Australian Colonies,’ and endeavoured to induce the colonial office to inaugurate at once a federal assembly or parliament for Australia (March 1857). He may thus be regarded as the forerunner of the present ‘Commonwealth’ movement.
Wentworth was so disgusted with the democratic flood-tide and the shoals of digger-immigrants that he abandoned Australia and remained in England for some years, expressing from time to time in vigorous and uncomplimentary phrases his condemnation of the action of the new generation of colonial politicians. He spoke of Australia having been ‘precipitated into a nation by the discovery of gold;’ and at a public dinner given in his honour in Melbourne foretold the ruin of his country from this cause. In 1861 Wentworth returned to Sydney. He received a public address in the hall of the university, when his statue in the great hall, by Tenerani of Rome, was unveiled. He even consented to assist the governor, Sir John Young (Baron Lisgar) [q. v.], and Sir Charles Cowper by accepting the post of president of the legislative council. But at the end of 1862 he finally returned to England.
Wentworth died at Merly House, near Wimborne, Dorset, on 20 March 1872. By the unanimous vote of both houses of the New South Wales legislature it was fitly decreed that their founder should receive the honours of a public funeral, and his remains were removed from England and interred with great pomp and ceremony, and with marks of universal respect, at Vaucluse, Sydney, on 6 May 1872, the Anglican bishop of Sydney officiating, while Sir James Martin delivered a funeral oration. It fell to Wentworth's antagonist, Sir Henry Parkes, to second Sir James Martin's proposal for a public funeral; and as colonial secretary he made the arrangements for the ceremony. The vessel, the British Queen, that bore Wentworth's remains to Australia also carried the costly communion service bequeathed by him to St. Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney.
Wentworth was married at St. Michael's Church, Sydney, to Sarah, daughter of Francis Cox of that city, by whom he had two sons and five daughters. She died and was buried at Eastbourne, Sussex, in 1880.
In addition to Tenerani's statue in Sydney University there is a picture of Wentworth which hangs in the Houses of Parliament, and a fine medallion portrait by the late Thomas Woolner, R.A., is in the possession of the eldest son, Mr. Fitzwilliam Wentworth of Vaucluse, Sydney.
[No biography of Wentworth has yet been published, but it is understood that his son, Mr. Fitzwilliam Wentworth, has for years been collecting materials for the work. All the published accounts of his career are imperfect and fragmentary, even the date of his birth is variously stated—by Sir James Martin as ‘about 1790,’ by Mr. Henniker-Heaton and Mr. David Blair as 1791, and only in recent compilations, such as Mr. Mennell's Australian Dictionary of Biography and Burke's Colonial Gentry, is the correct date, 1793, given. The writer is indebted to Mr. E. A. Petherick for access to his invaluable collection of early Australian books and pamphlets and for personal assistance. He has also had at his disposal the unpublished papers of the late Lord Sherbrooke and the writer's own notes of conversations with the late Sir George Macleay, K.C.M.G. Rusden's Histories of Australia and New Zealand; Martin's Life and Letters of Lord Sherbrooke; Heaton's Dictionary of Dates, contain the fullest published accounts of Wentworth. The Australian, the Atlas, and the Sydney Morning Herald have also been consulted.]
WERBURGA or WERBURH, Saint (d. 700?), abbess of Ely, was daughter of Wulfhere [q. v.], king of Mercia, and St. Ermenhild. Her mother was daughter of Earconbert, king of Kent, and Sexburga (d. 699?) [q. v.], a sister of St. Etheldreda [q. v.] or Æthelthryth. Werburga was, according to Ely tradition, left by her mother as abbess of her convent in Sheppey when Ermenhild went to Ely, and at her mother's death succeeded her as abbess of Ely. Her uncle Ethelred of Mercia set her over some Mercian nunneries, as Trentham and Hanbury in Staffordshire, and Weedon in Northamptonshire. According to an early tradition (Flo. Wig., which says nothing of her very probable rule in Sheppey), she became a nun, and entered her great-aunt's monastery, where she worked miracles, on the death of her father Wulfhere in 675. She died at Trentham and was buried at Hanbury. The year of her death is given in the Chester annals as 690, though if there is any ground for the story that Ceolred of Mercia translated her body nine years after her death, when it is said to have been found incorrupt, she could not have died earlier than 700, which is generally given as an approximate date, for Ceolred's reign began in 709. There is no reason to doubt that her remains were carried to Chester during the Danish invasions, perhaps, according to tradition, in 875; it was believed that they then for the first time were subjected to decay, and that her body crumbled to dust. The assertion that she had lived as a nun at Chester in a monastery built by her father is probably
