This family was divided against itself in the Civil Wars; and the brother
of the inheritor of Maxstoke, Fisher Dilke, from whom Sir Charles
descended, was a fanatical Puritan, and married into a great Puritan
house. His wife, Sybil Wentworth, was granddaughter to Peter Wentworth,
who led the Puritan party of Elizabeth's reign: she was sister to Sir
Peter Wentworth, a distinguished member of Cromwell's Council of State.
Property was inherited through her under condition that the Dilke heirs to
it should assume the Wentworth name; and in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries Fisher Dilke's descendants were Wentworth Dilke or Dilke
Wentworth from time to time.

In George II.'s reign one Wentworth Dilke was clerk to the Board of Green
Cloth at Kew Palace: his only son, Wentworth Dilke Wentworth, was
secretary to the Earl of Litchfield of the first creation, and left an
only son, Charles Wentworth Dilke, who was a clerk in the Admiralty. This
Dilke was the first of five who successively have borne this combination
of names. [Footnote: For convenience a partial table of descent is
inserted, showing the five Dilkes who bore the same combination of names.


CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE, b. 1742, d. 1826.
---------------------------------------------
| |
Charles Wentworth Dilke = Maria Dover William Dilke, b. 1796,
b. 1789, d. 1864. | Walker. d. 1885.
|
|
-------------------------------------------------------
| |