FITZWILLIAM, Thomas I

The heraldic pedigrees trace the descent of the Fitzwilliams of Mablethorpe on the Lindsey coast, a family which survived into the eighteenth century, from our MP. However, the family almost certainly descended from a younger son of Sir William Fitzwilliam (d.c.1340) of Sprotborough in south Yorkshire, and had been established there for three generations before our MP entered his inheritance.4 Lincs. Peds. 357-60; Genealogist, n.s. xxii. 179; Plantagenet Ancestry ed. Richardson and Everingham, ii. 105; W.O. Massingberd, Ormsby-cum-Ketsby, 259; J. Hunter, S. Yorks. i. 337. His father was a feoffee of Robert, Lord Willoughby of Eresby (d.1396), and died, probably while still a relatively young man, in 1403. A brass to his memory and that of his wife, who died in the same year, survives in the church of St. Mary, Mablethorpe.5 Lincs. AO, Ancaster mss, 5ANC 1/1/25; Monson’s Church Notes (Lincoln Rec. Soc. xxxi), 259. Our MP must have been a minor at the death of his parents, and he does not appear in the records until December 1419, when he offered surety for his maternal aunt’s husband, the newly-appointed Lincolnshire sheriff, Sir Richard Hansard*. On 23 Sept. 1423 he attested Hansard’s election to Parliament, and two months later he appeared with his brother-in-law, Philip Dymmok, before the barons of the Exchequer to acknowledge debts of about £66 to the dean of the free chapel of St. Stephen, Westminster.6 CFR, xiv. 304; Lincs. Archit. and Arch. Soc. i. 71; Vis. Yorks (Harl. Soc. xvi), 7-8; E159/200, recogniciones Mich.

These, however, are isolated early references to Fitzwilliam’s activities, and his career was slow to begin. Not until August 1433 was he appointed to his first ad hoc commission of local government, and even then it was a matter of so local concern to himself, namely the arrest of the parson of his parish church, that his omission would have been odd. He was not appointed to such a commission again until 1444. On 12 Jan. 1439 he was a juror at the inquisition post mortem held at Lincoln on the death of Anne, dowager-countess of Stafford, but this was an isolated instance of jury service on his part.7 CPR, 1429-36, p. 303; CIPM, xxv. 239. Given this lack of administrative experience and the comparative modesty of his landholdings – he was assessed on an income of only £10 in the subsidy returns of 1436 – it is surprising to find that he was on the shrieval pricked list for Lincolnshire in both 1441 and 1442.8 E179/136/198; C47/34/2/3, 4. This narrow avoidance of a burdensome and unpopular office prompted him to sue out a life exemption from office-holding on 3 June 1443. The justification given for this grant was his loss of land at Mablethorpe through coastal erosion, and that this was something more than a convenient excuse is suggested by the return made to the tax of 1428 to the effect that the Fitzwilliam lands there had been rendered worthless by flooding.9 CPR, 1441-6, p. 174; Feudal Aids, iii. 257, 301. At an uncertain date he sued the proctors of the parson of Mablethorpe for money collected to repair the broken banks: C1/10/97. For more general evidence of erosion there: Lincs. Historian, i. 331-3.

When his exemption was sued out Fitzwilliam had already entered royal service, yet, although styled ‘King’s esquire’ in 1443 and 1459, he does not appear on any of the surviving Household lists. More important than this royal connexion, and probably related to it, was an association formed much closer to home. In 1446-7 he served as reeve of the Lindsey manor of Burwell, which Ralph, Lord Cromwell, held by royal grant, and in January 1453 he was among the witnesses of a conveyance by Cromwell to his collegiate foundation at Tattershall.10 HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, i. 223; E41/313, pp. 12-14. This connexion is the probable context for the marriage, at an unknown date, of his daughter, Elizabeth, to another member of Cromwell’s affinity, the Derbyshire esquire, Robert Eyre*.11 S.M. Wright, Derbys Gentry (Derbys. Rec. Soc. viii), 221. His only election to Parliament on 5 Mar. 1453 is in itself further indirect evidence of the strength of this connexion. It was in this Parliament that Cromwell presented a petition against his powerful enemy, Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, and, together with the presence among the attestors to the electoral indenture of several of his adherents, this strongly suggests that Fitzwilliam was returned to serve the interests of the most influential of the county’s magnates.12 EHR, civ. 896; Lincs. Archit. and Arch. Soc. i. 75. Perhaps his entry into royal service, which occurred towards the end of Cromwell’s tenure of the treasurership of the Exchequer, was also the product of a relationship closer than the surviving direct evidence indicates.

