WENTWORTH, Sir George I (1609-66), of Wentworth Woodhouse, Yorks.

Wentworth was the scion of one of Yorkshire’s oldest and wealthiest gentry families. The Wentworths of Wentworth Woodhouse, near Rotherham in south Yorkshire, had been resident in the county since at least the reign of Henry III and by the seventeenth century had built up an estate worth about £4,000 a year.20Foster, Yorks. Peds. Wentworth’s fortunes were closely bound up with those of his elder brother – and, from 1614, the head of the family – Sir Thomas Wentworth†, the future earl of Strafford.

Admitted to University College, Oxford, in 1626, Wentworth was tutored by the Yorkshire cleric Richard Washington, for whom Strafford would secure the office of provost of Trinity College Dublin in 1640.21PRONI, T415/19, 21; Al. Ox.; J.V. Luce, Trinity College Dublin, The First 400 Years (1992), 21. Wentworth’s career in public life effectively began in July 1633, when he and his cousin Sir Thomas Danbie* were knighted in Dublin Castle by Sir Thomas (now Viscount) Wentworth in his capacity as lord deputy of Ireland.22Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 202. Wentworth decided to remain in Ireland after his knighthood and, with his brother’s encouragement, sought to make a career for himself in the king’s Irish administration. In order to initiate him in the ‘managing of affairs’ and to fit him for ‘further employment in the king’s service’, the lord deputy sent Wentworth to court in January 1634.23Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P8/91-2. On arriving at London, Wentworth delivered ‘dispatches...of great consequence’ from the lord deputy to the king (whom he waited upon for several days at Newmarket) and to Archbishop Laud, Lord Treasurer Portland, Lord Cottington, the earl of Arundel and numerous other courtiers. He was apparently zealous in attending to the lord deputy’s numerous interests in London, although he also found time to dine with Lord Treasurer Portland, Lord Cottington and other friends of his brother. His conduct appears to have made a favourable impression on at least one of the lord deputy’s correspondents, the earl of Arundel, who informed him that he was ‘very glad to see him [Wentworth] so resemble you, not only in outward shape, but in the inward parts, for I do observe not only a good judgement, but great secrecy and advisedness in all his ways’.24Strafforde Letters, i. 194, 209, 216-22, 232, 241.

Wentworth had returned to Ireland by the summer of 1634, when he was elected for Bandonbridge, County Cork, to the Irish Parliament. He was returned on the recommendation of Richard Boyle, 1st earl of Cork, after the lord deputy had solicited the earl’s electoral patronage on Wentworth’s behalf.25CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 63; Lismore Pprs. ed. Grosart, ser. 1, iv. 30, 33; D. Townshend, The Life and Letters of the Great Earl of Cork, 244. Within a week of assembling, the Commons had agreed to grant six subsidies, at which the lord deputy sent Wentworth back to England ‘to attend his Majesty with the success of that Parliament’.26Rushworth, Hist. Collns. viii. 168.

By 1635, Wentworth had established himself as one of his brother’s most trusted and useful servants – a fact illustrated by his appointment to the council of war convened by the lord deputy in December to court martial Lord Mountnorris, the vice-treasurer of Ireland.27CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 117. The principal charge against Mountnorris was that he had made a number of implicitly treasonous remarks concerning the lord deputy’s treatment of his family.28New Hist. of Ireland, iii. 252-5. His real offence, however, was that he presented an obstacle to the lord deputy’s plans for managing the Irish customs. Wentworth later claimed that he had played no significant part in Mountnorris’s trial, the lord deputy – hoping to forestall allegations that he or those close to him had influenced the verdict – having forbidden him to speak.29Proc. LP iii. 169, 174, 180. With his elder brother busily pulling strings on his behalf, Wentworth was granted a captaincy in the royal army in Ireland and the provost-marshalcy of Leinster in the late 1630s – an office worth about £290 a year by 1661.30Strafforde Letters, ii. 204; CSP Ire. 1660-2, pp. 44, 158; HMC Ormonde, n.s. iii. 409. And it was doubtless at the lord deputy’s request that the king appointed Wentworth a member of the privy council of Ireland in March 1640.31CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 236; Strafforde Letters, ii. 395-6. In a letter to the king, the lord deputy described Wentworth as a man ‘of courage and understanding, with faith, care and sobriety to execute as he shall be commanded...he shall die before he depart from or decline any service of yours, be the danger what pleaseth God to send...’.32Strafforde Letters, ii. 204. By the early 1640s, Wentworth was becoming an important figure in the Irish administration, if only because he was the lord deputy’s brother. Nevertheless, it is doubtful whether his network of friends and contacts in Ireland – which apparently included Edward Viscount Conway, Sir Philip Percivalle* and Sir Philip Mainwaring* – extended much beyond the lord deputy’s coterie of allies and hangers-on.33Add. 46921, f. 17; Add. 46932, f. 120v; CSP Dom. 1639, p. 410; 1640, pp. 277, 306; HMC 9th Rep. ii. 315-17.

