Charles Harding Firth

“ In the Tower he remained for several years, suffering, like other royalist prisoners, great hardships because parliament confiscated their estates and made no allowance for their maintenance, in spite of repeated petitions (A true Relation of the Unparalleled Oppression imposed upon the Gentlemen Prisoners in the Tower, 1647, 4to) . On 19 Aug. 1647 King Charles sent the prisoners in the Tower a brace of fat bucks for a feast, which gift and banquet Wortley celebrated in a ballad containing characters of the different prisoners. ”

“ Wortley is described as ‘a tall proper man, with grey hair’ (ib.) An engraved portrait is mentioned by Bromley (p. 81) . He married Grace, daughter of Sir William Brouncker of Melksham, Wiltshire, and had by her two children: Sir Francis, who succeeded him; and Margaret, married to Sir Henry Griffith, bart., of Agnes Burton, Yorkshire. Sarah, his daughter by his second wife, Hester, daughter of George Smithies, alderman of London, and widow of Alderman Eyre of Coleman Street, married Roger Bretteridge of Newhall, Yorkshire (Calendar of the Committee for Compounding, p. 1376; Hunter, ii. 325) . ”

“ In September 1639 he entertained John Taylor (1580−1653) [q. v.] , the water poet, who has left an account of his visit to Wharncliffe (Part of this Summer's Travels, or News from Hell, Hull, and Halifax, p. 23) . ”