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 deputy in the recordership. He was nominated treasurer of Lincoln's Inn in 1621, and died at Henley in March or April 1628. He married Dorothy, daughter and coheiress of Thomas Keble of Newbottle in Northamptonshire. By her he had seven sons and two daughters. His daughter Margaret was married, on 22 April 1628, to Anthony Saunders, rector of Pangbourne in Berkshire.

To Wentworth has been assigned the authorship of a legal treatise entitled ‘The Office and Duty of Executors,’ which first appeared in 1641, though Wood erroneously states that there was an earlier edition in 1612. The first two editions were anonymous, but the third, which also appeared in 1641, bore the name of Thomas Wentworth. The work was, however, generally ascribed to the judge, Sir [q. v.], and several indications in the book itself seem to support his claim. The latest English edition of the treatise was published in 1829 under the editorship of Henry Jeremy, London, 4to (, Touchstone of Common Assurances, 1648;, Works, 1648, p. 184; , Legal Bibliogr. p. 355).



WENTWORTH, THOMAS, first (1593–1641), statesman, the eldest son of Sir William Wentworth of Wentworth-Woodhouse, and his wife Anne, daughter of Sir Robert Atkinson of Stowell, Gloucestershire, was born on Good Friday, 13 April 1593, at the house of his mother's father, in Chancery Lane, and was baptised at St. Dunstan's-in-the-West. The family had long been settled at Wentworth-Woodhouse, and the Barons Wentworth and Earls of Cleveland were descended from a younger branch [see, first ].

The future Earl of Strafford was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, but the date of his entrance is unknown. In November 1607 he was admitted a student of the Inner Temple (, Complete Peerage, xii. 262). On 22 Oct. 1611 he married Margaret, the eldest daughter of Francis Clifford, fourth earl of Cumberland; was knighted on 6 Dec., after which he travelled on the continent (, Progresses of James I, ii. 435; State Papers, Docquets, 8 Dec.) under the care of Charles Greenwood, a fellow of University College, Oxford. He returned home about fourteen months later, in February 1613. In 1614 he sat for Yorkshire in the Addled parliament, and about Michaelmas in the same year (Strafford Letters, ii. 430) he became second baronet and head of the family on his father's death. In 1615 he was appointed custos rotulorum in Yorkshire in succession to Sir John Savile, who surrendered the office to avoid dismissal [see, first ]. In 1617 Savile, who had in the meantime curried favour with Buckingham, obtained a letter from the favourite asking Wentworth to restore the dignity to its former holder as having been voluntarily surrendered by him. On Wentworth's explanation of the true state of the case, Buckingham abstained from pressing his request. A lifelong quarrel between Savile and Wentworth was the perhaps inevitable result. For the Yorkshire seat in the parliament which met in 1621 Wentworth was a successful candidate in opposition to Savile. As he stood in conjunction with Calvert, the secretary of state, it is evident that he was at that time prepared to support the king's government, especially so far as it was represented by Calvert, who was a member of that party in the council which favoured an understanding with Spain.

It was, in fact, perfectly natural that it should be so. The main question likely to occupy parliament was that of succouring the elector palatine after his loss of Bohemia, and Wentworth was not the man to wish to hurry the king into a further extension of a warlike policy than he was willing to agree to. All through his life Wentworth gave the first place to domestic reform, and disliked entanglement in continental politics, and especially in a religious war. In the early part of the session he appeared as an occasional speaker, but it was not till after the adjournment in the summer that the young member took any prominent part in the debates. The government having proposed a vote of supply to enable James to maintain a force in the lower palatinate during the winter, leaving it to him to declare war or not when the summer arrived, the opposition showed an inclination to drag the king into a more direct conflict with Spain, and Wentworth on 26 Nov. proposed an adjournment, apparently to give James time to come to an understanding with the house; and, being beaten, supported the government on the 27th in its demand for a supply, leaving the king the choice of a fit time for declaring war. Later in the session, when a constitutional question was raised by