trust him’. Sir John Culpeper was among a number of MPs who called on Wentworth to explain himself, and he withdrew far enough so that ‘the House passed by his folly’, as Sir Simonds D’Ewes* noted.46PJ ii. 115. His temerity made no impact on his suitability as a messenger to the Lords, and may have been an asset. On 14 April he took four messages, the most important of which was on a judgment against Attorney-general Edward Herbert I*: he was later named to the committee to consider the impeachment of Herbert for his part in the Five Members affair.47CJ ii. 526b, 527a, 539b; PJ ii. 169. Five days later, it was his motion that introduced John Wylde’s* articles of impeachment against Sir Edward Dering*. On the same day that Wentworth was named to the joint committee with the Lords on Sir John Hotham’s refusal to admit the king to Hull, he named five ‘evil counsellors’ around the king: Richmond and George, Lord Digby*, Endymion Porter*, William Murray† and William Crofts†.48CJ ii. 550b; PJ ii. 189, 254. On 9 May, Wentworth proposed the motion for an assembly of divines to settle the government of the church, after having been a member of a committee consulting on the way forward after the recent abolition of episcopacy.49PJ ii. 296; CJ ii. 541b, 550b.

On 9 June, Wentworth managed his first conference with the Lords, and the following day pledged £100 and three horses for the security of the kingdom, in effect for the parliamentary cause. A week later he was given permission to return to the country to implement the Militia Ordinance in Warwickshire.50PJ iii. 57, 466; CJ ii. 629a, 635a. He was missing from the House between 21 June and 10 August, and joined John Barker*, William Purefoy I* and Godfrey Bossevile* in directing the Warwickshire militia. This was one of his few absences from the House, apart from a six week period in September and October that year, when he left London with the 3rd earl of Essex, in practice probably returning to Warwickshire to help direct military affairs.51CJ ii. 761a; PJ iii. 340; LJ v. 165a. On 9 July, the Speaker announced a letter from the Warwickshire deputy lieutenants, accounting for their musters in the county.52PJ iii. 191; LJ vi. 195b. But Wentworth went on to play only a limited role in local affairs, spending most of his time at Westminster. By this time, the king had added Wentworth’s name to a list, which included the Five Members of January 1642, of those who would not be pardoned should a reconciliation between king and Parliament be effected.53CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 342.

On 28 October, Wentworth was named to the important committee charged with taking accounts of financial contributions to the parliamentarian cause from the counties. He was evidently not inclined to pursue peace at any price. On a motion for a committee of the whole House to consider a peace, Sir Henry Vane II called instead for information on the strength of the main field army under Essex, and Wentworth supported him.54Add. 18777, f. 47; CJ ii. 825b. He was active in various ways in securing the city of London for Parliament. He served on the committee for strengthening the security of the Tower, and was entrusted with replacing its lieutenant: one wonders what he made of his custodial role over the place where his grandfather was imprisoned and died.55Add. 18777, f. 49v; CJ ii. 833a, 837a, 847a. He was among the delegation of Lords and Commons to visit the City corporation to explain Parliament’s case, and he and Samuel Vassall were selected to calm the London godly merchant community’s anxieties lest their loans to Parliament should be seen as implying support for sectarianism in the church.56CJ ii. 840a, 858a. When Henry Marten provoked outrage in the Commons by declaring that if the king returned to the capital, without his army, Parliament would be willing to ‘settle the crown upon his head’, Wentworth supported him.57Harl. 164, f.106. On 13 December, Wentworth spoke in the House on the progress of an ordinance to compel those hostile to Parliament to reveal the extent of their own estates so that penal taxation could be imposed. The speech was recorded in the tortuous record of the diarist, Walter Yonge I*. If the law prevented Parliament from defending itself, Wentworth argued, then the law of nature entitled MPs to introduce new legislation in self defence, to fulfil its duty of representing the nation. 58Add 18777, f. 92; Harl. 164, f. 248.