Wentworth’s desire to make his career in Ireland was also reflected in his private life. Within six months of his arrival in Ireland in 1633, he had proposed to Frances Ruishe, the coheiress of Sir Francis Ruishe of Sarre, Kent, whose widow had married Sir John Jephson of Frowle, Hampshire, and Mallow Castle, County Cork, the father of the future parliamentarian, William Jephson*. Described as a ‘very dainty gentlewoman’, Frances Ruishe had reputedly been left lands worth £1,000 a year by her father, together with two or three thousand pounds in money.34CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 76. The lord deputy regarded ‘Mistress Rush’ as a very good catch indeed, and he advised Wentworth ‘not to neglect any good means to bring that [marriage] treaty to a good conclusion, taking it indeed to be such a fortune, if it may be had, as you ought not to despise’.35Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P8/91-2. In order to hasten negotiations, the lord deputy agreed to settle lands near Dublin worth £500 a year on his brother.36Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P8/192-3, 159-61. However, it was reported in September 1634 that although Wentworth had been an ‘earnest suitor’ to Miss Ruishe, she looked for ‘greater preferment’ than he was able to offer.37CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 76. Haggling over the terms of the treaty continued well into 1635, with Wentworth returning to England to do his wooing in person, and it was not until early 1636 that the lord deputy was able to report to his wife that ‘there is now a conclusion to this weary [business] betwixt my brother and Mistress Ruishe, they are become man and wife’.38Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P8/185-91; Strafforde Letters, i. 391, 415, 426; Milnes, ‘Wentworth Woodhouse’, 377-8.

Wentworth’s wife brought with her the manor of Sarre and other property in Kent.39C54/3778/27; Hasted, Kent, x. 251, 257. His marriage also led to his embroilment in one of seventeenth century Ireland’s longest-running and most acrimonious civil disputes. The quarrel had begun in the mid-1630s and concerned the failure of the lord chancellor of Ireland, Viscount Loftus of Ely, to fulfill an alleged promise to settle an estate upon his heir, Sir Robert Loftus, and his wife Eleanor (Frances Ruishe’s sister).40HMC Var. iii. 158-164, 170-200; HMC 9th Rep. ii. 294. With Wentworth’s help, the principal complainant, Sir John Gifford (half-brother to Eleanor Loftus), had the dispute referred to the lord deputy and council of Ireland, who, in February 1638, decreed that Viscount Loftus should settle an estate of £1,200 a year upon his son. When Viscount Loftus refused to obey this decree, the lord deputy and the council stripped him of all his offices and committed him to Dublin Castle.41HMC 9th Rep. ii. 295-6, 300. The lord deputy’s treatment of Viscount Loftus formed the basis of one of the charges against him at his trial in 1641.

Shortly after Strafford’s execution in May 1641, Viscount Loftus presented a petition to the English Parliament for reversal of the 1638 decree, claiming that it was unjust and illegal and had been used by Sir George Wentworth to sequester the revenue of his estate to the tune of at least £2,944.42HMC 9th Rep. ii. 300, 317; LJ iv. 717-18. Wentworth counter-attacked in the winter of 1641-2, presenting his own petition to Parliament in which he insisted that he had been acting in the best interests of Viscount Loftus’s wrongly disinherited grandchild, who would have no means of support if the decree was overturned.43LJ iv. 544b. But having spent many months attempting to prove that Strafford’s administration in Ireland had been arbitrary and unjust, Parliament, not surprisingly, found in Viscount Loftus’s favour. In May 1642, the Lords ordered that the 1638 decree be ‘absolutely reversed...and that all the moneys received by force of the said decree, sequestration, and subsequent orders, and paid over to Sir George Wentworth’, should be repaid.44CJ ii. 284b; LJ iv. 393-5, 717-18; v. 38b-39a; HMC 9th Rep. ii. 300, 315. By this time, however, Wentworth was in Ireland, and when presented with this order in the summer of 1642, declared that it was not a ‘sufficient warrant for him to pay upon’.45LJ v. 381b, 382a.

