He was born in London, the son of Sir William Wentworth, of Wentworth Woodhouse, near Rotherham, a member of an old Yorkshire family, and of Anne, daughter of Sir Robert Atkins of Stowell, Gloucestershire. He was educated at St John's College, Cambridge, became a law student at the Inner Temple in 1607, and in 1611 was knighted and married Margaret, daughter of Francis Clifford, 4th Earl of Cumberland.
Wentworth entered Parliament in 1614 as Yorkshire's representative in the "Addled Parliament". He was an opponent of the policies of James I of England, confronting the king's foremost advisor and favorite, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham; but it was not till the parliament of 1621, in which he sat for the same constituency, that he took part in debate. His position was ambivalent. He did not sympathize with the zeal of the popular party for war with Spain, but King James's denial of the rights and privileges of parliament seems to have caused him to join in the vindication of the claims of the House of Commons, and he supported the protestation which dissolved the third parliament of James.
In 1622 Wentworth's wife died, and in February 1625 he married Arabella Holles, daughter of Denzil Holles. He represented Pontefract in the parliament of 1624, but appears to have taken no active part. He expressed a wish to avoid foreign complications and "do first the business of the commonwealth."
After the death of James I, Buckingham became first minister to Charles I.
In the first parliament of Charles I, June 1625, Wentworth again represented Yorkshire, and showed his hostility to the proposed war with Spain by supporting a motion for an adjournment before the house proceeded to business. He opposed the demand for war subsidies made on Buckingham's behalf. After that Parliament was dissolved in November, he was made sheriff of Yorkshire, a position which excluded him from the parliament which met in 1626. However, he had was not antagonistic to the king. In January 1626 he asked for the presidency of the Council of the North, and was favourably received by Buckingham. But after the dissolution of the parliament he was dismissed from the justiceship of the peace and the office of custos rotulorum of Yorkshire, which he had held since 1615, probably because he would not support the court in forcing the country to contribute money without a parliamentary grant. In 1627, he refused to contribute to the forced loan, and was imprisoned.
In the following year, Wentworth was one of the more vocal supporters of the Petition of Right, which curbed the power of the king. Once Charles I had (grudgingly) accepted the Petition, Wentworth felt it appropriate to support the crown, saying "The authority of a king is the keystone which closeth up the arch of order and government." He was consequently branded a turncoat. Following the assassination of Buckingham, in 1628, Wentworth was finally made Lord President of the Council of the North, the duties of which were to administer the supreme Law Court of northern England. On July 22, 1628, he was created Baron Wentworth. From this position, he acted as one of two principal members (the other being Archbishop William Laud) in a team of key advisors to the king during an 11-year period of total monarchical rule without parliament (known as "Thorough").
In the parliament of 1628, Wentworth joined the popular leaders in resistance to arbitrary taxation and imprisonment, but tried to obtain his goal without offending the Crown. He led the movement for a bill which would have secured the liberties of the subject as completely as the Petition of Right afterwards did, but in a manner less offensive to the king. The proposal failed because of the uncompromising demands of the parliamentary party and Charles's refusal to make concessions, and the leadership was snatched from Wentworth's hands by Eliot and Coke. Later in the session he quarrelled with Eliot, because he wanted to come to a compromise with the Lords, so as to leave room to the king to act unchecked in special emergencies.
As yet Wentworth was not directly involved in the government of the country. In December, 1628, he became Viscount Wentworth and president of the Council of the North. In the speech delivered at York on taking office, he announced his intention, almost in the words of Bacon, of doing his utmost to bind up the prerogative of the Crown and the liberties of the subject in indistinguishable union. "Whoever," he said, "ravels forth into questions the right of a king and of a people shall never be able to wrap them, up again into the comeliness and order he found them." His tactics were the same as those he later practised in Ireland, leading to the accusation that he planned to centralize all power with the executive at the expense of the individual in defiance of constitutional liberties.
The parliamentary session of 1629 ended in a breach between the king and parliament which made the task of a moderator hopeless. Wentworth had to choose between helping a Puritan House of Commons to dominate the king and helping the king to dominate a Puritan House of Commons. He chose the latter course, throwing himself into the work of repression with characteristic energy, as if the establishment of the royal power was the one thing needful. Yet even when he was most resolute in crushing resistance he held that he was maintaining the old constitution, which his opponents had attempted to alter by claiming supremacy for parliament.
In November 1629 Wentworth became a privy councillor. In October 1631 he lost his second wife, and in October 1632 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Godfrey Rhodes. In January 1632, he was made Lord Deputy of Ireland, largely because of his reputation for harshness. There he exercised the "Thorough" with a certain degree of brutality, propagating the English tradition of using Ireland as a practice ground for social and miltary experimentation. His methods are generally considered to have been autocratic, single-minded and extreme.
