was opposed by the House of Lords (see Peerage), and he was eventually created a peer with the usual remainder (1856). He died at his residence, Ampthill Park, Bedfordshire, on the 2Sth of February 1868, and having outlived his three sons, the title became extinct.
WENSLEYDALE, the name given to the upper part of the
valley of the river Ure in the North Riding, Yorkshire, England.
It is celebrated equally for its picturesque scenery and for the
numerous points of historical and other interest within it. The
Ure rises near the border of Yorkshire and Westmorland, in
the uplands of the Pennine Chain. Its course is generally
easterly as long as it is confined by these uplands, but on debouching
upon the central plain of Yorkshire it takes a southeasterly
turn and flows past Ripon and Boroughbridge to form,
by its union with the Swale, the river Ouse, which drains to the
Humber. The name Wensleydale is derived from the village
of Wensley, some 25 m. from the source of the river, and is
primarily applied to a section of the valley extending 10 m.
upstream from that point, but is generally taken to embrace
the whole valley from its source to a point near Jervaulx abbey,
a distance of nearly 40 m., below which the valley widens out
upon the plain. The dale is traversed by a branch of the North-Eastern
railway from Northallerton.
As far up as Hawes, the dale presents a series of landscapes in which the broken limestone crags of the valley-walls and the high-lying moors beyond them contrast finely with the rich land at the foot of the hills. Beyond Hawes, towards the source, the valley soon becomes wide, bare and shallow, less rich in contrast, but wilder. On both sides throughout the dale numerous narrow tributary vales open out. Small waterfalls are numerous. The chief are Aysgarth Force, on the main stream. Mill Gill Force on a tributary near Askrigg, and Hardraw Scaur beyond Hawes, the finest of all, which shoots forth over a projecting ledge of limestone so as to leave a clear passage behind it. The surrounding cliffs complete a fine picture. The small river Bain, joining the Ure near Askrigg, forms a pretty lake called Semerer or Semmer Water, 34 m. in length.
Following the valley upward, the points of chief interest apart from the scenery arc these. Jervaulx Abbey was founded in 1156 by Cistercians from Byland, who had previously settled near Askrigg. The remains are mainly transitional Norman and Early English, and are not extensive. Of the great church hardly any fragments rise above ground-level, but the chapter-house, refectory and cloisters remain in part, and the ivy-clad ruins stand in a beautiful setting of woodland. Above the small town of Middleham, where there are large training stables, rises the Norman keep of Robert Fitz-Ranulph, which passed to the Nevills, being held by the “King-maker,” Warwick. The subsidiary buildings date down to the 14th century. In Cover Dale near Middleham is the ruined Premonstratensian abbey of Coverham, founded here in the 13th century and retaining a gatehouse and other portions of Decorated date. Farther up Wensleydale Bolton Castle stands high on the north side. This was the stronghold of the Scropes, founded by Richard I.’s chancellor of that name. Its walls, four corner-towers and fine position still give it an appearance of great strength.
WENTWORTH, the name of an English family distinguished
in the parliamentary history of the 16th and 17th centuries.
The Wentworths traced descent from William Wentworth
(d. 1308) of Wentworth Woodhouse, in Yorkshire, who was
the ancestor of no fewer than eight distinct lines of the family,
two main branches of which were settled in the 14th century
at Wentworth Woodhouse and North Elmshall respectively.
From the elder, or Wentworth Woodhouse branch, were
descended Thomas Wentworth the celebrated earl of Strafford (q.v.), and through him the Watson-Wentworths, marquesses
of Rockingham in the 15th century, and the earls Fitz William
of the present day. To the younger branch belonged Roger
Wentworth (d. 1452), great-great-grandson of the above mentioned
William. Roger, who was a son of John Wentworth
(fl. 1413) of North Elmshall, Yorkshire, acquired the manor
of Nettlestead in Suffolk in right of his wife, a grand-daughter
of Robert, Baron Tibetot, in whose lands this manor had been
included, and who died leaving an only daughter in 1372.
