FENWICK, George (c.1603-57), of Brinkburn, Northumb., and Warminghurst, Suss.

The Fenwicks of Brinkburn were a cadet branch of the venerable Northumberland family the Fenwicks of Fenwick Tower, and, as such, the future MP for Morpeth was a distant relation of Sir John Fenwick* and Robert Fenwick*.45Hist. Northumb. xii. 352. He should not be confused with George Fenwick, merchant and customer of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, or the Northumberland sequestration commissioner of the same name.

Although Fenwick was an eldest son and received a gentleman’s education at Cambridge and the inns of court, he was evidently drawn by necessity or vocation to the legal profession. It was probably while he was studying for the bar at Gray’s Inn during the 1620s that he made the acquaintance of his kinsman and future father-in-law Sir Arthur Hesilrige*, who was admitted to the inn a year after Fenwick. By the mid-1630s, the two men were closely associated with the high-level puritan network centred upon the Providence Island Company – a colonial venture that brought together many of the nation’s foremost godly figures, including Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick, William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, Robert Greville†, 2nd Baron Brooke, John Pym*, Oliver St John* and Sir Gilbert Gerard*.46Infra, ‘Sir Arthur Hesilrige’; CSP Col. 1574-1660, p. 123; A. Armstrong, George Fenwick of Brinkburn 1603-56 (Morpeth, 2009), 16. Although Fenwick and Hesilrige were not themselves members of the company, they had joined several of its leading figures by mid-1635 on the London-based executive committee of the most uncompromisingly puritan of the Caroline plantations, the Saybrook colony.47Winthrop Pprs. (Mass. Hist. Soc.), iii. 198-9; K.O. Kupperman, Providence Is. 1630-41 (Cambridge, 1993), 325, 333. Among the godly notables also involved were the eponymous founders Viscount Saye and Lord Brooke, Sir William Boynton*, Sir William Constable*, Sir Henry Vane II* and the Independent divine Philip Nye.48Supra, ‘Sir William Boynton’; ‘Sir William Constable’; infra, ‘Sir Henry Vane II’; Winthrop Pprs. iii. 211-13; A.P. Newton, The Colonising Activities of the English Puritans (New Haven, 1914), 178, 180.

Inspired by the puritan vision of a New Jerusalem in the New World, Fenwick travelled out to Saybrook – in modern-day Connecticut – to lay the foundations of the settlement in anticipation of the imminent arrival of his fellow planters and other godly exiles from Caroline England.49CSP Dom. 1635-6, pp. 315, 319; Winthrop Pprs. iii. 261-2; Newton, Colonising Activities, 180. Apart from brief returns to England in 1636 and 1639 (on the second occasion to collect his wife), he remained at Saybrook for eight years as de facto governor of the colony and oversaw the construction of Saybrook fort at the mouth of the Connecticut River.50Winthrop Pprs. iii. 319; iv. 124; Newton, Colonising Activities, 180; Oxford DNB, ‘George Fenwick’. With the collapse of the king’s personal rule in 1640, however, the plantation was abandoned by its promoters, leaving Fenwick burdened with heavy expenses and an acute case of homesickness.51J. Winthrop, Hist. of New England 1630-49 ed. J.K. Hosmer (New York, 1908), i. 306; Newton, Colonising Activities, 185. In October 1642 he wrote plaintively to Sir Thomas Barrington*, Sir Gilbert Gerard* and Sir William Masham* about his expenditure on the abortive settlement: ‘I writ not this to require any aid from any, because what I have done was out of hopes to enjoy such friends as had any purposes this way soon after my coming over, nor did I think to have been so long alone’.52Eg. 2646, f. 181. Wearying of his ‘lone and solitary life’, he sold all interest in the Saybrook venture to the colony of Connecticut late in 1644 for £1,800, of which he was to receive £1,600 through levies on goods passing up the Connecticut River.53Eg. 2648, ff. 1, 1v; Public Recs. of the Colony of Connecticut, i. 266-271; Oxford DNB, ‘George Fenwick’. At some point between October 1645 and the spring of 1646 he returned to England and to what he perceived as the ‘a wicked, malignant, popish and irreligious party against civility and any that had the face of religion’.54Public Recs. of the Colony of Connecticut, i. 132; Winthrop Pprs. (Mass. Hist. Soc.), iv. 142.

