After the boys went to Eton, the Earl had very unpleasant things to
think about. Wentworth was pressing him hard. It is true that the little
dinner-parties and card-parties and private theatricals at the Castle
were going on as if there were no Star Chamber behind them. In January
1636 the Lord Deputy was inviting himself to supper at the Earl’s Dublin
house, and bringing Lady Wentworth with him. Lady Dungarvan’s baby was
born in March, a “ffair daughter”, to be christened Frances, and to
figure in the old Earl’s diary as “lyttle ffranck”; and the Lord Deputy
himself stood sponsor, though he had just lost his own little son, and
the Dungarvan christening had been postponed till the Wentworth baby had
been buried. But the Lord Deputy’s “sharp pursuit” of men was going on
all the same. In February, before the death of Wentworth’s child and the
Dungarvan christening, Lord Mountmorris had been degraded from the office
of Vice-Treasurer, “tried by a Commission and sentenced to be shot, for
no other crime than a sneer” against Wentworth’s government.[50] The
sentence was not to be carried out; but it became every day more evident
that “whatever man of whatever rank” opposed Wentworth, or even spoke
disrespectfully of his policy, “that man he pursued to punishment like a
sleuth-hound”.[51]
At the beginning of that year, the Earl of Cork had made his “Great
Conveighance,” by which he entailed all his lands upon his five sons.
Wentworth had taken exception to the conveyance of some of these lands to
the Earl’s eldest son, Lord Dungarvan; and in February a “sharp and large
discourse” had taken place between the Lord Deputy and the Earl. In April
the Star Chamber Bill against the Earl, dealing with his titles to the
churchlands of Youghal, was still under discussion; and Wentworth was now
pressing for the payment of money, by way of ransom, which was at first
to be £30,000, but was afterwards reduced to £15,000.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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