War Party activist at Westminster, 1643-4

On the last day of December 1642, Wentworth was named as a committeeman in the ordinance to associate Staffordshire and Warwickshire in an army. He was identified by conservatives like Sir Simonds D’Ewes as one of the ‘fiery spirits’ in the Commons, and in February 1643 with Henry Marten he spoke out about the dangers posed by the queen’s arrival with supplies and money from Holland.59LJ v. 520b; Add. 18777, f. 153v. His antagonism towards Henrietta Maria persisted when he took responsibility for arresting her Capuchin priests at Somerset House, resisted protests from the French ambassador, and requested the Lords’ support for their expulsion.60CJ ii. 1001b; iii. 8a, 31a. In the event the attack on the Capuchins was unsuccessful, but the event was an ironic commentary on Wentworth’s membership of Buckingham’s French mission of the 1620s.61Newsbooks, Mercurius Aulicus, I. 168. With Pym, Sir Henry Vane II, Marten and Strode, he insisted that the proposed treaty of Oxford should take place only after a disbandment, a stipulation that was bound to be unacceptable to the king. When on 27 February, during discussions on amending the proposals to be sent to the king, Marten described Charles’s last message as ‘an alarm to actions of hostility’, Wentworth was again in support.62Harl. 164, ff.. 301, 308. The same day, he supported John Wylde’s* sequestration ordinance, against the criticisms of Bulstrode Whitelocke and John Maynard.63Harl. 164, f. 307v. On 7 March, he was a teller against a motion to re-commit this legislation, and spoke on the clauses touching indemnity and the liability of local sequestering committees for rates and taxes. In a criticism of deference to lawyers in the House, he reminded MPs that their legal powers would remain uncompromised even if there were none of the legal profession in the chamber.64Add. 18777, f. 176v; CJ ii. 993a.

The progress of this legislation was interwoven with the development of clauses for the projected treaty with the king, and on 15 March there was a conference with the Lords on the king’s proposal that no imprisonment or plundering should take place during the cessation. The Lords suggested a proviso that distraints for taxes should still be levied, but the Commons preferred a formulation that all might enjoy property and liberty when the king’s army and the papists were disbanded. A vote to reject the Lords’ proviso was hastened when Wentworth, according to D’Ewes, ‘very cunningly thrust into the House ... just upon the making of the report from the conference’ a royal proclamation forbidding adherence to Essex’s army.65Harl. 164, ff.. 330v, 331. D’Ewes was convinced that in order to further their proposals for stepping up the war, the ‘fiery spirits’ resorted to tactics to overcome majority feeling against them. Thus on 3 April, when Marten argued in a full House for breaking off negotiations with the king, Wentworth and others waited until the chamber thinned for lunch before seconding the motion when it was put a second time.66Harl. 164, f. 351v. He was engaged in a similar ploy on 1 June 1643, when moves to rescind the authority of the oppressive Walter Long* to collect taxes in Essex were blocked by the early attendance of Wentworth and other hard-liners.67Harl. 165, ff.. 93, 94; CJ iii. 98a. Naturally, he was one of those who sat with ‘their hats over their eyes’ in despair when Essex’s letter calling for a resubmission of the Oxford peace proposals and, failing that, for a chivalrous battle to determine the war, was read in the Commons.68Harl. 165, f. 122v.

The revelations of the plot associated with Edmund Waller* touched Wentworth closely, since his ‘fiery spirit’ colleagues were its intended victims. On 3 June, Wentworth was a teller for those wanting to break open the regalia room at Westminster Abbey, to search for popish vestments and other objects; he took the new vow and covenant the following day, and on the 8th formed part of the parliamentary delegation to the City to provide the corporation with a narrative of the plot.69CJ iii. 114b, 118b, 120a. Through the summer, he was part of the committee formulating a reply to Essex’s letter, and discussed with the lord mayor the lieutenancy of the Tower. The result was that the City’s defence was vested in the civic authorities.70CJ iii. 165b, 170a; Gardiner, Hist. Civil War, i. 180-1. Another task that fell to him was to convince the Lords of the need for additional legislation on the excise and on sequestration, suggesting that he was working with John Wylde. He acted as a teller in 13 divisions in 1643, paired in all except one with different colleagues, the exception being the two occasions he was a teller with Henry Marten. Other ‘fiery spirits’ were natural colleagues in divisions; with William Strode I and Sir Arthur Hesilrige, Wentworth took a hard line against the earl of Holland (Henry Rich†) on his attempt to return to the parliamentarian camp after withdrawing from the royal court at Oxford.71CJ iii. 303b, 304a, 308b. D’Ewes was expecting Strode to be sent to the Lords to request Holland’s despatch to the Tower, but Wentworth took over from him, and on 11 November was ‘vehement’ in his denunciation of the peer. He urged the Sequestration Ordinance be employed against Holland.72Harl. 165, ff. 223v, 229v, 230v. An enemy of a different sort was Anthony Nicoll*, accused of withdrawing his cavalry at a battle at Stratton, Cornwall. Wentworth reported from the joint committee of Lords and Commons that the Cornishman had a case to answer, and pressed for a committee to draw up charges.73CJ iii. 315b; Harl. 165, f. 212v. Wentworth reported from the committee on 20 November that it was no breach of Commons privilege that the accusation came from a peer, the 1st earl of Stamford (Henry Grey*).74Add. 31116, p. 186.