Roger’s son Henry (d. 1482) was twice married; by his first
wife he was the ancestor of the Wentworths of Gosfield, Essex,
by his second of the Wentworths of Lillingstone Lovell, Buckinghamshire.[1]
Another of Roger Wentworth’s sons. Sir Philip
Wentworth, was the grandfather of Margery, wife of Sir John
Seymour, mother of the Protector Somerset and of Henry VlII.’s
wife Jane Seymour, and grandmother of King Edward VI.
Margery’s brother Sir Robert Wentworth (d. 1528) married a
daughter of Sir James Tyrrell, the reputed murderer of Edward V.
and his brother in the Tower; and Sir Robert’s son by this
marriage, Thomas Wentworth (1501–1551), was summoned to
parliament by writ in 1529 as Baron Wentworth of Nettlestead.
He was one of the peers who signed the letter to the pope in
favour of Henry VIII.’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, and
was one of the judges of Anne Boleyn. He was lord chamberlain
to Edward VI., and died in 1551 leaving sixteen children.
Thomas Wentworth, 2nd Baron Wentworth of Nettlestead (1525–1584), was the eldest son of the above-mentioned 1st baron. He served with distinction under his relative the Protector Somerset at the battle of Pinkie in 1547; but in 1551 he was one of the peers who condemned Somerset to death on a charge of felony. He was a trusted counsellor of Queen Mary, who appointed him deputy of Calais. Wentworth was the last Englishman to hold this post, for on the 7th of January 1558 he was compelled to surrender Calais to the French, his representations as to the defenceless condition of the fortress having been disregarded by the English Council some years earlier. Wentworth himself remained in France as a prisoner of war for more than a year, and on his return to England in 1559 he was sent to the Tower for having surrendered Calais; but he was acquitted of treason. He died on the 13th of January 1584. His eldest son William married a daughter of Lord Burghley, but predeceased his father, whose peerage consequently passed to his second son Henry (1558–1593), who was one of the judges of Mary, queen of Scots, at Fotheringay in 1586.
Thomas Wentworth, 1st earl of Cleveland (1591–1667), was the eldest son of Henry, whom he succeeded as 4th Baron Wentworth of Nettlestead in 1593. In 1614 he inherited from an aunt the estate of Toddington in Bedfordshire, tiU then the property of the Cheyney family, and here he made his principal residence. In 1626 he was created earl of Cleveland, and in the following year he served under Buckingham in the expedition to La Rochelle. Adhering to the king’s cause in the parliamentary troubles, he attended his kinsman Strafford at his execution, and afterwards was a general on the royalist side in the Civil War until he was taken prisoner at the second battle of Newbury. Cleveland commanded a cavalry regiment at Worcester in 1651, when he was again taken prisoner, and he remained in the Tower till 1656. He died on the 25th of March 1667. His early extravagance and the fortunes of war had greatly reduced his estates, and Nettlestead was sold in 1643. Cleveland was described by Clarendon as “a man of signal courage and an excellent officer”; his cavalry charge at Cropredy Bridge was one of the most brilliant incidents in the Civil War, and it was by his bravery and presence of mind that Charles II. was enabled to escape from Worcester. At his death the earldom of Cleveland became extinct. He outlived his son Thomas (1613–1645), who was called up to the House of Lords in his father’s lifetime as Baron Wentworth, and whose daughter Henrietta Maria became Baroness Wentworth in her own right on her grandfather’s death. This lady, who was the duke of Monmouth’s mistress, died unmarried in 16S6.
The barony of Wentworth then reverted to Cleveland’s daughter Anne, who married the 2nd Lord Lovelace, from whom it passed to her grand-daughter Martha (d, 1745), wife of Sir Henry Johnson, and afterwards to a descendant of Anne’s daughter Margaret, Edward Noel, who was created Viscount Wentworth of Wellesborough in 1762. The viscountcy became extinct at his death, and the barony again passed through the female line in the person of Noel’s daughter Judith to the latter’s daughter Anne Isabella, who married Lord Byron the
- ↑ In the 16th century Lillingstone Lovell was in Oxfordshire, that portion of the county being surrounded by Buckinghamshire, with which it was afterwards incorporated.