He had to deal with a people who had not arrived at national cohesion, and amongst whom English colonists had been introduced, some of them, like the early Norman settlers, being Roman Catholics, whilst others preserved their Protestantism. "The lord deputy of Ireland," wrote Sir Thomas Roe to Elizabeth of Bohemia, "doth great wonders and governs like a king, and hath taught that kingdom to show us an example of envy, by having parliaments and knowing wisely how to use them." Wentworth reformed the administration, getting rid of the inefficient English officials. He manipulated the parliaments to obtain the necessary grants, and secured their cooperation in various useful legislative enactments. He started a new victualling trade with Spain, promoted linen manufacture, and encouraged the development of the resources of the country in many directions.
Customs duties rose from a little over £25,000 in 1633-1634 to £57,000 in 1637-1638. Wentworth raised an army, put an end to piracy, instilled life into the Church and rescued church property. His strong administration reduced the tyranny of the wealthy over the poor. Yet these good measures were all carried out by arbitrary methods which made them unpopular. Their aim was not the prosperity of the Irish but the benefit to the English exchequer, and Strafford suppressed the trade in cloth "lest it should be a means to prejudice that staple commodity of England." Individual cases of unfairness included those of Esmond, Lord Chancellor Loftus and Lord Mountnorris, the last of whom Strafford caused to be sentenced to death in order to obtain the resignation of his office, and then pardoned.
Strafford ignored Charles's promise that no colonists should be forced into Connaught, and in 1635 he raked up an obsolete title--the grant in the 14th century of Connaught to Lionel of Antwerp, whose heir Charles was--and insisted upon the grand juries finding verdicts for the king. One county only, that of Galway, resisted, and the confiscation of Galway was effected by the court of exchequer, while Strafford fined the sheriff £1,000 for summoning such a jury, and cited the jurymen to the castle chamber to answer for their offence. In Ulster the arbitrary confiscation of the property of the city companies aroused dangerous animosity against the government.
Wentworth was benevolent but thoroughly unsympathetic towards the Irish as a race. His only thought was to convert them into Englishmen as soon as possible, in their habits, in their laws and in their religion. "I see plainly," he once wrote, "that, so long as this kingdom continues popish, they are not a people for the Crown of England to be confident of." He became even more high-handed. As yet he had never been consulted on English affairs, and it was only in February 1637 that Charles asked his opinion on a proposed interference in the affairs of the Continent. In reply, he assured Charles that it would be unwise to undertake naval operations till he had secured absolute power at home. He wished that John Hampden and his followers "were well whipped into their right senses." The opinion of the judges had given the king the right to levy ship money, but Wentworth did not consider this enough. When the Scottish Puritans rebelled, he advocated the most decided measures of repression, in February 1639 sending the king £2,000 as his contribution to the expenses of the coming war, at the same time arguing against an invasion of Scotland before the English army was trained, and advising certain concessions in religion.
Wentworth was recalled to England in September 1639. He was expected to help sort out the problems that were growing at home: namely, bankruptcy and war with the Scottish Covenanters, and became the king's principal adviser. Unaware how much opposition had developed in England during his absence, he recommended the calling of a parliament to support a renewal of the war, hoping that by the offer of a loan from the privy councillors, he would save Charles from having to submit to the new parliament if it rebelled. In January 1640 he was created Earl of Strafford, and in March he went to Ireland to hold a parliament, where the Catholic vote secured a grant of subsidies to be used against the Presbyterian Scots. An Irish army was to be levied to assist in the coming war. When Strafford returned to England he tried to enlist the peers on the side of the king, but persuaded Charles to be content with a smaller grant than he had originally asked for.
The Commons, however, insisted on peace with the Scots. Charles, on the advice of, or perhaps by the treachery of, Henry Vane the Younger, returned to his larger demand of twelve subsidies; and on May 9, at the privy council, Strafford, though reluctantly, voted for a dissolution. The same morning the Committee of Eight of the privy council met again. Vane and others were for a mere defence against invasion. Strafford's advice was the contrary. "Go on vigorously or let them alone... go on with a vigorous war as you first designed, loose and absolved from all rules of government, being reduced to extreme necessity, everything is to be done that power might admit... You have an army in Ireland you may employ here to reduce this kingdom...." He tried to force the citizens of London to lend money, and supported a project for debasing the coinage and seizing bullion in the Tower of London, the property of foreign merchants. He also advocated the purchase of a loan from Spain by the offer of a future alliance. Strafford was now appointed to command the English army, and was made a Knight of the Garter, but he fell ill at a crucial moment. In the great council of peers, which assembled on September 24 at York, the struggle was given up, and Charles announced that he had issued writs for another parliament.
By November 1640, there was no other choice but to recall Parliament. The Long Parliament assembled on November 3 1640, and Charles immediately summoned Strafford to London, promising that he "should not suffer in his person, honour or "fortune." One of Parliament's first utterances after its 11-year forced hiatus was to impeach Wentworth for "high misdemeanours" regarding his conduct in Ireland.