Fenwick was returned as a ‘recruiter’ for the Northumberland borough of Morpeth on 20 October 1645. His estate at Brinkburn lay some ten miles north of the town, and it is therefore unlikely that he enjoyed a strong proprietorial interest with the voters. It is possible that he had kinsmen among the leading inhabitants – indeed, one of the town’s two bailiffs and returning officers was his namesake. However, the return of an obvious carpetbagger – Viscount Saye’s son John Fiennes – for the senior place suggests the work of an outside patron, and the likeliest candidate is Charles Howard*, the future major-general. The Howards were lords of the manor of Morpeth, and Charles was a ward of Henry Darley* – Fenwick’s old Saybrook colleague and a close friend of Viscount Saye.55Supra, ‘Morpeth’; ‘Henry Darley’. Fenwick was named to perhaps as many as 30 committees between the spring of 1646 and Pride’s Purge – the precise number is impossible to establish, for the clerk of the House seems to have referred to both George and his fellow Northumberland recruiter William Fenwick as ‘Mr Fenwick’. William attended the House very rarely, however, and it is therefore likely that the vast majority of these 30 appointments were those of the Morpeth MP.56CJ iv. 610a; v. 181a, 330a, 383b; vi. 34a.

A number of Fenwick’s early appointments in the Long Parliament suggest his alignment in the House with the Independent interest of which Hesilrige was a leading member. He was named to four committees during the spring of 1646 relating to the Commons’ grievances against the Scots, and in particular to the abuses and ‘oppressions’ committed by their army in the northern counties.57CJ iv. 478b, 481b, 491a, 559a; LJ viii. 225b. As a Northumberland landowner, he would have seen his rents suffer as a result of the Scots’ depredations in the north. However, if his committee appointments are any guide, his main concern at Westminster was the promotion of a godly preaching ministry and the relief of tender consciences. The task of bringing in an ordinance for removing scandalous ministers and tackling simony was specially trusted to Fenwick and Alexander Rigby I on 7 April.58CJ iv. 502a. In July he was named a commissioner for scandalous offences and added to a committee to prepare a declaration for preventing sequestered ministers returning to their livings.59CJ iv. 563a, 608a. And with church government becoming an increasingly contentious issue, he was named to a committee set up on 12 December to examine and refute arguments by London’s ministers in favour of jure divino Presbyterianism.60CJ v. 11a; Add. MS 31116, p. 585. Perhaps his most revealing appointments in this area were those of 6 and 12 October 1647, when he was named to committees headed by Hesilrige for exempting tender consciences under a national Presbyterian church and for purging Anglican sympathizers from Cambridge colleges.61CJ v. 327b, 331b.

Insight into Fenwick’s religious views is provided by his letter of March 1647 to Governor John Winthrop of Boston, Massachusetts.62Winthrop Pprs. iv. 141-3. He clearly sympathized with Winthrop’s efforts to maintain the purity of church life in the colony. But with the Scots and the Presbyterians demanding severe penalties against the ‘conscientious’ – that is, Congregationalists – in England, he was worried at the implications of the New England practice of using the civil power to enforce religious conformity

Truly sir, you cannot believe how sharp the spirit of this state grows against such as cannot conform to what is established ... If you knew the temper of our times you would less blame many that are very shy of entrusting the censure of men’s judgements in the magistracy ... You had need to be careful of your practice there, for whatever you do that may have the least shadow of severity is heightened here and cast in your brethren’s teeth by those who in other things [are] much against you.63Winthrop Pprs. iv. 142.

Fenwick seems to have remained at Westminster during the Presbyterian ascendancy in the spring of 1647.64CJ v. 112b, 117b, 132b, 167a, 170b. Granted leave of absence on 28 May, he had returned to the House by 23 July, when he was named to a committee for removing control of the London militia from the ‘Covenant-engaged’ faction.65CJ v. 190a, 255b. Like Hesilrige, he was among those Members who fled to the protection of the army following the Presbyterian ‘riots’ at Westminster on 26 July, and who signed their ‘engagement’ of 4 August, in which Sir Thomas Fairfax* and his men were eulogised for their ‘Christian, noble and public affection to the good, peace and prosperity of this kingdom and ... faithfulness to the true interest of the English nation’.66LJ ix. 385b. On 18 August, Fenwick was named to a committee for repealing all legislation passed during the Presbyterian coup.67CJ v. 278a. Appointed to a new committee for absent Members set up on 9 October, he may have contributed to its work in hounding those Presbyterians who had withdrawn themselves from the House after the army’s march on London in early August.68CJ v. 329a. He was also named to two committees set up in December to address the grievances of the army over pay and indemnity.69CJ v. 376b, 396a. Given his links with Hesilrige and the Independents, he almost certainly approved of the vote of no addresses, and he was named to the committee set up its wake for redressing the people’s grievances.70CJ v. 417a.

