Background
Paul Wentworth may have been born in Barbados.
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Paul Wentworth
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A man of apparent education and talents, he lived before the Revolution in many places, the West Indies, New Hampshire, London, Paris, relying for financial support on his abilities as a stock jobber and on the profits of a Surinam plantation. He had one ambition - to obtain from the British government some office that would give him the political prestige he considered commensurate with his dignity and standing as a gentleman. Governor Wentworth, who seems to have thought highly of him, obtained for him, in 1770, an appointment to the council of New Hampshire; but he did not, apparently, care to forsake his financial activities for a minor colonial office. He did, however, serve the colony as its London agent in the early seventies. With the outbreak of hostilities he, like his kinsman, supported the British side. His travels in America and his wide acquaintance with Americans, both in the colonies and in London, made him valuable to the government, which gave him immediate employment in its spy service, where he hoped the reward of his endeavors would be a baronetcy, a seat in Parliament, and an administrative post. He became one of the important members of the secret service, appointing and directing spies, digesting and interpreting their reports for the ministry, and making frequent trips to the Continent, where, under assumed names and various disguises, he himself often performed the more dangerous and delicate missions. Through him Edward Bancroft was brought into the service, and to him Bancroft's often very valuable reports were made. His most noteworthy exploit was his attempt to halt the negotiations between France and the United States, which, in December and January 1777-78, he realized were rapidly approaching their culmination. He made frantic efforts to persuade Silas Deane and Benjamin Franklin to consider British terms of reconciliation, going far beyond his instructions in the offers he dangled before them. Franklin finally promised to talk with any regularly appointed peace commissioner, and Wentworth hastened back to London, only to find that George III could not be persuaded of any immediate danger. As a result, Wentworth's activity only served to hasten the French alliance, since Franklin took good care to inform Vergennes that British overtures of peace were being made. By this time Wentworth was aware that his visits to Paris were being closely scrutinized by the police, and thereafter he remained in London. For his services before the French alliance and for the great danger he had run Lord North believed he deserved special recompense; but George III distrusted Wentworth for his stock gambling; and the only return he received, therefore, aside from his salary and expenses was a seat in Parliament in 1780, which lasted six weeks. He stayed on in London after the war, continuing his business activities and making further futile efforts at a political career. In 1790 he retired to his Surinam plantation, where he died.
Achievements
Personality
Wentworth, hating the ungentlemanly nature of his position, was, nevertheless, hard-working, daring, alert, and completely unscrupulous in his methods of obtaining information.
Connections
In Surinam he married a widow.
