498). After Wentworth's return from Connaught the inquiry was held to Mountnorris's detriment (ib. i. 497), and on 12 Dec. Wentworth summoned him before a council of war, which condemned him to death, as being a captain in the army, for inciting his brother, a lieutenant, to revenge himself on the deputy for a real or imaginary wrong. Wentworth, however, only wanted to frighten Mountnorris into a resignation of his office. When that end was obtained he was set at liberty. So much hostility had been awakened by these proceedings that Wentworth thought it advisable to plead his own cause at court. On 21 June 1636 he made a statement before the council at Westminster setting forth the marvellous improvement of Irish affairs since he had become deputy (ib. ii. 16). He returned to Dublin with a full assurance of the king's favour.
Up to this time, so far as we know, Wentworth's opinion had never been asked on affairs outside his own department. On 28 Feb. 1637 Charles, who had just received the opinion of the judges in favour of his right to levy ship-money, consulted him on the advisability of taking part at sea in the war which France and other states were waging against the house of Austria (ib. ii. 53). Wentworth's advice, given on 31 March (ib. ii. 59), was distinctly against war. Apart from his dislike of a war with Spain, and his clear view of the difficulties which would attend any attempt to recover the Palatinate, he held that the king was not yet strong enough to go to war at all. It was true that the opinion of the judges in favour of the legality of ship-money was ‘the greatest service that profession hath done the crown at any time,’ but unless the king ‘were declared to have the like power to raise a land army upon the same exigent of state,’ the crown stood but on ‘one leg at home,’ and was ‘considerable but by halves to foreign princes abroad.’ To fortify ‘this piece’ would for ever vindicate ‘the royalty at home from under the conditions and restraints of subjects.’ So far had Wentworth travelled. It is true that he had never done more than support parliament in refusing supplies required to carry out what he judged to be an evil policy, yet he had never before so distinctly sided with the advocates of an absolute sself-centred monarchy. Between him and his old parliamentary allies—they had never been more—there was more than a difference of judgment on the existing form of government. The real question was whether future generations would be better governed if the crown were freed from ‘the conditions and restraints of subjects.’
Wentworth's strength, however, lay rather in action than in theory, and at the close of a progress in the summer of 1637 he was able to boast of the prospects of material improvement. ‘Hither we are come,’ he wrote from Limerick, ‘through a country, by my faith, if as well husbanded, built, and peopled as are you in England, would show itself not much inferior to the very best you have there.’ Two more districts, Ormonde and Clare, had been secured for a plantation, and that ‘which beauties and seasons the work exceedingly, with all possible contentment and satisfaction of the people’ (State Papers, Ireland). Wentworth's attempt to build up a government in Ireland on the comfort of the people came to nothing. Englishmen had too much to do at home, and the expected settlers for Connaught or other districts were not to be had, and Wentworth himself was interrupted by a summons to shore up the tottering monarchy in England. That he should have judged fairly the men who broke in upon his beneficent labours was not to be expected. To Laud, writing on 10 April 1638, he expressed a wish that Hampden and his like ‘were well whipped into their right senses’ (Strafford Letters, ii. 156). In July he expressed himself no less strongly on the Scottish covenant, and recommended that Berwick and Carlisle should be garrisoned and the troops exercised during the winter in preparation for an invasion of Scotland in the following summer, when the ports could be blockaded and commerce destroyed. The strong hand against the nation must be accompanied by clemency towards individuals. No blood was to be shed on the scaffold. Conquered Scotland was to be governed by a council subordinate to the English privy council. The English common prayer book was to be substituted for the newly invented one against which the Scots had protested (ib. ii. 189). When Charles prepared for war in 1639, Wentworth backed his opinion by sending 2,000l. to the king towards the support of the army. Yet he protested against an invasion being attempted with a raw army, the only one at Charles's disposal, and urged him to be content with a blockade of the Scottish ports till he had time to discipline his men. He had been too long absent from England to appreciate the change of feeling there towards the crown, and he thought it possible that English soldiers would be content to serve five or six months at their own expense, and that after that a parliament would be willing to grant supplies for the next campaign (ib. ii. 279).