Fitzwilliam’s return to Parliament was the most significant episode in a career which, despite its length, lacked colour. He remained loyal to Henry VI at least until the Coventry Parliament of 1459 and very probably beyond. On 11 Dec., while that Parliament (in which his son Thomas represented Lincoln) was in session, he was granted a royal licence ‘of special grace’ to crenellate his manor-house at Mablethorpe and enclose it with stone walls for protection from the sea.13 CChR, vi. 131-2. He did not, however, benefit from the windfalls of patronage which followed the attainders of the Yorkist lords, and his appointment to the Yorkist commission of arrest of November 1460 shows he was not considered a Lancastrian partisan. None the less, he does not appear to have been entirely trusted by the new regime. His absence from royal commissions during the 1460s might be explained by advanced age, which led him to resign his interests in favour of his son, Thomas, appointed to the Lindsey bench as early as 1458 and a j.p. and commissioner of sewers during the 1460s. But the fact that he joined his son on the Lindsey bench during the Readeption strongly suggests that he retained some loyalty to the house of Lancaster.

What is known of Fitzwilliam’s connexions with those who led the Lincolnshire rebellion of March 1470 provides further evidence of this residual loyalty. When Richard, Lord Welles and Willoughby, and others implicated in the raid on the manor of Sir Thomas Burgh† at Gainsborough, which probably took place in the autumn of 1469, received pardons on the eve of their rebellion, our MP and his son were also pardoned.14 C67/47, mm. 7, 8; C237/46/68, 70; M.A. Hicks, False, Fleeting, Perjur’d Clarence, 67. There is insufficient evidence to associate the Fitzwilliams, as Hicks does, with George, duke of Clarence. For the evidence dating the raid to the late summer or autumn of 1469: J.S. Mackman, ‘Lincs. Gentry’ (York Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1999), 152-9. Further, not only was our MP’s deceased wife’s nephew, Sir Thomas Dymmok, one of those later executed for his part in the rebellion, but it is probable that Fitzwilliam was himself a member of the affinity of Dymmok’s brother-in-law and the leader of the rebellion, Lord Welles. In 1468 he and his son had acted with Welles in a settlement on Margaret, countess of Somerset, widow of Welles’s father, Lionel; and at the time of the rebellion both Fitzwilliams stood feoffees in several Welles manors.15 CCR, 1461-8, p. 464; CPR, 1467-77, pp. 508-9. When this evidence is added to that of the royal order of 26 May 1471 for the arrest of the younger Thomas, together with members of the Dymmok family and others, it seems reasonable to argue that they were at least passive supporters of the Lincolnshire rebellion as well as of the subsequent Readeption.16 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 285-6. However, on Edward IV’s restoration that spring the younger Thomas, who was to go on to enjoy a career of considerable distinction, was able to restore himself to favour, while his father went into complete retirement. On 25 Feb. 1472 the elder Thomas sued out the extra security of a further pardon, but, whether through advanced age or disfavour, his public career was over. He lived on until 9 Apr. 1479 and was buried in Lincoln cathedral, where he made provision for the foundation of a chantry.17 C67/48, m. 7; Desiderata Curiosa, 298; PCC 9 Horne (PROB11/11, f. 72d).