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About Lettice Wentworth
- 'Peter WENTWORTH (Sir Knight)
- Born: 1529, Lillingstone, Dayrell, Buchinghamshire, England
- Died: 10 Nov 1596, Tower of London, London, England
- Buried: AFT 10 Nov 1596, Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, Tower of London
- Notes: See his Biography.
- Father: Nicholas WENTWORTH (Sir Knight)
- Mother: Jane JOSSELYN
- 'Married 1: Laetitia LANE (dau. of Sir Ralph Lane and Maud Parr)
- Married 2: Elizabeth WALSINGHAM
- Children:
- 1. Nicholas WENTWORTH
- 2. Mary WENTWORTH
- 3. Thomas WENTWORTH
- 4. Frances WENTWORTH
- 5. Walter WENTWORTH
- 6. Son WENTWORTH
- 7. Dau. WENTWORTH
- 8. Dau. WENTWORTH
- 9. Dau. WENTWORTH
- ' The details in this biography come from the History of Parliament, a biographical dictionary of Members of the House of Commons.
- Born 1524, first son of Sir Nicholas Wentworth of Lillingstone Lovell, chief porter of Calais, by Jane, dau. of John Josselyn of Hyde Hall, Sawbridgeworth, Herts.; brother of Paul. Educated Lincoln Inn 1542. Married first Lettice, dau. of Sir Ralph Lane of Orlingbury, Northants. by Maud, dau. and coheiress of William, 1st Baron Parr of Horton'; and secondly Elizabeth, dau. of William Walsingham of Footscray and Joyce Denny, sister of Sir Francis Walsingham, widow of Geoffrey Gates of Walton or Waltham, Essex; by whom he had four sons and five daughters. Suc. family 1557.
- Wentworth's family setting was both impressive and significant. His grandfather ......
- Wentworth was imprisoned in the Tower, where he remained till his death four-and-a-half years later. It is clear from several surviving petitions and letters that he could have secured his freedom within a reasonable time if he had been prepared to acknowledge his fault and give pledge of future silence, without which he remained a potential focus of unrest and disturber of the Queen's delicately poised policy for the peaceful transition of the crown at her death. Instead of repentance, in every petition he reiterated the argument of his Pithie Exhortation: to do otherwise, he declared, would be to ‘give her Highness a most detestable Judas-kiss’. In 1594, when Doleman's Conference about the Next Succession to the Crown of England was published a disturbing Catholic tract he was reckless enough, at the instance of some friends, to write an answer, entitled A Discourse containing the Author's opinion of the true and lawful successor to her Majesty. It was published after his death along with his Pithie Exhortation and, fortunately for Wentworth, seems to have been kept secret from the authorities. Wentworth pronounced in favour of James VI's title to the succession a judgment he would have strongly opposed earlier, thus, incidentally, vindicating the Queen in her policy of letting time simplify the problem. Doleman had been led to exalt the rights of Parliament. Thus, ironically enough, Wentworth found himself expounding the limitations of those rights.
- To keep Wentworth where he could do no harm to the state was the main concern of Queen and Council. As he put it himself: ‘The causes of my long imprisonment ... a truth plainly delivered’. His second wife was permitted to live with him in the Tower, and there she died, Jul 1596, ‘my chiefest comfort in this life, even the best wife that ever poor gentleman enjoyed’. There was a proposal to release him on the pledges of sureties in Jul 1597, when he asked not to be sent home to Lillingstone Lovell, where memories of his wife would be too much for him. On 10 Nov that year he died. An inquisition post mortem taken at Oxford in 1599 was concerned with his manor of Lillingstone Lovell and houses, woods, etc. in the parish and in Lillingstone Dayrell. Wentworth's children married into puritan families, and one of his sons, Thomas, emulated his father in Parliament in James I's reign.
- ..... The heir to the manor of Lillingstone Lovell was Wentworth's eldest son, Nicholas, who married Susanna, daughter and heiress of Roger Wigston, the head of a great puritan family; and from their mar riage there sprang Sir Peter Wentworth, Lady Vane, and Sybyl, who married Fisher Dilke, second son of Sir Thomas Dilke of Maxstoke Castle. Of Peter's younger children, Walter was a member of Parliament; and Paul was of Castle Bythorpe, married Mary Hampden, and is sometimes said to have been author of Wentworth's ' Orizons'. Of the daughters, Frances married Walter Strickland.
- [State Papers, Dom. Elizabeth ; Lord Salisbury's MSS. at Hatfield; D'Ewes's Journals; Official Return of Members of Parliament; Acts of the Privy Council, ed. Dasent; Hallam's Constitutional History of England; Froude's Hist, of England; Button's Three Branches of the Wentworth Family]
- Sources:
- Neale, ‘Peter Wentworth’
- Neale, Parlts.
- _________
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Lettice Wentworth's Timeline
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1525
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| 1555 |
1555
Age 30
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