tion for Strafford's life. Some authorities accessible in 1836 were neglected by the author of this life, no doubt owing to the circumstances under which it was written. The two volumes of the Proceedings of the Parliament of 1620-1621, published at Oxford in 1766, would have explained Wentworth's political position at the outset of his parliamentary career. More important is Dr. Whitaker's Life and Correspondence of Sir George Radcliffe, published in 1810, containing a number of letters from Wentworth to his friend, some of which are of the highest interest. Additional letters of less value were also in print in Carte's Life of Ormond, 1735, and Berwick's Rawdon Papers, 1819.

The amount of new material published since 1836 is of course much more considerable. The publication of the Calendars of the English Domestic State Papers has elucidated many points in Wentworth's career in England, and made plain the problems with which he had to deal. By the aid of these papers Mr. J. J. Cartwright has narrated in detail Wentworth's early contests for power in his native county, and his government of it as President of the Council of the North (Chapters from Yorkshire History, 1872). Wentworth's part in the early parliaments of Charles I. and his share in the struggle for the "Petition of Right" has been for the first time made clear in Mr. Gardiner's History of England from the Accession of James I. to the Outbreak of the Civil War. Even for the history of Wentworth's government of Ireland much new evidence has been added to the papers printed in Dr. Knowler's

folios. Unfortunately the originals of those papers, and the great collection from which they are extracted, are still inaccessible to historians. According to Hunter, who seems to have been specially privileged—"A vast mass of Strafford's correspondence remains behind, in what is called the Earl of Strafford's chest, in the archives at Wentworth House, well arranged and bound in volumes."1 From this source nevertheless came the additional letters from Laud to Wentworth before mentioned. The private archives of Ireland have also yielded something. From the Duke of Devonshire's papers at Lismore Castle, we have obtained the diary of the Earl of Cork, and from the Marquis of Drogheda's come a mass of papers relating to the quarrel with Lord Chancellor Loftus.

Other smaller fragments of Strafford's correspondence are scattered up and down the various collections of State Papers published of late years. Four letters from him to the Earl of Carlisle were printed in 1883 in vol. viii. of the Camden Miscellany, and ten more are contained in the recently printed report on the Coke Papers at Melbourne. The arrangement of the papers of the House of Lords has led to the discovery of the originals of two very important papers. One is the copy of Sir Henry Vane's notes of the debate in the Privy Council which had so great a share in bringing Strafford to the block. The other is the King's famous letter to the House of Lords after he had passed the bill of attainder against the Earl. "If he must Dey, it wer a

1 Hunter, South Yorkshire, ii. 84.

Charitie to repryve until Saterday." The errors and corrections of the letter testify to the perturbation of the unhappy King.1

A TABLE

OF THE PRINCIPAL DATES AND EVENTS IN THE LIFE OF THOMAS WENTWORTH, EARL OF STRAFFORD.

Born, April 13, 1593;

knighted by James I., December 6, 1611;

travelled in France and Italy, December 1612-February

1614;

succeeded his father as second baronet, September 1614; appointed Custos Rotulorum for the West Riding of Yorkshire, Dec. 1615;

appointed a member of the Council of the North, July 10, 1619;

High Sheriff of Yorkshire, November 13, 1626;

committed to the Marshalsea for refusing the loan, May 1627;

created Baron Wentworth of Wentworth Woodhouse, July

22, 1628;

created Viscount Wentworth, December 13, 1628, and appointed president of the Council of the North; made a privy-councillor, November 10, 1629; appointed Lord-Deputy of Ireland, January 6, 1632; landed in Ireland, July 23, 1633;

created Earl of Strafford, January 12, 1640;

1 Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, I. 10; ibid. III. 3.

appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, January 13, 1640; leaves Ireland for the last time, April 13, 1640;

captain-general of the Irish army, August 3, 1640; lieutenant-general of the army in England, August 18,1640; Knight of the Garter, September 12, 1640;

sent to the Tower, November 11, 1640; beheaded, May 12, 1641.

THOMAS WENTWORTH married

(1) Oct. 22, 1611, Lady Margaret Clifford, eldest daughter of Francis fourth Earl of Cumberland; she died Aug. 1622.

(2) Feb. 24, 1625, Lady Arabella Holles, second daughter of John first Earl of Clare; she died Oct. 1631. (3) Oct. 1632, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Godfrey Rhodes.

Strafford left three daughters and one son. The youngest daughter, Margaret, died unmarried; the second, Arabella, left no issue; the eldest, Anne, married in 1654 Edward Watson, second Lord Rockingham. Their son, William, second Earl of Strafford, died in 1695, leaving no children. "With him ended," says Hunter, "the regular male succession of the Wentworths of Wentworth Woodhouse, which had continued from the time of Henry III." The honours of the family became extinct, except the barony of Raby, which descended to Thomas Wentworth, grandson of Sir William Wentworth the great earl's younger brother. This Thomas Wentworth distinguished himself as a soldier and diplomatist, was one of the negotiators of 1 South Yorkshire, ii. 89.

the Treaty of Utrecht, and was created Earl of Strafford by Queen Anne in 1711. The second line of Earls of Strafford which he founded became extinct in 1799. But the title of Earl of Strafford was revived in 1847 in favour of John Byng, great grandson of the negotiator of the Treaty of Utrecht, whose grandson is the present Earl of Strafford.

Woodhouse and the other estates of the great Earl of Strafford passed to Thomas Watson, the third son of his daughter Anne and Lord Rockingham, who assumed the name of Wentworth. His son, successively created Lord Malton (1728), Earl of Malton (1734), and Marquis of Rockingham (1746), published the collection of Strafford's letters, and was the father of Charles Watson Wentworth, Marquis of Rockingham, twice Prime Minister of George III. On Rockingham's death in 1782 the Wentworth estates passed to the Fitzwilliam family, his sister Anne having married William, Earl Fitzwilliam. Her son, the popular Earl Fitzwilliam who was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1795, took the arms of Wentworth, and prefixed in 1807 the name of Wentworth to that of Fitzwilliam; so that the present WentworthFitzwilliam family are the direct descendants of Strafford through his daughter Anne.