There, effectively, the matter rested until after the civil war, when Viscount Loftus’s claim was taken up by his eldest surviving son, Edward, 2nd Viscount Loftus. In April 1647, the Lords debated Edward Viscount Loftus’s allegation that Wentworth had refused to obey its order of 3 May 1642. In his defence, Wentworth claimed that he had never been served with this order and produced witnesses that the money he had received from Viscount Loftus’s estate had been on proper authority and had been used to redeem Sir Robert Loftus’s lands.46LJ viii. 709b; ix. 119a, 127. The Lords decided that Wentworth had shown no contempt for the order of the House, was not liable to pay any money to Edward Viscount Loftus, and promptly dismissed the case. It is not clear how Wentworth managed to secure such a favourable verdict, although there is a hint in his correspondence during the mid-1640s that he may have looked for assistance at Westminster to his kinsman Denzil Holles* (Strafford’s second wife had been a Holles), whose Presbyterian allies enjoyed a dominant position in the Lords by the spring of 1647.47Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P40/69. Under the Rump, Wentworth was again summoned to Westminster to answer Viscount Loftus’s complaint against him; and the dispute was not finally resolved until 1678 – over ten years after Wentworth’s death – when the Lords upheld their order of May 1642 reversing the 1638 decree.48HMC Var. iii. 220-30; HMC 9th Rep. ii. 301, 327-8.

Wentworth’s role in the Viscount Loftus affair, not to mention his participation in the court martial of Lord Mountnorris, would have been sufficient to earn him numerous enemies on both sides of the Irish Sea, even if he had not been the lord deputy’s brother. By the late 1630s, his long-term political survival, like that of his brother’s, depended on the outcome of the bishops’ wars – hence his willingness to join the lord deputy and his friends Sir George Radcliffe and Christopher Wandesford† in contributing £2,600 a year to the king’s war-chest during the late 1630s.49Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, i. 370. He also agreed to serve as a major of horse under Strafford’s protégé, the earl of Ormond, in the expeditionary army that the lord deputy raised in 1640 for deployment against the Covenanters.50Bodl. Carte 1, f. 184v. In the event, the army remained in Ireland and Wentworth himself appears to have taken no part in the bishops’ wars.51CSP Dom. 1639, p. 410; 1640, p. 306. Nor did he distinguish himself in the king’s service following his election in March 1640 to both the Irish Parliament and the Short Parliament. Returned on Strafford’s interest for the borough of Kildare, he was named to only one committee in the Irish Parliament.52CJ Ire. i. 130, 137. And he made no recorded impact in the Commons following his return for the Yorkshire constituency of Pontefract – once again on his brother’s interest – to the Short Parliament, although he evidently took his seat in the House.53PRONI, T415/20; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. viii. 538-9.

In the elections to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640, Wentworth was returned again for Pontefract.54Supra, ‘Pontefract’. In this, as in previous Parliaments, he was largely inactive. He received no committee appointments and participated very little in debate. That one of the Long Parliament’s first acts was to have Strafford imprisoned in the Tower, probably stifled any inclination Wentworth may have had to attend the House on a regular basis – especially as some of the most damning allegations against Strafford concerned the lord deputy’s administration of Ireland, an issue that touched closely on Wentworth’s own political record. Fortunately for Wentworth, the Commons regarded him as far less culpable than Strafford, and on 19 November 1640 it granted him permission to visit his brother in the Tower whenever he chose.55Procs. LP i. 193, 196; ii. 561; CJ ii. 93b; LJ iv. 149b. His treatment by the English House of Commons contrasts with that by the Irish Parliament, which disabled Wentworth and Sir George Radcliffe early in 1641 for their complicity in Strafford’s ‘arbitrary and tyrannical’ government in Ireland.56CJ Ire. i. 198, 199.

