Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Earl of Bute

“ The entries do not seem to be of much moment; but they may accidentally confirm or disprove some disputed points of history. There is an entry without a date, describing the stages of a journey in England, commencing with London and Hampstead: it ends with Toddington. This forms a strong link in the chain of identity; for Toddington is a place remarkable in the history of the duke. Near it was the residence of Lady Henrietta Maria Wentworth, baroness (in her own right) of Nettlestead, only daughter and heir of Thomas Lord Wentworth, grandchild and heir of the Earl of Cleveland. ”

“ Raised to the peerage by the title of Viscount Wentworth, he was appointed Lord-Deputy and Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, and sailed for that ‘distressful country’ with a code for his own government, drawn up by himself, in his pocket, from which he never swerved. ”

“ Educated at Clare College, Cambridge, he entered parliament in 1621, and his rise to importance was due primarily to his friendship with Sir Thomas Wentworth, afterwards earl of Strafford. Although at first hostile to Charles I., this being evidenced by the active part he took in the impeachment of Buckingham, Wandesford soon became a royalist partisan, and in 1633 he accompanied Wentworth to Ireland, where he was already master of the rolls. ”

“ The proprietors, incredulous that the king could know of or sanction such infamous breaches of faith and acts of oppression, sent over a deputation to Charles to lay the matter before him. But the king received them with reproaches, declared his full approval of the proceedings of the lord deputy, and sent them back to Ireland as state prisoners. The old earl of Clanricarde, whose son had been the bead of the deputation, died soon after receiving the news of this shameful conduct of the monarch, and Wentworth wrote to Charles that he was accused of being the cause of his death. ”

“ Still he enjoyed all the external marks of consideration and honor. The President of the North was a sort of king. He was clothed with great powers, and lived in great state and splendor. He had many attendants, and the great nobles of the land, who generally took Charles's side in the contests of the day, envied Wentworth's greatness and power, and applauded the energy and success of his administration.
Wentworth appointed to the government of Ireland. ”

“ The 2nd earl inherited not only the Fitzwilliam estates in Northamptonshire, but also, on the death of his uncle the marquess of Rockingham in 1782, the valuable Wentworth estates in Yorkshire, and thus became one of the wealthiest noblemen of the day. He had been at Eton with C.J. Fox, and became an active supporter of the Whig party; and in 1794, with the duke of Portland, Windham and other “old Whigs” he joined Pitt’s cabinet, becoming president of the council. At the end of the year, however, he was sent to Ireland as viceroy. ”

“ There is no more human reading than the private diary record of those uneasy years that followed; and [28] unconsciously, by mere enumeration of daily incidents, the Earl has made his own character and the character of Wentworth stand out as clearly as if they were both alive and facing each other in a Parliament of to-day. There is the character of the strenuous old Elizabethan Protestant, with its angles and its softnesses, the man of sixty-seven, who for five-and-forty years had been the man on the spot. Royalist to the backbone, he had served in Ireland three sovereigns in succession. ”

“ All places of real authority were exclusively under the king's control, and he could only rise to such stations through the sovereign's favor. In a word, he could acquire only influence as a leader in Parliament, while the king could give him power.
The king appoints Wentworth to office.
Kings can exercise, accordingly, a great control over the minds of legislators by offering them office; and King Charles, after finding [Pg 161] that his first advances to Wentworth were favorably received, appointed him one of his Privy Council. Wentworth accepted the office. ”

“ The demon of despotism raised up an agent in the person of Earl of Strafford. Thomas Wentworth, a man of wealth, talents, energy, and indomitable courage; a man who had, in the early part of his career, defended the cause of liberty; who had even suffered imprisonment sooner than contribute to an unlawful loan, and in whom the hopes of the liberal party were placed. But he was bribed. His patriotism was not equal to his ambition. ”