The year 1643 marked a high water in Wentworth’s parliamentary career, if measured by the formal record. He was never busier in taking messages to and from the Lords, nor in more conferences with them. He managed 4 conferences, was a member of 9 others, and acted as messenger between the Houses on 18 occasions. He was not to be so prominent as a teller again – managing 13 divisions in 1643 – until 1646. Quite apart from all his conferences and committees associated with the Lords, he was named to 68 other committees in 1643. In that year he was also named to important bicameral executive committees of Parliament. From 27 March, he served on the Committee for Sequestrations. He was a member for seven months of the Committee for Advance of Money, and from November was named to the Committee of Safety. Then there were also his appointments to parliamentarian bodies in Warwickshire. But in none of these was Wentworth an important member or regular attender, and it seems that his natural métier was the floor of the House of Commons, where his outspoken contributions seem to have had most impact. He was a gadfly, much in evidence in various ways, but not an expert in any particular field.

Wentworth’s alliance with Hesilrige was there in embryo by the end of 1643, and on 1 January 1644 the two men were engaged in an incident over the army that paved the way for a future pattern. There had already been criticism of the earl of Essex’s studiously old-fashioned, chivalrous approach to military affairs. Hesilrige reported to the House that Sir William Waller* had no commission to be major-general of the associated southern counties. In fact, Waller had been commissioned, but on a more provisional basis than commissions to other commanders had been. In this dispute between Essex and Waller, Hesilrige and Wentworth weighed in on the side of Waller, who, despite the setbacks he had suffered, was regarded as a more uncompromising general than his rival. In the House, the issue spilled over into a conflict between Sir Philip Stapilton, on the side of Essex, and Wentworth and Hesilrige. Wentworth sought to question Essex on the form of words chosen for Waller’s commission.75Harl. 165, f. 266v.

These reservations about the commitment of the supreme command fed into enthusiasm for the new joint committee with the Scots, the Committee of Both Kingdoms. On 8 February 1644, Wentworth took to the Lords the ordinance drawn up by Sir Henry Vane II and Oliver St John for this committee, with a request that the Upper House should expedite it. Essex’s powers were an object of debate between the Houses, with reluctance by the Lords to accept Essex’s total subordination to the new committee. Wentworth argued that if it ordered Essex to do something he was unable to accept, he could always refuse and appeal to Parliament: a point D’Ewes considered ‘frivolous’. The ‘violent spirits’ prevailed, however.76Harl. 166, ff. 3, 3v, 9v; CJ iii. 394a. On 26 February a committee which included Wentworth reviewed the officer roll of Essex’s army. Essex was reluctant to co-operate, but Wentworth spoke volubly on the future of Essex’s cashiered officers.77Harl. 166, ff. 18, 26, 27. Rivalry between the Houses evidently played a part in this difficulty with Essex. On 1 March Wentworth told the Commons he had searched the Lords Journal and found votes stating that Essex, and indeed any other peers, might attend the Committee of Both Kingdoms as by right: this naturally provoked resentment in the lower House, which appointed another committee to put a contrary view before the Lords.78Add. 31116, p. 240; CJ iii. 411b. Wentworth’s scrutiny of the record of the upper chamber must surely have occasioned at least some raised eyebrows among the peers.

Critic of Essex, ally of the Scots and Erastian, 1644-7

For Wentworth, the new Committee of Both Kingdoms was a vehicle for a more vigorous prosecution of the war, and the Solemn League and Covenant with the Scots was a price worth paying. In May 1644, he supported moves to implement the ecclesiastical clauses of the Covenant.79Harl. 166, f. 64; CJ iii. 503b. Wentworth was away from the House between mid-June and November, but if he was in Warwickshire, he played no part in the local war effort or on the county committee.80A. Hughes, Politics, Religion and Civil War in Warws. 1620-60 (Cambridge, 1987), 173, Appendices 1 and 2. On his return, he continued in his ‘war party’ outlook. A renewed commitment to war was surely the motive for his interest in a committee formed on 14 November 1644 to consider the places and offices of MPs, a foreshadowing of Zouche Tate’s committee that produced the Self-Denying Ordinance.81CJ iii. 695b. This perspective, perhaps coupled with his stay away from Westminster, persuaded him to change his view of the 2nd earl of Denbigh (Basil Feilding). He had supported Denbigh against his Warwickshire critics such as William Purefoy I*. Denbigh was accused locally by some of the former officers of the late Lord Brooke (Robert Greville†) of the same half-heartedness that Wentworth thought marked Essex.82‘William Purefoy I’ supra.

It is a measure of how detached the Member for Tamworth was from his radical neighbour Purefoy that in 1643 he saw Denbigh as representing an alternative military command structure to that headed by Essex, and therefore to be supported. In June 1643, Wentworth took an ordinance for £6,000 for Denbigh to the Lords, and in November had with other midlands Members been named to the committee that supervised the setting-out of his army. The following month, he was named to the committee to investigate Denbigh’s local political difficulties. Now, in November 1644, Wentworth was active in the series of divisions on the earl’s alleged failings and offences, which included favouring delinquents. He was a teller for those wishing to hear the charges against Denbigh. When this motion was won, Wentworth then opposed the putting of the main question that the earl be cleared of disaffection to the public interest. When the main motion was put to the question, Wentworth was a teller for those who thought Denbigh should not be exonerated.83CJ iii. 137a, 298b, 355a, 700b.