Wentworth testified for the defence on three separate occasions during Strafford’s trial in the spring of 1641.57Procs. LP ii. 834. On 25 March, giving evidence on the 3rd article – that Strafford had referred to Ireland as a conquered nation that the king might rule as he pleased – he denied that his brother had ever uttered such words either in private or public.58Procs. LP iii. 127; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. viii. 168. Answering questions on 27 March on the 5th article – which concerned the court martial of Lord Mountnorris – Wentworth testified that Strafford had done all he could to avoid influencing the verdict against Mountnorris, even to the extent of barring Wentworth himself from speaking.59Proc. LP iii. 169, 174, 180. On 5th April, during proceedings on the 22nd article – one of several relating to allegations that Strafford had designed to use Irish troops to subdue England – Wentworth was called again, this time in connection with a claim made by Sir Thomas Barrington* that he had heard Wentworth, at the close of the Short Parliament, declare that ‘this commonwealth [England] is sick of peace and will not be well till it be conquered again’. Wentworth had said these words, claimed Barrington, in consequence of his conviction that the Short Parliament had had no intention of granting the king taxes. The trial managers evidently thought that Barrington’s testimony would corroborate the charge that Strafford and those around him had aimed at subduing England by force. Wentworth admitted having talked with Barrington, but was spared from testifying any further on the grounds that he might incriminate himself.60Procs. LP iii. 371, 383, 391, 399; Add. 64807, f. 44v; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. viii. 538-9, 557-8. On 21 April, Wentworth was one of only seven Yorkshire MPs who voted against the bill for Strafford’s attainder.61Procs. LP iv. 51; Verney, Notes, 58. Wentworth’s support for his brother did not preclude him taking the Protestation on 3 May.62CJ ii. 133b. He visited his brother in the Tower on 10 May and two days later attended his execution.63CJ ii. 142a; Procs. LP iv. 299-300; Add. 1467, f. 37. As he later confided to Sir George Radcliffe, Wentworth blamed his brother’s downfall upon the machinations of the ‘Scotch faction’ in the three kingdoms. Those whom he held particularly responsible were the marquess of Hamilton, Sir Henry Vane I*, the godly Long Parliament preacher Stephen Marshall, and two leading members of the ‘New English' planter interest in Ireland, Sir John Clotworthy* and Sir William Parsons.64The Life and Original Corresp. of Sir George Radcliffe ed. T.D. Whitaker, 228-33.

On 4 June 1641, the king granted a patent to Wentworth, Sir William Savile*, Sir William Pennyman* and other gentlemen, to serve as trustees of all Strafford’s property, from which they were to provide for his widow’s jointure, pay off his debts (which amounted to £107,000) and raise portions for his children.65SO3/12, f. 157; W. Yorks. Archives (Leeds), WYL100 (former Temple Newsam ms TN/F/18/1); HMC 4th Rep. 83. By late October 1641, Wentworth had returned to Dublin, where he signed the letter from the lords justices and council of Ireland to the earl of Leicester (the new lord lieutenant of Ireland) of 25 October, relaying news of the outbreak of the Irish rebellion.66HMC Ormonde, n.s. ii. 6. However, he was back in England by 8 November, when he wrote to the earl of Ormond, declaring his willingness to sacrifice his life in the earl’s service.67Carte, Ormond, v. 258-9. Wentworth’s desire to serve under Ormond, who had been ‘bred up in the school of Strafford’, is illustrative of his failure to develop a political identity separate from that of his elder brother.68Gardiner, Hist. Civil War, i. 116.

But while Wentworth was evidently keen to join Ormond in Ireland, his enemies at Westminster had different ideas. The ‘Scotch faction’ had not forgotten Barrington’s testimony against Wentworth at Strafford’s trial, and on 5 February 1642, the puritan MP Denis Bond moved that a man who had declared that England would never be well until it was conquered was not fit to hold any command in Ireland. In response, Wentworth, who was present in the House, made an ‘earnest declaration of his zeal and faithfulness to the public’, insisting that he was ready to ‘hazard his life and fortunes for the king’s service and this House’ against the Irish rebels. Aware of the root cause of the hostility and suspicion with which some MPs regarded him, Wentworth expressed the hope ‘that being a brother of the earl of Strafford ... [would] not be a cause of putting him forth of his employment’.69PJ i. 282-3, 285, 288. When the House resumed this debate on 21 February, Wentworth moved that he was now ready to go to Ireland and asked that he might depart in the ‘good opinion of the House and that he might return a Member of the House’. This request was ‘something opposed’ by the godly MPs William Strode I and Sir Walter Erle. Erle claimed that a letter had been sent to John Glynne*, one of the prosecuting counsel at Strafford’s trial, in which it was reported that Wentworth and Strafford’s eldest son had threatened that they would ‘hew him [Glynne] all to pieces’.70PJ i. 430. Wentworth’s distant kinsman, Sir Peter Wentworth, rebutted this charge, however, and Wentworth himself declared that he harboured no ‘evil opinion’ of any Member of the House. Upon a vote, the House resolved that Wentworth be allowed to repair to his troop in Ireland and that he could remain an MP.71CJ ii. 446a. About a week later, Wentworth left London for Ireland.72HMC Var. iii. 212.