The appointment of Hesilrige as governor of Newcastle in December 1647 proved a watershed in Fenwick’s own career. On 20 March 1648 – the day that the Commons resolved that both men should be added to all the committees and sequestrations commissions for the four northern counties – Fenwick was granted leave of absence.71CJ v. 505b, 506a. And by July he had raised a regiment of foot in the north and scored his first military success against the enemies of Parliament – for which he received the thanks of the House.72CJ v. 624b, 625a. Fenwick’s regimental chaplains included the Congregationalist minister Ralph Ward.73A. Laurence, Parliamentary Army Chaplains (Woodbridge, 1990), 166, 169, 184; Calamy Revised, 509-10. After Hesilrige had suppressed a royalist rising at Tynemouth Castle in August, he commissioned Fenwick to raise more troops as a garrison and appointed him the new governor.74SP28/133/3, f. 36v. Similarly, after the recapture of Berwick in October, he installed Fenwick as the town’s military commander.75Moderate Intelligencer no. 186 (5-12 Oct. 1648), 1687. Late in November, Fenwick presented a petition to the House from the four northern counties, requesting that the region’s sequestration and composition revenues be used to pay off its supernumerary forces raised during the second civil war. The House tasked Fenwick with bringing in an ordinance to this effect, though it was Sir Thomas Widdrington who reported the finished legislation, on 2 March 1649.76CJ vi. 88b, 90b, 153a. The ordinance established a new commission for compounding with northern delinquents, which Hesilrige and his allies used to consolidate their power in the region.77Infra, ‘Sir Arthur Hesilrige’.

Although appointed one of the commissioners for the king’s trial early in January 1649, Fenwick, like Hesilrige, evidently remained in the north for much of the winter of 1648-9, and it was not until 17 February that he registered his dissent to the 5 December 1648 vote – that the king’s answers at Newport were a sufficient ground for a settlement.78CJ vi. 144b. Thereafter, he and Hesilrige evidently worked closely together in the House and were identified by the Leveller leader John Lilburne as prominent members of a ‘traitorous party of officers’ at Westminster, headed by Oliver Cromwell and Henry Ireton, that was allegedly intent on establishing ‘an absolute and perfect tyranny of the sword’.79J. Lilburne, The Picture of the Councel of State (1649), 16-17 (E.550.14); Worden, Rump. Parl. 28, 66, 231, 261. Yet Fenwick was never among the grandees in the Rump, receiving only 23 committee nominations – all but seven of them between February 1649 and May 1650.80CJ vi. 148b, 155b, 161b, 162a, 167b, 171a, 180b, 181a, 187b, 207b, 209b, 318a, 324b, 327b, 358b, 359a; vii. 49a, 118b, 127b, 138b, 141a, 154b, 158b. His most eye-catching appointments were to the committees on a bill for a new representative and for joining Scotland and England in one commonwealth.81CJ vi. 318a; vii. 118b. But the majority of the committees to which he was named related either to northern affairs, the provision of a godly preaching ministry, or the improvement of public revenues. He and Hesilrige were evidently keen to streamline the sequestration process, for on 19 March 1649 they were tellers in favour of removing the power of the Committee for Sequestrations* to hear appeals.82CJ vi. 167b. They also supported John Owen and other Independent ministers in pressuring the Rump for tougher action against radical sectarian and heterodox beliefs and for the more effective propagation of the gospel.83Infra, ‘Sir Arthur Hesilrige’. Sir Henry Vane II’s allies among the New England separatists believed that Hesilrige and Fenwick, ‘and all the friends they can make in Parliament and council and all the priests, both Presbyterian and Independent’, were leading the campaign in the Rump against the introduction of wide-ranging religious toleration.84Lttrs. of Roger Williams ed. J.R. Bartlett (Providence, 1874), 255.