“ To begin, then, at the commencement I must sail back many years. I am an old man now, and have had a rough cruise through life. I was then a young lad just ready to be launched out on the sea of life; it is forty years gone by now, but I remember all as if it had happened yesterday. The Earl of Wentworth, your father, was then but just of age, and had been celebrating his majority with great merry-making. ”

“ Come what might, he would ever be the true man!—he could not endure the thought of bearing a false reputation, or depriving another of his rights.
He would do nothing rashly: calm consideration, quiet, and time, were indispensable; and the matter should have his calm thoughts,—his time,—his whole mental powers. Beyond this, the case would be one which involved much more in a legal point of view; for, although it might be possible to prove that Edward L'Estrange was Viscount de Vere, and in his own right Earl of Wentworth, by his career he had forfeited all title to such honours. ”

“ Few men, and least of all men of Wentworth's strength of will, could be expected to see things in the same way after ceasing to be critics and becoming actors. As wielding the executive powers of the crown in the north, Wentworth would soon come to regard the crown as the sole upholder of the rights of the state, and all who opposed it as engaged in the destructive work of weakening the authority without which the state would dissolve into atoms. ”

“ A theory has been set forth that he was in reality innocent of the crime imputed to him, and a victim to the vindictive feelings of powerful enemies. Wentworth, in his position as lord deputy, had recovered from the Earl of Cork some of the great tithes which he had appropriated, and had compelled the earl to compound for some church lands in his possession. Bishop Atherton sued for the remainder of those lands belonging to the see of Waterford which were still retained by the Earl of Cork ”

“ WENTWORTH, HENRIETTA MARIA, Baroness Wentworth (1657?–1686) , mistress of the Duke of Monmouth, born in all probability towards the close of 1657, was the only child of Sir Thomas Wentworth, baron Wentworth (1613–1665) [q. v.] , by Philadelphia (d. 4 May 1696) , daughter of Sir Ferdinando Carey. On the death of her grandfather, Sir Thomas Wentworth, fourth baron Wentworth of Nettlestead and first earl of Cleveland [q. v.] , she succeeded to the barony of Wentworth. The early years of Lady Wentworth appear to have been passed at the family manor of Toddington in Bedfordshire. ”

“ War, moreover, would only be waged against Spain, and Weston's pro-Spanish proclivities were as marked as his devotion to peace. The same desire to avoid or postpone difficulties—‘quieta non movere’—actuated Weston's domestic policy. It was on his introduction that Wentworth was taken into favour and made a peer, and it was he who dissuaded Charles from erecting a monument to Buckingham, partly from fear of popular resentment and partly because he had no money to spare. ”

“ The victim of bad men, you have sunk to infamy; but 'though your sins be as scarlet' recollect they may be made 'white as snow!' the greatest sinner may yet repent!"
"Too late—too late." They were the only words the hapless man could utter, so overwhelmed was he at first by the intelligence.
The Earl stood silent too, then Viscount de Vere spoke:
"Wentworth, whatever are my rights I have forfeited them. Will you grant my dying wish, and that is never while I live mention this. When by my death I have atoned for my crimes record my unhappy fate on my tomb stone. ”

“ When they reached the plain, leaving the road, she dashed forward across the sandy ground; the Earl followed. Their horses drove the numerous herds of cattle that fed on the immense pasturage right and left before them. Lord Wentworth was in high spirits then, and enjoyed the gallop over the great common as every rider must, especially by moonlight. Then there was the romance of the ride, following a beautiful girl to an unknown place, and as his courser's hoofs spurned the sandy soil, he almost shouted the "Tallyho!" ”

“ Think of your wife and Augusta;—as a father you are not bound, on mere report, to bring them to ruin!"
"I hope," said the Countess, "as I have shared my husband's prosperity, I shall be enabled to share his adversity, if it is God's pleasure; and I do hope Wentworth will be ruled by right; and whatever may happen, at least I will not add to his trials by impatience or complainings."
"I am quite sure you will always be faithful for better for worse," said the Earl, with earnestness. "No, Arranmore, depend on it, whatever course justice points to, I will go ”

