He was the son of Sir Nicholas Wentworth of Lillingstone Lovell, chief porter of Calais, and was trained for the law in Lincoln's Inn.
Amongst other, Mr. Speaker, two things do great hurt in this place, of the which I do mean to speak: the one is a rumour which runneth about the house and this it is, "Take heed what you do, the queen's majesty liketh not such a matter.
The reason is, the devil was the first author of them, from whom proceedeth nothing but wickedness...[5]It was here that Wentworth was interrupted, and the house decided "that he should be presently committed to the serjeant's ward as prisoner, and so remaining should be examined upon his said speech for the extenuating of his fault therein".
[8] In February 1587, Sir Anthony Cope (1548–1614) presented to the Speaker a bill abrogating the existing ecclesiastical law, together with a Puritan revision of the Book of Common Prayer, and Wentworth supported him by bringing forward certain articles touching the liberties of the House of Commons; Cope and Wentworth were both committed to the Tower for interference with Elizabeth I's ecclesiastical prerogative.
[2] In 1593, Wentworth again suffered imprisonment for presenting a petition on the subject of the royal succession; and he did not regain his freedom, dying in the Tower on 10 November 1596.
While in the Tower he wrote A Pithie Exhortation to her Majesty for establishing her Successor to the Crown, a notable treatise preserved in the British Library.