Philip Mainwaring

The Rt. Hon. Sir Philip Mainwaring, P.C. (I.) (1589 – 2 August 1661), was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons variously between 1625 and 1661.

Mainwaring was the seventh son of Randall Mainwaring, of Peover, Cheshire, and Margaret Fitton, daughter of Sir Edward Fitton of Gawsworth Old Hall and Ann Warburton. He was admitted at Gray's Inn on 14 March 1609, and matriculated at Cambridge from Brasenose College, Oxford, on 29 August 1610. He was awarded BA from Oxford in 1613 and entered Lincoln's Inn on 15 February 1614. In 1624 he was awarded an MA at Cambridge on the visit of King Charles.

Mainwaring was elected Member of Parliament for Boroughbridge in 1625 and 1626. He was elected MP for Derby in 1628 and sat until 1629 when King Charles decided to rule without parliament for eleven years.

In 1634, Mainwaring became Principal Secretary to the 1st Viscount Wentworth (who was later created, in January 1640, 1st Earl of Strafford), Lord Deputy of Ireland. Lord Wentworth's biographer refers to Mainwaring as a "court hanger-on" who was disliked by many of Wentworth's friends, but who had provided him with useful intelligence in the past, and who justified Wentworth's trust by proving a diligent and loyal official, who remained faithful to his employer to the end.

He was knighted at Dublin Castle on 13 July 1634. He was an MP in the Irish House of Commons for Clonakilty from 1634 to 1635 and for Carysfort from 1640 to 1641.