Wentworth spent most of the next four years in the Dublin Pale fighting the Irish rebels.73HMC Ormonde, n.s. ii. 121. He regularly attended meetings of the lords justices and the council of Ireland during this period, signing many of their letters to the king, to Parliament and to the earl of Leicester.74Add. 46926, ff. 138, 149; Add. 46927, ff. 3, 149; LJ v. 488b-89a; HMC Ormonde, ii. 30, 41; HMC Ormonde, n.s. ii. 115, 341; HMC Egmont, 180, 201; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 530. Although the council maintained a veneer of unity during the early years of the rebellion, in fact it was divided between those who were aligned with the English Parliament and those who generally took their lead from the king. True to his political upbringing under Strafford, Wentworth was part of the pro-royalist faction, headed by his patron, Ormond (created marquess of Ormond in August 1642 and appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland by the king in October 1643).75HMC Ormonde, n.s. i. 59-60. Ormond and his supporters, although opposed to the rebellion, tended to favour a more conciliatory approach to the rebels than did the hard-line Protestant faction on the council – which was parliamentarian in sympathy and headed by Sir John Temple* and one of Wentworth’s bêtes noires, Sir William Parsons – which advocated a policy of all-out war. Wentworth remained active on the council after the Irish Cessation of September 1643, and it was probably his continued loyalty to the king’s cause in Ireland (and to Ormond’s pro-cessationist party in particular) that prompted the Commons to disable him from sitting, on 22 January 1644.76HMC Ormonde, ii. 30, 37-8; Letter-Bk. of the Earl of Clanricarde ed. J. Lowe, 232-3; CJ iii. 374a.

Wentworth continued to serve under Ormond until the winter of 1646-7, when he returned to England.77E134/1652-3/HIL10; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 497; LJ ix. 18b. His decision to leave Ireland was probably linked to the events surrounding Ormond’s resolve to submit to the English Parliament in the autumn of 1646 and his resignation as lord lieutenant of Ireland in February 1647. Soon after the parliamentary commissioners finally took control of Dublin that summer, they removed Wentworth from all his Irish commands.78CSP Ire. 1660-2, pp. 44, 158. Back in England, Wentworth was again within reach of parliamentary authority – a fact exploited first by Edward Viscount Loftus (see above) and then by the Committee for Advance of Money. In 1644, the committee had assessed Wentworth at £2,000, but had taken no proceedings against him at that time. In March 1648, however, and again a year later, it threatened to sequester his estate for non-payment of the assessment. It was probably only his service against the Irish rebels, and the debts that he had run up in the process, that saved him from paying this large fine. In December 1649, the committee ordered that his fine be discharged on payment of £50, ‘it appearing that he is very much in debt’.79CCAM, 434-5.

Little is known about Wentworth during the interregnum. He seems to have avoided all public engagements, and there is no evidence that he was involved in royalist intrigue. Some of his time was taken up in managing the affairs of Strafford’s heir, William 2nd earl of Strafford, who spent several years on the continent during the late 1640s.80HMC Var. ii. 375-6. His principal concern, however, was probably to recover his lands in Ireland, which had been seized by the rebels in the mid-1640s. How successful he was in this venture is not known. He made at least one trip to Ireland during the 1650s and may have employed Sir Philip Percivalle’s son, John Percivalle, as his man-of-business in Dublin.81Add. 46936A, ff. 124, 141; CSP Dom. 1655, p. 589; HMC Egmont, 494, 549, 550. Wentworth was certainly still in financial difficulty in July 1657, when he petitioned the lord protector in the hope of receiving compensation for the losses he had sustained during his service against the rebels.82CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 643. In October 1660, he presented a similar petition to the English privy council, asking to be restored to his old offices in Ireland.83CSP Ire. 1660-2, pp. 44, 158. The following month the king ordered that Wentworth be re-appointed to the Irish privy council, and by 1661 he had regained his office as provost marshal of Leinster.84CSP Ire. 1660-2, p. 142; HMC Ormonde, n.s. iii. 409. He was also restored to the receivership of recusant fines in northern England – an office created by Strafford, which Charles I had granted to Wentworth a few weeks before the earl’s execution in May 1641.85SO3/12, f. 142v; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 367; ‘A Bk. of All the Several Officers of the Ct. of Exchequer’, by Lawrence Squibb ed. W.H. Bryson (Cam. Soc. ser. 4, xiv), 124.

Wentworth spent his remaining years serving in the Irish administration under Ormond.86Bodl. Carte 31, f. 517; Carte 144, f. 166; Carte 215, ff. 142, 183; CSP Ire. 1663-5, pp. 128, 286; 1669-70, p. 454; Census of Ireland ed. Pender, 641. He died on or about 3 July 1666 and was probably buried in Dublin, where he then resided. His will is no longer extant.87NLI, GO 142, p. 108. None of his immediate descendants sat in Parliament.