Major Political Figures in Irish History

The following sample essay on major political figures in Irish history. Among the during the seventeenth century, Thomas Wentworth holds an unusual position in light of his achievements and the attitudes of those he ruled. The Lord Deputy in Ireland starting in 1631, Wentworth traveled to Ireland to stabilize the deeply divided territory and to set her productivity to England’s benefit. Of the goals he attempted, among them the stabilization of Ireland’s economy, the reform of its military, the regeneration of its commerce, and the reorganization of its religion, few, if any, failed under his driven leadership.

However, his methods have been argued as ruthless and tyrannical, earning him intense dislike among the people of Ireland and among political circles at home in England. While Wentworth may have succeeded at bringing the Crown’s bidding into reality in Ireland, his methods intensified an underpinning disorder within Ireland and between Ireland and England.

Wentworth first appears as a significant political figure at the Parliament of 1628, vocally and slyly siding with the popular cause against the Crown.

Charles and his Court undoubtedly noticed the vigor and savvy in Wentworth as their adversary in parliament. Thus, in promoting him to viscountcy and then appointing him President of the Council of the North, the Crown both gained an apt ally and removed a growing thorn in its side. Wentworth’s acceptance of this position and apparent reversal of political alliance became known in political circles as his great apostasy, a blemish on his character which many remembered for years to come.

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Whatever his affiliations during the earliest days of his political career, from his appointment in the North, Wentworth professed his foremost loyalty to the king and repeatedly demonstrated his unflinching dedication to the royal decree.

For it was here, governing England’s more remote and otherlandish counties, that Wentworth developed both a strong-handed reputation and experience in political management that would eventually lead him across the Irish Sea half a decade later. Wentworth’s primary goal in the North was to reestablish the Crown’s authority, bringing the various local powers back under one rule. He recognized the need to impress upon the North the authority he wielded, knowing this would give similar gravity to his reforms. A scandal arose in 1631, in which a Sir David Foulis of Yorkshire began spreading rumors of Wentworth embezzling Knighthood fines. For this attack on his character, a tactic not unfamiliar to government figures of the period, Wentworth brought swift and extreme vengeance, charging Foulis with libel and sending him to prison for seven years. This extremism, though not common during Wentworth’s presidency, was not a singular case either, and Wentworth soon made his levity known.

It would be unfair to say that the Northern presidency during these years was tyrannical – Wentworth revived several causes aimed at aiding the poor. Investigations into the Yorkshire cloth industry were aimed at regulating worker wages, though also cut into the capitalists’ profits. His enforcement of the 1601 Poor Law ensured work and provisions for the poor, though at the same time made him unpopular with the gentry as it drained their coffers and proved an unfamiliar annoyance.4 Wentworth’s goal was to make the will of the Crown a reality in the North; The cost of this goal was perhaps too great, however: “His tactics were the same as those he later practiced in Ireland, leading to the accusation that he planned to centralize all power with the executive at the expense of the individual in defiance of constitutional liberties.”