With his hawkish line on the military campaigning, and his participation in the first committee to consider offices and places of MPs as an obstacle to winning the war, Wentworth took a natural interest in the progress of moves to establish the New Model army. He himself had no office or place to lay down, of course, which put no obstacle in the way of his enthusiasm. He served on the committee to consider allowances to MPs and peers in December 1644, and in March 1645 became involved in the tussle between Lords and Commons over the list of officers for the new army. Wentworth was one of the managers of a conference between the Houses over the officer list. On 8 and 22 April 1645 he met again with the Lords to present the Commons’ preferences for commissions. On 3 May, he reported from the joint committee on commissions, bringing with him the news that Francis Russell* had been chosen to govern the Isle of Ely.84CJ iii. 729a; iv. 81a, 104a, 118b, 131b. Having through his war party origins, uncompromising temperament and support for military reform become associated with the political Independents, Wentworth now became a contributor to the furore over the alleged treason of Denzil Holles*, leader of the Presbyterians. According to Lord Savile (Thomas Savile†), who had deserted the king for Parliament, Holles had held discussions with the king or his advisers over their response to propositions put to them by Parliament at Uxbridge. Wentworth was a member of the committee that examined Savile’s information, and on 10 July 1645 proposed that Holles and his co-accused, Bulstrode Whitelocke*, be examined separately and not allowed to communicate with each other. It was perhaps typical that Wentworth’s suggestion should be ignored. On 16 July, Whitelocke was bombarded with questions in a committee of the whole House about the Savile affair and his part in it: no fewer than 30 questions, according to Whitelocke, came from Wentworth.85CJ iv. 195b; Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 470, 479.

Through the summer of 1645, Wentworth was involved in liaison with the Scots. There was still some hope that the alliance with the Scots would produce military results, and Wentworth served on the committees to prepare instructions for commissioners to the Scots in July, to provide the Scots with information on the strength of the king’s army, and to draft replies to the parliamentary commissioners accompanying the Scots army as it invested Hereford.86CJ iv. 198a, 223b, 240b, 245b. On 15 August, Wentworth was given a month’s leave to go to the country; in fact, he remained at Westminster until early October, but then disappeared from the record of the House until January 1646.87CJ iv. 243a. On his return, he played a part, though not a leading one, in what must have been frustrating negotiations with the Scots and the French ambassadors to Scotland, Montereul and Sabran: frustrating and futile, when the king eventually presented himself to the Scots, in May.88CJ iv. 422a, 461b, 462b, 465b, 472a, 491a, 538b, 540a. There is evidence of a reconciliation with Denbigh: Wentworth brought from committee in March a recommendation that the earl should receive his arrears for his military pay, which had ended the previous year, under the Self-Denying Ordinance, in April 1645.89CJ iv. 96b, 97a, 484b. With the unravelling of the alliance with the Scots came a strain on the religious coalition which had bound Parliament and the Westminster Assembly together. Wentworth was one of the MPs who decided whether the Assembly had breached parliamentary privilege when it rejected Parliament’s claim to appoint commissioners with powers over admission to the Lord’s Supper in churches. The Presbyterian-dominated Assembly insisted that this authority rightly lay with presbyteries. Unsurprisingly, the committee found that there had indeed been a breach of privilege, and Wentworth was one of the MPs to convey this judgment to the Assembly. In June 1646, he was one of those commissioners empowered to determine scandalous offences that might prevent access to church membership, a further proof of his Erastianism.90CJ iv. 511a, 518b, 562b.