“ The two armies were disbanded on the 24th of June, and Charles having stopped at Berwick to buy a Tweedish wrapper, returned to England. The king was now seized very seriously with a fit of his old complaint—the want of money—and he called in Laud and Hamilton to consult with Wentworth about a cure for the distressing malady. ”

“ In June Raby was made a privy councillor, and was created Viscount Wentworth of Wentworth-Woodhouse and of Stainborough, and Earl of Strafford, with special remainder, failing heirs male, to his brother Peter. His mother had for years been suggesting to him eligible matches, and on 6 Sept. he married Anne, only daughter and heiress of Sir Henry Johnson of Bradenham, Buckinghamshire, a prosperous shipbuilder, who had married, as his second wife, Martha, daughter of Lord Lovelace (afterwards Baroness Wentworth in her own right) . ”

“ He was trained from childhood, to a belief in those extravagant doctrines respecting the royal prerogative, which were so generally prevalent at that day. It was therefore natural that Wentworth, in entering on public life, should seek employment at Court. The King seems, from the first, to have regarded him with favor ”

“ The writer of this counsel knows, perfectly, that already the King’s poverty is the Parliament’s power; and that to build fortresses and array soldiers needs a full purse, not an exhausted one. But he says,—as Wentworth said after him,—that soldiers can be set to work upon good hopes of the pay to come. A resolute King, he thinks, with resolute troops at his back, could do in England what had so often been done in Italy. He could tithe men’s estates. He could make salt and some other things of prime necessity a royal monopoly. He could set a tariff on dignities of honour. ”

“ The only good which he effected was in putting down the multitude of minor tyrants, but then he combined all their tyranny and oppressions in himself. He was ready to bear any amount of odium, because he trusted to the king's support, and thus Charles liked well enough, as it removed the odium from himself The great object was to raise a large permanent revenue, and Wentworth soon informed Charles that if this was to be done, there must be an end to making large grants to needy English nobles, who absorbed that which should flow to the crown. ”

“ The authority of a king is the keystone which closeth up the arch of order and government, which contains each part in due relation to the whole, and which once shaken, infirm'd, all the frame falls together into a confused heap of foundation and battlement of strength and beauty’ (printed from Tanner MSS. lxxii. 300 in Academy, 5 June 1875) . Wentworth's conception of parliaments, in short, was rather that which prevails in Germany at the present day than that which was already growing in England in the minds of the parliamentary leaders. ”

“ To secure a supply of money which would enable him to carry out his objects till the growth of prosperity should give him a constant revenue, Wentworth recommended Charles to allow him to summon parliament. An Irish parliament did not, like an English parliament, represent a tolerably united nation. ”

“ That there was no real or pretended change of principle is obvious. Wentworth had sought to limit the powers of royalty, as had been done in the petition of right, for the sake of the king as well as of his subjects, but he had never shown any desire to transfer the control of the executive from the king to parliament, or to favour the growth of puritanism in the church. It was, however, precisely these two points on which the House of Commons had put forward claims at the close of the session of 1628, and were likely to put forward claims in the coming session of 1629. ”

“ In 1622 Wentworth's wife died, and in February 1625 he married Arabella Holies, daughter of the earl of Clare. He was returned for Pontefract to the parliament of 1624, but appears to have taken no part in the proceedings. He had no sympathy with the popular outcry against Spain nor for wars undertaken for religious considerations to the neglect of the practical interests of the country. ”

“ Sure I were the most solitary man without them that ever served a king in such a place’ (ib. i. 99, 194, ii. 433) . During Wentworth's visits to England Wandesford was invariably appointed one of the lords justices who governed Ireland in his absence, at one time in association with Adam Loftus, first viscount Loftus of Ely [q. v.] ”