Wentworth, Thomas, First Earl of Strafford

Thomas Wentworth, first earl of Strafford (1593–1641), lord deputy and subsequently lord lieutenant of Ireland, was born on Good Friday 1593 (13 April) in London. In the 1620s he sat in every English parliament except during the 1626 session. In June 1627 he was imprisoned for having refused the forced loan, a fiscal device that the king used to raise money for warfare without parliamentary consent. One year later, however, he made his peace with the king and was elevated to the peerage, and in December 1628 Charles I appointed him lord president of the north. He actively sought advancement, and on 12 January 1632 he was appointed lord deputy of Ireland. Wentworth mistrusted the class of Protestant officeholders and planters (the "New English") whom he found in power when he came to Ireland about one year later, and he was prepared to be temporarily tolerant toward Catholics until church and state had been sufficiently strengthened to enforce the official religious settlement. In 1634 and 1635 he deliberately played Protestants off against Catholics and vice versa in the Irish parliament, with considerable success. Armed with new statutes, Wentworth and Bishop Bramhall of Derry pursued a campaign for the reendowment of the Protestant Church of Ireland that affected primarily Protestant landowners. Wentworth's plans to confiscate vast tracts of land in areas that had not yet been planted, however, threatened Catholic proprietors, Gaelic and Old English alike, much more than Protestant ones. Although plantation plans for Connacht and other areas could not—in the end—be fully realized before 1640, they created a general feeling of insecurity among landowners. Other measures seen as arbitrary and vindictive by both Protestants and Catholics also contributed to Wentworth's increasing unpopularity. In 1638 the crisis in Scotland began to undermine his position in Ireland. Having refused to support the earl of Antrim's plan for an invasion of Scotland in 1639, he recruited an army of Catholic soldiers in Ireland himself—to be used against the Covenanters who had risen against Charles I to defend the Scottish church and its Calvinist traditions against English interference—in 1640. In January 1640 Wentworth was elevated to the position of lord lieutenant and made an earl, taking the title of Strafford. His attempt to save the king's cause in the fight against the Scots in the summer of 1640 failed, and after the long parliament had met, he was impeached by the English House of Commons. The majority of the more serious charges against Went-worth during the impeachment related to his period of office in Ireland. With great skill Strafford took apart most of the charges raised against him, but he was nevertheless condemned by bill of attainder and executed on 12 May at Tower Hill, London.

SEE ALSO Bedell, William; Graces, The; Monarchy; Rebellion of 1641

Bibliography

Kearney, Hugh. Strafford in Ireland: A Study in Absolutism. 1959. 2d edition, 1989.

Merritt, J. F., ed. The Political World of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, 1621–1641. 1996.

Wedgwood, Cicely V. Thomas Wentworth, First Earl of Strafford, 1593–1641: A Revaluation. 1964.

Ronald G. Asch