Wentworth was evidently keenly interested in religious matters, and indeed an Erastian, polemical pamphlet of 1641 is attributed to him.91A Pack of Puritans maintayning the unlawfulnesse or unexpediencie or both, of pluralities, non-residency, unpreaching prelates and ministers, etc. (1641, E.208.1). The author of this piece claimed only to gather his material together from other sources – ‘The stuff is none of mine, neither do I bestow any trimming upon it’ – and posed as an unskilled writer, who ‘wears a sword not a pen and inkhorn by his side’.92A Pack of Puritans, sig. A3. The implication that he was a soldier must cast some doubt on Wentworth’s candidature as the author, since he is not known to have served in any military capacity, beyond a reference to a ‘stand of arms’ of his in 1643.93Newsbooks, Mercurius Aulicus I. 449. In other respects, however, the content of this polemic fits in with Wentworth’s outlook. A Pack of Puritans demands that bishops should be resident in their sees and play no part in secular affairs. Ministers (the term priest is unjustifiable) and bishops should be elected by the people and should preach. Clergy should live simply, from tithes, rents or wages. Princes and Parliaments should direct religious affairs.94A Pack of Puritans, sig. B1; pp. 8, 14, 16, 19, 20, 29, 45-8. In the House of Commons, between April 1643 and February 1647, Wentworth was called upon to invite or to thank 16 ministers of Presbyterian or Independent persuasion, in connection with their preaching engagements before MPs. He played a part in committees on religious observance, serving on committees to better mark the Lord’s Day, to combat superstition and, in January 1645, to stamp out moral offences such as incest, adultery and drunkenness. 95CJ iii. 440b, 470b; iv. 3b. In all of this activity there was a presumption that Parliament had the authority, legal and scriptural, to legislate. When on 20 September 1645, Wentworth informed the House of a petition circulating in London, for signatures by ministers and others, to complain of the slackness of the House in settling church government, his motive was presumably to defend the Houses against a calumny. The petition was presented to the London common council to obtain support for a rejection of the allegations.96Add. 31116, p. 465. His challenge to theocratic pretensions in the Westminster Assembly fitted in well with this profile.

From his zenith of parliamentary activity in 1643, Wentworth had maintained a high profile in the Commons. In the years 1644 to 1648 inclusive, he was a teller in 46 divisions, sat on 160 committees, excluding those connected with the Lords, which made up a further 18 appointments, and acted as a messenger between Commons and Lords on 31 occasions. His activities as an intermediary between the Houses never suggested that he was in any sense a client of the peers. In fact, over the years, Wentworth could be less than respectful towards the Lords, as his scrutiny of their Journal suggests. He was often asked to take messages which the Lords must have found unpalatable, and this continued as relations between the Houses became strained during 1646 and 1647. On 6 July 1646, he took to the Lords a declaration that there was no further use for the Scots army. The same day he was appointed to a committee to find ways of repaying those who had lent money to Parliament and was among those who went to the City for an answer. On 10 September the London common council proposed the device of ‘doubling’ whereby those who had lent were promised an 8 per cent return, secured on the excise and confiscated lands, if they advanced more. Wentworth and Oliver Cromwell* were tellers against the motion – won only by 18 votes – that the concurrence of the Lords should be sought.97CJ iv. 603a, 604b, 663a, 665b. It is an exaggeration to describe this as a ‘first proposal for unicameral government’, but it marked the start of further disagreements between Lords and Commons. In December 1646, the Presbyterian peers produced proposals for a settlement to be put to the king. They sent clauses to the Commons for approval, and one was subject to a division on Christmas Day. At issue was whether the king should have to accept the stipulations of the Covenant. Wentworth was a teller for the noes, but the Presbyterian formulation won the day by 42 votes. Four days later, Wentworth was one of the committee to explain to the Lords why another plank of their proposals was unacceptable to the Commons.98CJ v. 28a, 33a; M. Kishlansky, The Rise of the New Model Army (Cambridge, 1979), 128.

By March 1647, Wentworth had become sympathetic to the complaints of the army against the parliamentary plans for disbandment. He seems, however, to have kept out of the dispute over garrisons in Warwickshire and Coventry that involved other MPs of that county. On the 13th of that month, he sought to see the question put that governors of garrisons should be sustained in their posts, opposing the Presbyterian commanders Sir William Waller* and Edward Massie*.99CJ v. 111a. On 18 May, he and Sir Henry Mildmay opposed the setting up of a committee to consider the timing of disbandment of those military units not to be sent to Ireland, and again he was in the minority at the division, which was lost by 139 votes to 100. On 8 June, Wentworth supported a proposal to continue dialogue with the army over its Remonstrance, even as ‘reformadoes’ (disbanded soldiers) blockaded the Commons. Wentworth took to the Lords a letter from Fairfax explaining the events by which the king had come into the custody of the army.100CJ v. 202b, 203a. During the political crisis of the summer of 1647, Wentworth kept a low profile: it is possible he was away from London, in the country. After 8 June, there are only two mentions of him – on 26 June and 22 July – before 18 August. He was not among those Independents who fled to the army between 30 July and 6 August, but on 18 August he was named to the committee to produce a declaration that would invalidate all resolutions of the Houses during their ‘forcing’.101CJ v. 225b, 254a, 278a; HMC Egmont, i. 440. He was a teller with the most radical elements in the House in September: with Thomas Rainborowe on the 22nd opposing Cromwell’s wish that negotiations with the king be discussed in a committee of the whole House; and the following day, with Henry Marten, against sending propositions to the king.102CJ v. 312a, 314b. He was by this time evidently against further negotiations with Charles I, and actively supported the vote on 5 November that the king was bound in justice and duty to assent to laws made by Parliament.103CJ v. 351b.

