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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2009

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Introduction
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1973

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References

page 1 note 1 SC, xx, 198 and 205Google Scholar (from his son William), 192 (from privy council), 196 (from Dr. W. Goodwin), 206 (from Peter Man); xxi, 5 (unsigned, undated, copy); xxii, i (from Thomas Wentworth of Elmsall) are omitted.

page 1 note 2 These are mainly SC, xx, 8699.Google Scholar

page 1 note 3 See below, Appendix, pp. 320–22. The main documents are P.R.O., St. Ch. 8/261/9; Wards 9/94, fo. 677; 9/95, fps. 53, 657 and 9/536–38 and 563.

page 1 note 4 Man described himself in 1619 as ‘having bene servante and sollicitor many yeres’ to Sir William and to Wentworth, P.R.O., St. Ch. 8/261/9, no. 27.

page 1 note 5 The letters from Wentworth are in SC, xxi and those to him mostly in SC, xx (a); they became much more numerous after 1628.

page 1 note 6 SC, xxi, 16.Google Scholar

page 2 note 1 Memorials of the Holles Family 1493–1656, ed. A. C. Wood (Camden Ser., 3rd series, lv, 1937), p. 109.Google Scholar

page 2 note 2 Sir William's views should be compared not only with Radcliffe's (below, p. 325–26), but also with Christopher Wandesford's A Book of Instructions…, ed. Comber, T. (Cambridge, 1777), pp. 910, 18, 70Google Scholar, ‘…in the Generall to exercise yourself in those Studies which tend rather to the Improvement of your Manners than the Advancement of your Knowledge… to know not only what virtue is, but how to practise it. Without learning he will not be able to assist in government or to behave according to his degree.’

page 2 note 3 Copies of a number of the letters in the letter-book are also in SC, xxi; e.g. nos. 21–32, 35.

page 2 note 4 Knowler, ii, pp. 486 and 483.

page 3 note 1 Wedgwood, C. V., Thomas Wentworth, first earl of Strafford (London, 1961), p. 20.Google Scholar

page 3 note 2 Wandesford in 1636 adopted a much more moralistic stance and advised against undertaking ‘any suit upon confidence of the favour of the judge, interest in juries, or the like circumstantiall by-helps… the victory obtained by such false and degenerate helps brings neither honour in present, nor peace and satisfaction to your own Mind. And thus are you disappointed and your Adversary provoked to work under you by the like mines and art to blow you up.’ Both Wandesford and his patron, Sir William's son, stress the need for good relations and reputation with neighbouring families by avoiding offence and faction, as the foundation of acceptance and authority in local affairs. Where Sir William had stressed the need to court the judges of Assize and the Lord President, Wandesford only mentions the latter point, while emphasizing the need to court the Lord Chancellor in order either to be included in commissions or left out of them. Wandesford also thought dependence ‘upon some Person of Honour and Power’ at Court would be needful to give countenance in the country, while Wentworth advised his nephew Sir William Savile not to go to Court before he was thirty; A Book of Instructions… (Cambridge, 1777), pp. 6062, 7072, 82Google Scholar; Wentworth to Savile, December 1633; Knowler, i, pp. 168–70.

page 4 note 1 Wedgwood, , Wentworth, p. 21Google Scholar; see below, p. 35.

page 4 note 2 Ibid., p. 20.

page 4 note 3 See Table I. Sir Thomas Danby's presentment as a recusant is recorded for 1570–73 by Aveling, Dom Hugh, ‘The Catholic Recusants of the West Riding of Yorkshire’, Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, Literary and Historical Section, x, pt. vi (1963), p. 303.Google Scholar

page 4 note 4 These statements are based on an examination of the main unpublished accounts of the Commons’ debates, as well as those in print.

page 5 note 1 No. 217 shows that he did not, as has sometimes been assumed, contest the shire in the 1624 election.

page 5 note 2 P.R.O. St. Ch. 8/258/5, undated, c. 1612.

page 5 note 3 Nos. 374, 376. Sir Henry says that Wentworth had not publicly given his official support as Lord President to his rival, whose identity is unfortunately unknown to me. It might perhaps have been Sir Edward Osborne or Sir Francis Wortley.

page 6 note 1 In 1624 Wentworth was more hostile to the Merchant Adventurers than Savile; P.R.O., SP 14/166, fo. 191, Sir Edward Nicholas' diary.

page 6 note 2 Warwickshire County Record Office, Newdegate Diary, iii, p. 56; 25 June 1628, in the debate on the report by Radcliffe from the committee which had considered and condemned the company's patent.

page 6 note 3 He was born in 1556.

page 6 note 4 Gilbert, the seventh earl, succeeded in 1590 and died in 1616; his brother and heir male died in 1618. On his death Hallamshire and most of the other lands went to Gilbert's three daughters as heirs general; see below, pp. 97–99.

page 6 note 5 MacCaffrey, W. T., ‘Talbot and Stanhope, an episode in Elizabethan politics’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, xxxiii (1960), pp. 7485Google Scholar, gives some idea of the lengths to which earl Gilbert was prepared to go in pursuit of a quarrel with a neighbour with much more powerful connections at Court than Sir William Wentworth.

page 7 note 1 Wentworth bought the manor, rectory and glebe lands of Kirkby Malhamdale from the countess and by February 1620 was engaged in disputes with the tenants about leases, boundaries and timber; P.R.O., C2, Jas. I, W27/76; C3/327/14. He then sold off the tithe to his sister and some land to tenants; some of the money raised went to the countess, or to pay her debts while he kept some of the land; below, nos. 145, 161; Econ. History Review, 2nd Ser., xi (1958), p. 229, n. 2.Google Scholar

page 7 note 2 He had missed the beginning of the session owing to illness (no. 222).

page 8 note 1 C.J., i, p. 784Google Scholar; Bodley, MS. Tanner, 392, fo. 81r.

page 8 note 2 It should be noted that only documents deposited at Sheffield have been used. Recently other papers, including three letters from Sir Henry Savile of Methley and five memoranda about Pontefract, all dated 1621, have been found at Wentworth Woodhouse; see Fletcher, A. J., ‘Sir Thomas Wentworth and the restoration of Pontefract as a parliamentary borough’, Northern History, vi (1971, published 1972)Google Scholar. It should also be noted that no. 134 was printed by Sir Charles Firth from a transcript by Knowler, Pages relating to Thomas Went worth, first earl of Strafford (Camden Miscellany, X (Camden Society, 1895), p. 2).Google Scholar