This accompanies Mark Empey’s Historical Journal article Power, Prerogative, and the Politics of Sir Thomas Wentworth in Early Stuart England and Ireland

In 1643 an anonymous pamphlet entitled The Kingdomes Monster Vncloaked from Heaven was published amidst the deepening crisis of the English civil war. Accompanying the text is a striking woodcut revealing two arms descending from clouds to reveal the veil of a three-headed monster, representing ‘Papist Conspirators’, ‘Malignant Plotters’, and ‘Bloudy Irish’, with its four arms holding a weapon directed against the Church of England, parliament, the city of London, and a kingdom in flames. In the prose that follows the author writes:

This Monster following its forefathers hate,
Seeks to destroy the Kingdome and the State:
While Church and Kingdom should oppressed lie
Subjected to their blinded Popery:
Long time it walked muffled in a cloak
Till Straffords head was cut off, then it broke

That the ghost of Sir Thomas Wentworth, first earl of Strafford and lord lieutenant of Ireland (1593-1641), should still linger two years after his execution offers a fascinating insight into how despised he was in the public sphere. Without doubt, the troubling events in the wake of the Bishops’ Wars and Wentworth’s intention to recruit Irish Catholics for the army left an indelible mark on Protestants in England. And those fears were confirmed by the Irish rebellion of 1641 where accounts of Protestant settlers being butchered by bloodthirsty Catholics circulated throughout the three kingdoms.

However, Wentworth’s involvement in the chaotic developments of the late 1630s was not the only reason he found himself public enemy number one. Rather it was an accumulation of grievances that stemmed more than a decade during his tenure as lord president of the Council of the North (1628-41) and subsequently as lord deputy of Ireland (1632-41). In that time, the king’s subjects were denied access to Charles and had the law used against them so that Wentworth could establish prerogative rule and enforce his will.

The manner in which he executed that plan has been well documented. But despite his career being the subject of intense scrutiny there is little or no attention focusing on the formation of Wentworth’s political skills. How did he become such an effective minister at both York and Dublin, resulting in him being such a despised figure? What was the key to his success? More importantly, why was he able to make a notable impact so quickly as lord deputy of Ireland when his predecessors had miserably failed?

There has been plenty of discussion about Wentworth’s trademark policy of ‘thorough’. Nevertheless, we need to look deeper and assess his approach to governing if we are to fully comprehend the authoritarian nature of his administrations. A critical examination of his actions as lord president of the North yields fruitful results not just because it highlights his taste for power. Crucially, it also reveals the extent to which his early achievements in Ireland were built on a tried and tested strategy that would later have far-reaching consequences both for him and his king.

Read The Historical Journal article Power, Prerogative, and the Politics of Sir Thomas Wentworth in Early Stuart England and Ireland