These essays reexamine the early Stuart period from a fresh vantage point: the career of Thomas Wentworth, earl of Strafford. Wentworth played a crucial role in virtually every disputed policy of the 1620s and 1630s, and his career encapsulates many of the paradoxes and tensions in Stuart politics. The Political World of Thomas Wentworth boasts a series of major articles exploring the political world under Charles I through Wentworth's career, and challenging some of the categories and presuppositions that characterize recent work on this period.