Peter Wentworth (1524 – 10 November 1597) was a prominent Puritan leader in the Parliament of England. He was the elder brother of Paul Wentworth and entered as member for Barnstaple in 1571. He later sat for the Cornish borough of Tregony in 1578 and for the town of Northampton in the parliaments of 1586–7, 1589, and 1593. Wentworth was the chief critic of Queen Elizabeth I, and Wentworth's 1576 Parliament address has been regarded as the sign of a new era in English Parliament politicking. Recorded speeches and parliament sessions, jotted in the diaries of MPs like those of Thomas Cromwell, began to proliferate around this time, when public interest embraced political affairs and when issues such as freedom of speech took root in parliamentary politics. For these reasons, Wentworth is often regarded as the first celebrated English parliamentarian.
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Early life
He was born in 1524, the 1st son of Sir Nicholas Wentworth (d. 1557) of Lillingstone Lovell, Oxfordshire, chief porter of Calais, and Jane Josselyn (d. 1569), daughter of John Josselyn of Hyde Hall, Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire. He was trained for the law in Lincoln's Inn.
He inherited the estate at Lillingstone Lovell on the death of his father in 1557.