PETER

See also:

• WENTWORTH, WILLIAM CHARLES (1793-1872)

WENTWORTH (1530-1596)  was the elder brother of the above-mentioned Paul, and like his brother was a prominent puritan leader in parliament, which he first entered as member for Barnstaple in 1571 . He took a firm attitude in support of the liberties of parliament against encroachments of the royal prerogative, on which subject he delivered a memorable speech on the 8th of February 1576, for which after examination by the Star Chamber he was committed to the Tower . In February 1587 Sir Anthony Cope (1548-1614) presented to the Speaker a bill abrogating the existing ecclesiastical law, together with a puritan revision of the Prayer Book, and Wentworth supported him by bringing forward certain articles touching the liberties of the House of Commons; Cope and Wentworth were both committed to the Tower for interference with the queen's ecclesiastical prerogative . In 1593 Wentworth again suffered imprisonment for presenting a petition on the subject of the succession to the Crown; and it is probable that he did not regain his freedom, for he died in the Tower on the loth of November 1596 . While in the Tower he wrote A Pithie Exhortation to her Majesty for establishing her Successor to the Crown, a famous treatise preserved in the British Museum . Peter Wentworth was twice married; his first wife, by whom he had no children, was a cousin of Catherine Parr, and his second a sister of Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's secretary of state . His third son, Thomas Wentworth (c . 1568-1623), was an ardent and some-times a violent opponent of royal prerogative in parliament, of which he became a member in 1604, continuing to represent the city of Oxford from that year until his death . He was called to the bar in 1594 and became recorder of Oxford in 1607 . Another son, Walter Wentworth, was also a member of parliament .