ton, knighted on 2 Feb. 1625–6, and entered at Trinity College, Oxford, in 1628; in 1631 he was at The Hague, at the court of the Queen of Bohemia, who frequently mentions him in her letters (see Evelyn, Letters, passim). He was with his father at Berwick in 1640, and was in the same year returned to both the Short and Long parliaments; but on 25 Nov. 1640 was summoned to the upper house in his father's barony of Nettlestead. During the early part of the civil war (1642–5) he commanded a troop of horse, first under Charles, viscount Wilmot [q. v.], against whose dismissal he protested, and then under Lord Goring; was present at the battles of Cropredy Bridge and Newbury in 1644, and shared the revels and intrigues of Prince Charles's disastrous campaign in the west in 1645. In 1646, on Goring's flight to France, the chief command fell to Wentworth, who, according to Bulstrode (Memoirs, pp. 93–4, 149–53), ‘was not thought either of interest, experience, courage, or reputation enough for that trust.’ He was mainly responsible for the defeat and surrender at Torrington on 14 March 1646. He also presumed to talk ‘imperiously and disrespectfully’ to the prince; and, after being driven from his quarters at Ashburton, was placed as general of the horse under the chief command of Lord Hopton, with whom and the prince he eventually escaped to the Scilly Isles and Jersey. In 1649 he attended Charles to Paris, was with him in Scotland and at Worcester, and formed one of the council till the Restoration, being gentleman of the chamber and master of the ceremonies. His principal services were a diplomatic mission from Cologne to Denmark in 1653, and the organisation and command of the ‘royal regiment of guards’ in 1656, though he seems not to have been present at the battle of the Dunes in 1658. After the Restoration he retained this colonelcy, received 500l. from the king in November 1663, and died in his father's lifetime on 28 Feb. 1665. By his wife Philadelphia (d. 4 May 1696), daughter of Sir Ferdinando Carey, who was naturalised in 1662 and received a pension of 600l., very irregularly paid, he had an only child, Henrietta Maria Wentworth [q. v.], who succeeded his father in the barony. A portrait of Wentworth, painted in 1640, belongs to Mr. H. R. Clifton of Clifton Hall, Nottingham, and is reproduced in F. W. Hamilton's ‘Grenadier Guards.’ Lloyd credits him with ‘a very strong constitution and admirable parts for contrivance.’
[Authorities cited under Wentworth, Thomas, Earl of Cleveland, and F. W. Hamilton's Grenadier Guards, caps. i. and iii.]
WENTWORTH, Sir THOMAS, fourth Baron Wentworth of Nettlestead and first Earl of Cleveland (1591–1667), born in 1591, was the elder son of Henry, third baron Wentworth (d. 16 Aug. 1593), by Anne (d. May 1625), daughter of Sir Owen Hopton, lieutenant of the Tower. Thomas Wentworth, second baron [q. v.], was his grandfather. In 1595 his mother married Sir William Pope (1573–1631) of Wroxton (afterwards first Earl of Downe), and Thomas, with his brother Henry (d. 1644), afterwards a major-general in the king's army, and his sister Jane, who married Sir John Finet [q. v.], were brought up there. The boys matriculated on 12 Nov. 1602 at Trinity College, Oxford, their stepfather being the nephew of the founder, Sir Thomas Pope [q. v.]; a room had been built for them over the college library in 1601 at a cost of 50l. (Comp. Burs. Coll. Trin.) On 27 Aug. 1605 they appeared before James I at Christ Church (Wake, Rex Platonicus, p. 35), and Thomas was created a knight of the Bath on 4 June 1610. In 1611 he married, and seems to have settled at Toddington, Bedfordshire, with his great-aunt Jane (Wentworth), lady Cheyney, on whose death on 16 April 1614 he added the estates there of the Cheyney family to the Wentworth property in Suffolk and Middlesex. In 1619 he became custos rotulorum for the county of Bedford. Lloyd (Memoires p. 570) says that he served under Prince Maurice in 1620 and Count Mansfeldt in 1624, but has probably confused him with his second wife's father, Sir John Wentworth of Gosfield (d. 1631), who took part in Vere's expedition of 1620. He took his seat in the House of Lords on 30 Jan. 1621, was made joint lord lieutenant of Bedfordshire on 5 May 1625, and was created Earl of Cleveland on 7 Feb. 1626. This promotion he seems to have owed to the favour of Buckingham, under whom he served in the expedition to La Rochelle in 1627; he was present when Buckingham was assassinated by Felton, and heard ‘the thump’ and the assassin's exclamation of ‘God have mercy on thy soul’ (Lloyd, l.c. and Forster, Eliot, ii. 355). His connection with the court had led him into great extravagance, and about 1630 he and his son began to raise loans chiefly from persons of rank; before 1638 they had heavily encumbered the lands in Bedfordshire and Middlesex, especially the manors of Stepney and Hackney, while they still owed 19,200l.
On 12 Feb. 1639 Cleveland wrote to say that he would join the king with ten men; and on 9 Oct. 1640 the garrison of Berwick was ‘very merry since the Earl of Cleveland