Political Independent and Rump politician, 1648-53

Wentworth was probably a supporter of the Vote of No Addresses to the king on 3 January 1648, although once more, he was absent – or at least not in evidence – at that time. From late January, he was involved in taking to the Lords a series of impeachments of eminent Presbyterians, who had opposed the army: the 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham (Francis Willoughby), Sir John Maynard*, the 3rd earl of Suffolk (James Howard), the 4th earl of Lincoln (Theophilus Clinton).104CJ v. 445a,b; 448a,b, 450b. On 11 February, he was active in pushing through, with a majority of 30 votes in a House of 130, a declaration designed to explain the Vote of No Addresses to the country.105CJ v. 473a. Until July, Wentworth was involved in various committees dealing with threats to Parliament’s political supremacy: from insurrections in Kent, Surrey and north Wales.106CJ v. 583b, 593a, 599b, 631b. He was involved in committees examining aspects of the king’s attempted escape from the Isle of Wight.107CJ v. 632b, 636b. On 28 July, the Vote of No Addresses was in effect overturned, in a vote of 71 to 64 that three propositions need not be accepted by the king before discussions could open. The three conditions had been a withdrawal of threats against parliamentarians, the promotion of Presbyterianism for three years and parliamentary control of the militia for ten. It was alleged that Independent support for this manoeuvre was to prevent a haemorrhage of support in the country. Wentworth, described in the hostile press as among the ‘high boys of the faction’ distrustful of the king, was in favour of the rider that future negotiations should be held on the Isle of Wight, where Charles’s capacity for manipulating public opinion would be minimised. In the division on this point, there was a tie, and Speaker Lenthall, to the surprise of the radicals, voted not to impose a form of words that would exclude the possibility of an alternative venue.108CJ v. 650a; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 18 (25 July -1 Aug. 1648), sig. S2iii (E.456.7).

On 8 August, a motion was put in the Commons that only those who had taken the Covenant should be admitted to the beneficed ministry. According to Marchamont Nedham, it was merely a ploy to flush out the strength of Independency, and Wentworth, John Wylde and Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire were among those who strongly opposed the motion.109Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 20 (8-15 Aug. 1648), sig. Y2ii (E.458.25). On 26 September, Wentworth was excused sick at a call of the House. He was actually present in the House on this occasion, apparently, to move that absentees should, instead of paying a summary fine, be allowed the chance to attend another day before being fined. A critical observer explained Wentworth’s liberal view as motivated by indifference to poor attendances during which extreme resolutions could easily be forced through.110CJ vi. 34b; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 27 (26 Sept.-3 Oct. 1648), sig. Nn2i (E.465.19). He was back by 20 October, however, and the following part was active as a teller in divisions on the fate of royalists, taking a hard line against the 7th earl of Derby (James Stanley†), and Sir Francis Dodington, but voting not to banish the Welsh renegade general, Rowland Laugharne†.111CJ vi. 70b, 71a, 73a. On 17 November, Wentworth was named to the committee chaired by William Prynne to produce a justification for Parliament’s proceedings in the war, an attempt to assert the authority of the Houses in the face of the ominous meetings of the army council. This hardly indicated any suspicions of the army on Wentworth’s part, however. After the army Remonstrance, asserting popular sovereignty and demanding the abandonment of the Newport treaty, was read over four hours in the House on 20 November, Wentworth was among the first on his feet to thank the army for its manifesto, while Prynne denounced it.112Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 35 (21-28 Nov. 1648), sig. Bbbi,ii (E.473.35); Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 126. Despite this, the following day Wentworth adopted his accustomed role, and secured the approval of the Lords to orders including one to continue the treaty with the king. When on the 30th, the Commons voted on whether to debate the Remonstrance or reject it, Wentworth was a teller for those in favour of adopting it. He was in the minority of 58 against the 125 whose wish to reject it prevailed.113CJ vi. 82a, 91b.

