Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 60.djvu/269

 house’—namely, interference with the ecclesiastical prerogative. On 13 March, on a motion by Thomas Cromwell, a committee was appointed to confer with the privy councillors in the house ; but it is not known when Wentworth was released (, Whitgift, i. 488–9).

On 24 Feb., the fifth day after the opening of the session of 1593, Wentworth and Sir Henry Bromley delivered a petition to the lord keeper desiring the lords of the upper house to be suppliants with them of the lower unto her majesty for entailing the succession of the crown. This was deeply resented by the queen; Wentworth and Bromley were called before the council and commanded to forbear parliament and remain at home in their lodgings. Next day, Sunday, 25 Feb., they were called before the lord treasurer, Lord Burghley, Lord Buckhurst, and Heneage, and were told that her majesty was so offended at them that they must be committed. Wentworth was again sent prisoner to the Tower, but how long he remained in durance is again uncertain. On 10 March a motion to request his release was opposed by all the privy councillors in the house, who argued ‘that her majesty had committed them for reasons best known to herself, and that for them to press her majesty in that suit was but to make their case the worse.’ Anthony Bacon, in a letter dated 16 April 1593, says that several members who thought to have returned into the country at the end of the session were stayed by the queen's command for being privy to Wentworth's motion (, i. 96;, Const. Hist.)

There is no evidence that Wentworth was ever out of prison again before his death. The queen's enmity to him was embittered by his advocacy of the claims of Lord Beauchamp to the succession (cf., Annals, iv. 332–6; and art. ). Wentworth was certainly in the Tower on 14 April 1594, and he certainly also died there on 10 Nov. 1596 (see the inquisition taken at Oxford in September 1599, which says ‘at the City of London’). There is no record of his burial in the Tower, but his wife, Elizabeth Wentworth, who, though Walsingham's sister, had shared her husband's imprisonment, died in the Tower, and was buried in the chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula on 21 July 1596.

Two years before his death, Peter Wentworth wrote in the Tower his famous book, ‘A Pithie Exhortation to Her Majesty for establishing her Successor to the Crowne; whereunto is added a Discourse containing the Author's Opinion of the true and lawful Successor to her Maiestie. Imprinted 1598,’ 16mo. Two printed copies and a manuscript copy are in the possession of the present writer; two other copies are in the British Museum. A folio copy of the ‘Pithie Exhortation’ is in the Duke of Bedford's library at Woburn (see Index Expurgatorius Anglicanus; Hist. MSS. Comm. 2nd Rep. App. p. 2). These tracts were written in answer to Dolman's treatise advocating the claims of the Infanta Isabella to the succession [see, 1546–1610]. They are constitutionally excellent and biblically learned. In the ‘Discourse’ Wentworth says himself of the other tract that the lord treasurer ‘affirmed at the counsell table that he had three severall times perused’ the book and found nothing but what he thought to be true, and stood assured would at last come to pass, as indeed it did by the accession of James I. Several letters from Wentworth to Sir Robert Cecil written during his last imprisonment are at Hatfield with other documents relating to him (Cal. Hatfield MSS. vi. 284, 288, 289, vii. 286, 303, 304, 324).

The heir to the manor of Lillingstone Lovell was Wentworth's eldest son, Nicholas, who married Susanna, daughter and heiress of Roger Wigston, the head of a great puritan family; and from their marriage there sprang Sir Peter Wentworth [q. v.], Lady Vane, and Sybyl, who married Fisher Dilke, second son of Sir Thomas Dilke of Maxstoke Castle.

Of Peter's younger children, Walter was a member of Parliament, Thomas (1568?–1628) is separately noticed, and Paul (who must be carefully distinguished from Paul Wentworth [q. v.]) was of Castle Bythorpe, married Mary Hampden, and is sometimes said to have been author of Wentworth's ‘Orizons.’ Of the daughters, Frances married Walter Strickland [q. v.]

[State Papers, Dom. Elizabeth; Lord Salisbury's MSS. at Hatfield; D'Ewes's Journals; Official Return of Members of Parliament; Acts of the Privy Council, ed. Dasent; Hallam's Constitutional History of England; Froude's Hist. of England; Rutton's Three Branches of the Wentworth Family; authorities cited in the text.]  WENTWORTH, PETER (1592–1675), politician, son of Nicholas Wentworth of Lillingstone Lovell, Buckinghamshire, by Susanna, daughter of Roger Wigston of Wolston, Warwickshire (, Pedigrees of Knights, p. 36), was grandson of Peter Wentworth [q. v.] He was born in 1592, and matriculated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford,