LARGE UPPER CORRIDOR.
No. 98.
THOMAS WENTWORTH, EARL OF STRAFFORD.
After Vandyck.
BORN 1594, EXECUTED 1641.
In armour. Holding a baton.
THE eldest son of Sir William Wentworth, of Wentworth Wodehouse, county York, by Anne Atkinson, of Stowel, county Gloucester. Educated at home, and afterwards at Cambridge, where he gained an excellent reputation for conduct and study. His father dying when Thomas was twenty-one, he found himself at that early age the Master of Wentworth, of large estates and property, the husband ‘of a fair wife,’ (the daughter of Francis Earl of Cumberland,) and the guardian of a flock of young relatives, yet he found time not only for the diligent pursuit of study, but for the relaxations of ‘hunting, hawking, and fishing;’ in fact, for all the varied business and pleasures of a country life.
But he was not long allowed to remain in the privacy of Wentworth, being elected member for York, and Custos Rotulorum. This was in the place of Lord Savile, who had been compelled to resign for misconduct. But Sir Thomas had not held the office long before the Duke of Buckingham requested him to retire, that Savile might be reinstated, a proposition which so nettled his high spirit that he couched an indignant refusal in terms that made a lifelong enemy of the haughty favourite.