Wentworth continued his uncompromising line early in December, opposing the treaty and on the 4th, refusing to condemn the army’s removal of the king from Carisbrooke to Hurst castle. On the 13th, a week after Pride’s Purge, he was named to one of the committees formed to repudiate the treaty and earlier votes in support of it, and on 4 January 1649, he supported a motion that the Lords who rejected the attainder of the king should themselves be impeached. This was a prelude to the three votes asserting popular sovereignty. Wentworth was therefore a natural nominee for the high court of justice to try the king, whose commissioners were announced two days later.114Mercurius Pragmaticus nos.36, 37 (5-12 Dec. 1648), sig. C2i (E.476.2); no. 38 (12-19 Dec. 1648), sig. Ddd2v (E.476.35); nos. 40, 41 (26 Dec. 1648-9 Jan. 1649), sig. Fff3ii (E.337.20); CJ vi. 96b. He played no part in the trial, however, and stayed away from Westminster altogether until the spring. On 24 February he wrote to the Speaker to excuse himself, pleading ill-health in general and a sprained ankle in particular. He dated his own period of absence as nearly six weeks, suggesting he left Westminster no later than the week beginning 15 January. His letter makes it clear that his absence was first occasioned not by illness or injury but by his feeling ‘unable to endure a whole winter’s siege in London, without a retreat to prevent many distempers’; but Wentworth’s choosing to take a restorative holiday at the start of the trial of the king for his life must surely suggest a tactical withdrawal.115Mems, of the Great Civil War ed. Cary, ii. 122-3; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 188. Furthermore, Wentworth made no mention of great affairs of state in his letter, only his anxiety to protect his own interests in the persistent affair of George Warner’s Wolston estate. In the event, it was not until June that Warner’s case was discussed in the Rump Parliament, but Wentworth’s letter excused him from the censure of the House. On 28 February he was let off not having entered his dissent to the vote of 5 December in favour of the Newport treaty, and it was only on 6 April that John Lisle reported that Wentworth had appeared and taken the tests for admission.116CJ vi. 153a, 181a.

His apparent initial ambivalence over the regicide notwithstanding, Wentworth quickly became an active member of the commonwealth government. In April and May 1649 he was added to the Committee for Compounding at Goldsmiths’ Hall, the Committee of Navy and Customs and to the committee for the excise, and in July he joined the Committee for the Army.117CJ vi. 182a, 219b, 265a. That month he was given responsibility, jointly with Miles Corbett, for bringing in an act for probate and for marriages. Later in the year, in divisions, he was on the opposing side to Henry Marten on two occasions, both over finance of the army. His membership of the Goldsmiths’ Hall did him no harm when the Warner case was resolved with Wentworth’s purchase of Wolston manor from the state.118CJ vi. 288b. On sequestrations in general, Wentworth continued in his uncompromising fashion, advocating the minority view that those who withheld compositions should forfeit a double penalty.119CJ vi. 348b. It was presumably his reputation as a hawk that commended him for service on committees to speed up sales of bishops’, then crown, lands.120A. and O.; CJ vi. 358a. His slowness in attending the Rump did not affect his popularity, it seems, as he came sixth in elections for the second council of state, on 20 February 1650.121CJ vi. 369a. When the oath was administered to Wentworth and John Gurdon, they successfully argued for exemption from the oath of secrecy, claiming to have taken a previous version of it already.122CJ vi. 371a, CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 10, 11. He was the second most frequent attender of council in June, but after that, his attendances tailed off markedly. In a pattern which paralleled his parliamentary career as a whole, Wentworth’s service on council committees was extensive but unfocussed, and most of his council activity was on ad hoc bodies rather than the important standing ones. During his first year on the council, among the more significant committees to which he was nominated were those to speed the sale of confiscated estates, for the mint, for raising new revenue for the state, for ordnance and for conferring with army officers.123CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 29, 104, 111, 213. In December 1650, he was part of the small group that escorted the Spanish ambassador to his meetings.124CSP Dom. 1650, p. 480. His council duties evidently left him with time to play an important role on the floor of the House: in his first year as a councillor, he was still named to 13 legislative committees, and many others dealing with a range of issues such as petitions, and diplomatic relations with Spain and Portugal.125CJ vi. 379b, 400a, 403b, 417a, 420b, 423b, 425a, 456a, 458a, 515b, 517a, 524a, 527b (legislative cttees.); 516b, 526a, 558a (Spain and Portugal).

In 1651, Wentworth continued to appear on committees dealing with sequestrations, voting for alienations from offenders.126CJ vi. 527b, 593a, 596b. His legislative committees in the House were far fewer, however: only six in the 12 months from February 1651. He did not find a place in the third council of state from February 1651. His role as the go-between for foreign ambassadors on their visits to consult the English government seems to have developed as a kind of substitute for his wonted missions to the House of Lords. Between 1651 and April 1653, the embassies of Tuscany, Oldenburg, the United Provinces, Denmark, France, Hamburg and Sweden were all reported, received, escorted, or heard by bodies of which Wentworth was a member. Some of this work may well have been more ceremonial than diplomatic, as he was on occasion asked to escort ambassadors to the Thames.127CJ vii. 64a, 104b, 202b, 203b, 233b, 252a, 262a, 276b; CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 54, 81, 85, 165; 1652-3, p. 41. In December 1651, he found a place on the fourth council of state, but his appearances were erratic, and from August tailed off to a handful a month. His standing among his peers as a council member declined sharply with his own waning public profile. At elections for the fifth council of state, on 25 November 1652, he polled 56 votes and tied for bottom place with two others, and only secured his place by a draw from a hat.128CJ vii. 220a,b. This sense of decline did not prevent his being involved, famously, in Cromwell’s dissolution of the Rump on 20 April 1653. When the lord general began his tirade against the Parliament, Wentworth stood up to declare it the first time he ever heard unbecoming language from a servant of the House; it was Bulstrode Whitelocke* who recorded Cromwell’s angry dismissive condemnation of Wentworth as ‘whoremaster’: the precise reason for this epithet to be applied to the bachelor Wentworth seems beyond recovery.129Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 5; Ludlow, Mems. i. 352.

