Christopher Wandesford

Christopher Wandesford (24 September 1592 – 3 December 1640) was an English administrator and politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1621 and 1629. He was Lord Deputy of Ireland in the last months of his life. Life Wandesford was born on 24 September 1592 at Bishop Burton, near Beverley, Yorkshire, the son of Sir George Wandesford (1573–1612) of Kirklington, Yorkshire and his wife Catherine Hansby, daughter of Ralph Hansby of Gray's Inn. Educated at Clare College, Cambridge, and Gray's Inn, he entered Parliament as MP for Aldborough in 1621 and 1624. He was then returned for Richmond in 1625 and 1626 and Thirsk in 1628. His rise to importance was due primarily to his close friendship with Sir Thomas Wentworth, afterwards Earl of Strafford, who was his distant cousin. Although at first hostile to Charles I, as shown by the active part he took in the impeachment of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, Wandesford soon became a royalist partisan, and in 1633 he accompanied Wentworth to Ireland, where he became Master of the Rolls. Wandesford said that he went to Ireland not out of ambition, but simply out of his affection for Wentworth. He sat in the Irish House of Commons as member for Kildare in the Irish Parliaments of 1634 and 1639 and was a member of the Privy Council of Ireland. Wandesford's value to Wentworth was fully recognised by the latter, who wrote that of all the Privy Council he confided only in Wandesford and George Radcliffe, for whose services he could never be sufficiently thankful. In 1640 Wandesford succeeded Strafford as Lord Deputy of Ireland, but he had only just begun to struggle with the problems of his new position when he died, after a short illness which seems to have been a severe fever, on 3 December 1640. The medical treatment he received, which included applying split pigeons to the soles of his feet, is unlikely to have improved his chances of survival.