He arrived on November 9 and next day asked the king to forestall his impeachment by accusing the leaders of the popular party of treasonable communications with the Scots. The plan having been betrayed, Pym immediately took up the impeachment to the House of Lords. Strafford came in person to confront his accusers, but was ordered to withrdraw and taken into custody. On November 25 he preliminary charge was brought up, whereupon he was sent to the Tower, and, on January 31 1641, the accusations in detail were presented. These were that Strafford had tried to subvert the fundamental laws of the kingdom. Much stress was laid on Strafford's reported words: "You have an army in Ireland you may employ here to reduce this kingdom."
However tyrannical Strafford's earlier conduct may have been, his offence was outside the definition of high treason; the copy of rough notes of Strafford's speech in the committee of the council, its authenticity not supported by councillors who had been present on the occasion, was not evidence which would convict in a court of law. His words had to be arbitrarily interpreted as referring to the subjection of England and not of Scotland and were also spoken on a privileged occasion. Strafford took full advantage of the weak points in the attack, and the lords, his judges, were influenced in his favour. But behind the legal aspect of the case lay the great constitutional question of the responsibility to the nation of the leader of its administration. The impeachment failed on April 10.
But by this point, Wentworth had become something of a symbol for absolute monarchy, and parliament felt the need to kill this symbol off. Consequently, the House of Commons produced a bill of attainder which essentially meant that Wentworth could be executed regardless of crime, simply because it was the will of Parliament that he should die. On April 13 the Commons passed the bill by a vote of 204 to 59. But the bill could still be blocked in the House of Lords of which Wentworth, as Earl of Strafford, was a member. There was considerable public feeling against Wentworth, and the threat of mob violence was sufficient to persuade the Lords to give way. A scheme to win over the leaders of the parliament, and a scheme to seize the Tower and free Strafford by force, were both considered by the king; and the revelation of the army plot on May 5 caused the Lords to pass the attainder. Nothing now remained but the king's signature.
Wentworth had served Charles with what the king felt was a massive degree of loyalty, and Charles had a serious problem with signing Wentworth's death warrant as a matter of conscience. However, to refuse the will of the Parliament on this matter could seriously threaten the monarchy, and Charles was keen to stay in power. Charles had, after the passing of the attainder by the Commons, for the second time assured Strafford "upon the word of a king, you shall not suffer in life, honour or fortune." Strafford now wrote releasing the king from his engagements and declaring his willingness to die in order to reconcile Charles to his subjects. "I do most humbly beseech you, for the preventing of such massacres as may happen by your refusal, to pass the bill; by this means to remove... the unfortunate thing forth of the way towards that blessed agreement, which God, I trust, shall for ever establish between you and your subjects." Charles gave his assent on May 10. Strafford met his fate two days later on Tower Hill, receiving the blessing of Archbishop, who was then also imprisoned in the Tower, on his way to execution.
Wentworth was executed before a crowd of about 200,000, on Tower Hill, Strafford, on May 12, 1641. Thus passed into history "the great person," as Clarendon well calls him, without doubt one of the most striking figures in the annals of England. Following news of Wentworth's execution, Ireland rose in rebellion. This led to more bickering between king and parliament, this time over the raising of an army. The long term consequence of all of this was the English Civil War.
When Charles I was executed eight years later, amongst his last words he suggested that God had permitted Charles's execution as punishment for Charles's permitting of Wentworth's execution.
Strafford had been given the chance to carry out his ideals, and the final failure of his Irish administration, and especially its inability to endure in spite of its undoubted successes, was an object lesson in one-man government for all time. If this was the case in Ireland, where political ideas were still rude and elementary, still less could success be expected from the attempt to introduce the centralization and absolute power of the executive into England, where principles of government had been highly developed both in theory and practice, and a contrary tendency had long been established towards the increase of the rights of the individual and the power of parliament.
In the course of his career he made many enemies. No death was ever received with more public rejoicing. Yet Strafford was capable of inspiring strong friendships in private life. Sir Thomas Roe speaks of him as "Severe abroad and in business, and sweet in private conversation; retired in his friendships but very firm; a terrible judge and a strong enemy." His appearance is described by Sir Philip Warwick: "In his person he was of a tall stature, but stooped much in the neck. His countenance was cloudy whilst he moved or sat thinking, but when he spake, either seriously or facetiously, he had a lightsome and a very pleasant air; and indeed whatever he then did he performed very gracefully." He himself jested on his own "bent and ill-favoured brow," Lord Exeter replying that had he been "cursed with a meek brow and an arch of white hair upon it, "he would never have governed Ireland nor Yorkshire."Early Parliamentary career
The Petition of Right and its aftermath
Lord Deputy of Ireland
Recall and impeachment
The failure of impeachment and the bill of attainder
Death and reputation