After the Rump, 1653-75

Wentworth largely withdrew from public life during the Cromwellian protectorates. In 1655, there was an ironic echo of his unhappy experiences as a Ship Money sheriff in the 1630s, when it had been noted that his own parish contained unusually many defaulters. Wentworth failed to pay his assessment in Warwickshire, and was reputed to have denied the legality of the Instrument of Government. At a time of challenge to the customs in Coney’s case, Wentworth’s tax strike could not be ignored, and his goods were distrained. He immediately launched writs against the collectors, and was summoned to appear before the lord protector’s council. His defence was ‘that by the law of England no money ought to be levied upon the people without their consent in Parliament’. When Lord Protector Cromwell asked him whether he would drop his action or not, Wentworth rather too readily said, ‘If you command me, I must submit’; and afterwards defended himself against the reproaches of Edmund Ludlowe II* by insisting he had done what he could, at his age, ‘when ... the blood does not run with the same vigour as in younger men’.130Ludlow, Mems. i. 413-14; CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 297, 300, 596. He was discharged on 28 August 1655: the episode did not prevent him from becoming an assessment commissioner himself in 1657.

At the return of the Rump Parliament, Wentworth became once more an activist. As usual, he was the ubiquitous generalist, rather than a specialist. He was named to six committees between 30 June and 29 August 1659, and with the 5th earl of Pembroke (Philip Herbert, Lord Herbert*) and the 2nd earl of Salisbury (William Cecil*) accompanied the French ambassador when the government granted him an audience.131CJ vii. 698b, 748b, 751a, 755b, 765b, 767b, 770b. He must at least have partially redeemed himself in Ludlowe’s eyes when on 13 October, he broke through the army officers’ cordon of the House and entered it, by persuading some skilled boatmen to ferry him through the river defences.132Ludlow, Mems. ii. 139.

This was to be Wentworth’s last hurrah in public life. At the restoration of the king, he returned to Warwickshire and to obscurity. He had never attended quarter sessions, so his loss of place as a magistrate was virtually nominal.133Warwick County Records, ii. p. xix; iii. p. xix; iv. p. xix. He was not mentioned in debates in the Commons about exceptions from the Act of Indemnity, and may well have considered his sprained ankle of 1649 providential. But there is compelling evidence that he retained his republican principles. When he made his will in 1673, he left £100 to John Milton, ‘who writt against Salmatius’, and £50 to Marchamont Nedham.134PROB11/350, f. 204. Milton and Nedham were themselves friends. Wentworth would have encountered Milton during his days on the council of state, when Milton was its secretary of foreign tongues. He may have singled out Milton’s polemic, Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio, a counter-blast to Claudius Salmasius’s Defensio Regia pro Carolo I, because it was good republican knockabout, rather in Wentworth’s own robust style. But a more compelling linkage is the singling out of that tract by the Commons on 13 June 1660, when Milton was questioned about it. Nedham was another colleague from the days of the Rump: Wentworth was present in the council meeting that awarded the controversialist a pension.135Masson, Life of Milton, iv. 151, 226; Complete Prose Works of John Milton ed. D. M. Wolfe iv. 285, 295; OPH, xxii. 348. Nor did Wentworth’s will compromise any of its author’s religious principles; its preamble went beyond mere convention in its denunciation of ‘all the trash and trumpery of popery and Arminianism’. His executors were John Swynfen* and Walter Strickland*, the former a victim of Pride’s Purge, the latter a Rumper. Despite being on the opposite side to Wentworth in December 1648, Swynfen had helped him secure the Wolston estate, and they were colleagues in south Staffordshire.136CJ v. 328a, 341b. The bequests Wentworth made amounted to £4,435 in value: he had evidently overcome the financial difficulties he had claimed assailed him in the 1630s. His main legatee was his nephew, Samuel Dilkes, who in order to inherit had to change his name to Wentworth, a condition he fulfilled after Sir Peter died in December 1675. Wentworth died on 1 December 1675, and was buried at Lillingstone Lovell on 21 December.137Vis Oxon. 1669, 1675 (Harl. Soc. n.s. xii), 105; Rutton, Wentworth, 286.