In the summer of 1649, Fenwick returned to his military duties in the north. He worked closely with Hesilrige in stamping the Rump’s authority on the northern counties and, in the process, breaking the power of John Lilburne’s uncle George Lilburne* and his circle in the region.85Infra, ‘Sir Arthur Hesilrige’; ‘George Lilburne’; SP23/153, p. 201; SP28/240, ff. 26, 28; CJ vi. 155b; vii. 71b; J. Lilburne, A Preparative to an Hue and Cry after Sir Arthur Haslerig (1649), sig. A2 (E.573.16); A Just reproof to Haberdashers-Hall (1651), 14, 16 (E.638.12); Recs. of the Cttees. for Compounding...in Durham and Northumb. ed. R. Welford (Surt. Soc. cxi), 81, 85, 146, 393; W. Dumble, ‘Government, Religion, and Military Affairs in Durham during the Civil War and Interregnum’ (Durham Univ. MLitt. thesis, 1978), 160-1, 166, 172, 197. Fenwick’s purchase in 1649-50 of former church property in and around Sunderland, and his subsequent development of the Monkwearmouth quays, challenged the Lilburne interest in its own backyard.86VCH Durham, v. 62, 93; Dumble, ‘Durham during the Civil War and Interregnum’, 216. In 1651 Fenwick was part of the syndicate headed by Hesilrige that purchased the castle and adjoining property in Newcastle from the trustees for the sale of crown lands.87C54/3571/14. Having taken part in Cromwell’s invasion of Scotland in 1650, he was appointed governor of Edinburgh Castle and Leith – offices he retained until August 1656.88Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 388, 392. He was an important figure in the civil and military governance of Scotland under the commonwealth and was an active member of a high-powered commission that the Rump sent to Edinburgh late in 1651 to oversee work on uniting Scotland with the English republic.89CJ vii. 30b, 53a, 106a, 132b; CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 211, 290; Mercurius Politicus no. 73 (23-30 Oct. 1651), 1168-9 (E.644.5); no. 88 (5-12 Feb. 1652), 1407 (E.654.9); Severall Procs. in Parl. no. 142 (10-17 June 1652), 2221; The Cromwellian Union ed. C.S. Terry (Scottish Hist. Soc. xl), 12, 99. Fenwick and his fellow commissioner Vane II returned to Westminster in March 1652, when the Speaker gave them the thanks of the House for the commission’s endeavours.90CJ vii. 106a; Clarke Pprs. v. 57; Cromwellian Union ed. Terry, 68-9, 149. Fenwick and Hesilrige were named to (and regularly attended) the committee that the Rump set up in October to negotiate with deputies sent from the shires and burghs of Scotland about finalising the terms of the new Anglo-Scottish commonwealth.91SP25/138, pp. 12, 59; CJ vii. 118b, 189b. Fenwick’s high profile as a commissioner for Scotland and governor of Edinburgh helped to put him in the running for a place on the council of state in November. No doubt he also benefitted from the backing of Hesilrige, whose daughter he had married just five days before the council elections. Fenwick’s tally of 39 votes was enough to tie him in last place with John Fagge* and Colonel Thomas Harrison II*, but it was the latter whose name was drawn from the hat for the one remaining place.92CJ vii. 221a.

Although Fenwick seems to have divided his time between Edinburgh and London for much of the early 1650s, he forged a particularly close relationship with the leading inhabitants of Berwick and was involved with Joseph Caryll, John Owen and other prominent divines in finding a godly minister for the town.93Berwick RO, B1/10, ff. 150, 152v, 179v; B1/11, ff. 28v, 34v, 35, 42v, 51; B9/1, Berwick Guild letter bk. ff. 23v, 46, 53, 58, 64, 66, 67, 71v. He earned the townsmen’s lasting gratitude for his robust defence of their privileges against the customs and excise commissioners and in helping to raise money towards the construction of a new parochial church. Although he was no longer the governor of Berwick by 1654, the town’s freemen gave him their unanimous support in the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654.94Supra, ‘Berwick-upon-Tweed’; R. Denton, Berwicks Beauty, or a Church Erecting There (1650), epistle dedicatory, 7. In the event, he made no impression upon the proceedings of this Parliament, and it is likely that he remained in the north for the duration of its sitting.

Despite his alleged complicity in John Wildman’s* republican plot against the protectorate early in 1655, Fenwick seems to have suffered no immediate loss of favour at Whitehall.95TSP iii. 147. Indeed, in the wake of Penruddock’s Rising in 1655, he was one of the men that the protectoral regime relied upon to suppress royalist activity in northern England.96CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 78, 94. Nevertheless, following his return for Berwick in the elections to the second Cromwellian Parliament in 1656, he, like Hesilrige, was among those excluded from the House by the protectoral council as opponents of the government.97Supra, ‘Berwick-upon-Tweed’; CJ vii. 425b. He was also removed as governor of Edinburgh Castle and Leith.98Clarke Pprs. iii. 71.

Fenwick died on 15 March 1657, and his place of burial was probably Warminghurst, Sussex, where he had acquired an estate through his first wife. It is a measure of the esteem in which he was held at Berwick that although he was not buried in the parish – contrary to the assertion of several authorities – the corporation saw fit to erect a memorial tablet acknowledging him as ‘the principal instrument’ in the building of the town’s new church.99Berwick RO, B1/11, f. 166; Fuller, Berwick, 183-4. He died without male issue, and he therefore bequeathed the bulk of his landed estate to his wife, his nephew Thomas Ledgard and to the heirs of his brother Claudius. He charged his estate with annuities of over £1,000 a year and made bequests totalling about £1,500, including a legacy of £500 ‘to the public use...of New England’. Among his other legatees were his ‘dear friend and father-in-law’ Sir Arthur Hesilrige, his ‘loving friend’ Edward Hopkins*, his ‘ancient acquaintance and dearly beloved friend’ Sir Thomas Widdrington, and Alderman Tempest Milner of London.100PROB11/263, ff. 278v-279v. Fenwick was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.