Wentworth and the Northern Recusancy Commission

In June 1629 Thomas, Viscount Wentworth was given control of the Northern Commission for Compounding with Recusants and appointed Receiver-General of northern recusant revenues. He was already Lord President of the Council of the North and Lord Lieutenant of Yorkshire, but this new appointment was to extend his power geographically far outside the Council’s jurisdiction. It gave Wentworth the opportunity to demonstrate further his administrative abilities and brought him personal financial advantages. Wentworth’s biographers have customarily given this aspect of his work only cursory attention, but in 1961 Clare Talbot edited a Catholic Record Society volume (n. 53) containing a selection of texts relating to Wentworth’s management of the commission, prefaced by a very informative introduction by the late J. C. H. Aveling which has added much to our knowledge of this part of Wentworth’s administrative work. The texts include over eighty documents, in whole or in part, from the Strafford Papers held in Sheffield Archives which shed much light on the work of the northern commission. There are, however, a number of other important letters, accounts and texts of speeches, both in the Strafford Papers and elsewhere, which deserve attention as they usefully supplement, and occasionally correct, Aveling’s introductory comments.