FITCH, Thomas (c.1602-66), of Cheshunt, Herts.

Fitch’s lineage and family background remain largely obscure. Described as a ‘cousin’ of Gray Fitch – son of Richard Fitch of Chelmsford – he almost certainly belonged to a branch of the Fitches of Essex.23Add. 63854B, f. 51; Chelmsford par. reg. (bap. 12 Apr. 1590). But he should not be confused either with Thomas Fitch, son of James Fitch of Bocking, who was admitted to Merchant Taylors’ School in 1615 or with Thomas Fitch, son of Richard Fitch of Stratford Langthorne, West Ham, who was apprenticed in 1624 to London clothier and obtained his freedom of the Haberdashers Company in 1633.24C8/81/75; GL, Ms 15857/1, f. 219v; Ms 15860/4, f. 204v; Merchant Taylors’ School Admiss. Reg. ed. C.J. Robinson (Lewes, 1882), i. 89.

Fitch was appointed clerk of stores by the Providence Island Company in the early 1630s and had established himself as a planter on the Caribbean colony by 1634, when William Jessop* – the company’s secretary – began writing to his long-time friend ‘Ensign’ Fitch.25Add. 63854B, ff. 47, 83; A.P. Newton, Colonising Activities of the English Puritans (New Haven, 1914), 94; K.A. Kupperman, Providence Is. 1630-41 (Cambridge, 1993), 103, 155-6, 342. Established in 1630, the Providence Island Company was headed by some of England’s foremost godly figures, among them Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick, William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke, John Pym* and Henry Darley*. Jessop implied that Fitch had at one time been familiar with members of the earl of Warwick’s London household in St Andrew, Holborn – the parish where Fitch’s future wife may have been baptised.26Add. 63854B, f. 210. Fitch’s association with Warwick may be further evidence of his Essex connections, for the earl was the county’s greatest landowner and political patron.27‘Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick’, Oxford DNB. Fitch had returned to England by March 1641, when the company appointed him deputy governor of Providence Island in respect of his ‘good qualifications and temper’, and the following month he embarked to take up his new post.28CO124/2, f. 194v; Kupperman, Providence Is. 175, 293-4, 323-4, 340. However, by the time he arrived at the island it had been captured by the Spanish, and after skirmishing with the invaders he and most of his party returned to England.29HCA13/58, f. 205v.

In the summer of 1642, Fitch enlisted in the earl of Essex’s parliamentarian army, receiving a commission as a captain in the regiment of foot commanded by the puritan peer and Providence Island Company grandee Lord Brooke.30SP28/1A, f. 187; SP28/143, pt. 6, f. 13; Peacock, Army Lists, 34. His decision to take up arms against the king was probably linked to his religious sympathies, for his later career suggests that he was a man of godly convictions. Following the destruction of Brooke’s regiment at Brentford in November, Fitch was one of several of its officers who joined the regiment of Devon foot commanded by Sir John Northcote*.31BHO, Cromwell Assoc. database. In May 1644, Fitch was appointed lieutenant-colonel of the Devon regiment of foot commanded by Anthony Rous* and stationed for much of 1644-6 in Plymouth.32SP28/17, f. 249; SP28/253B, pt. 2, f. 62v; SP28/267, ff. 231-3; BHO, Cromwell Assoc. database. His activities and whereabouts during the two years or so after he ceased drawing pay as a lieutenant-colonel in November 1646 are a mystery.

Fitch had resumed his military career by September 1648 at the latest, when he was part of the force that Oliver Cromwell* marched into Scotland to secure an anti-Engager government in Edinburgh. ‘In October 1648 at our return out of Scotland’, Fitch later wrote, Cromwell committed the care of Carlisle garrison to his care.33SP28/259, f. 409. According to the parliamentarian press, however, it was Sir Arthur Hesilrige* – the commander-in-chief of the four northern counties – who appointed ‘Lieutenant-colonel Fitch’ his deputy as governor of Carlisle.34The Moderate no. 15, p. 126. Fitch would certainly have been well known to Hesilrige through their common association with Lord Brooke and puritan colonial ventures during the 1630s.35Infra, ‘Sir Arthur Hesilrige’. Fitch struck up a good rapport with the city’s aldermen, who ‘banquetted’ him and his officers on several occasions during the early 1650s.36Cumb. RO (Carlisle), CA/4/3; CCC 304. He was also on friendly terms with Colonel Charles Howard*, the future Cromwellian grandee, who courted Fitch’s interest when securing the return of his father-in-law, Edward Howard, 1st Baron Howard of Escrick, for Carlisle in April 1649.37Naworth Estate and Household Accts. 1648-1660 ed. C.R. Hudleston (Surt. Soc. clxviii), 17, 94; CJ vii. 329a; CCC 232.

In the autumn of 1650, Fitch (by now a colonel) was given a field command and ordered to march his regiment to join Cromwell’s army in its invasion of Scotland.38SP28/257, f. 409v; CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 350, 400; Wanklyn, Reconstructing the New Model Army, ii. 58-9. After the defeat of the Scots at Worcester in September 1651, Fitch and his men were transferred to Inverness, and in November he was appointed the town’s governor.39Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 510; Wanklyn, Reconstructing the New Model Army, ii. 74-5. A Scottish minister who encountered Fitch’s troops en route to their new garrison described them as ‘a rude, raging rabble of a sectarian new regiment, running down men in the streets’.40Scot. and Commonwealth ed. Firth, p. xix. Fitch himself may well have been a sectary or at least held radical religious views, for by late 1653, his wife and her mother had become members of Edmund Chillenden’s General Baptist congregation in London.41Bodl. Rawl. A.8, f. 127; ‘Edmund Chillenden’, Oxford DNB.

Fitch was in the Highlands in July 1654, when he was elected MP for Carlisle to the first protectoral Parliament.42Supra, ‘Carlisle’; Cumb. RO (Carlisle), CA/2/392. At the time of his election, he was sheriff of Inverness-shire and thus ineligible – in his own eyes, at least – to sit in Parliament.43Cumb. RO (Carlisle), CA/2/128. On 10 August, the corporation wrote to the protector, requesting that Fitch’s return be allowed to stand or that a writ be issued for a new election.44TSP ii. 534. The issue of whether sheriffs could sit for Parliament was discussed at Westminster in November as part of the wider debate on the protectoral settlement, and it was decided to amend the established precedent so that sheriffs could be returned for constituencies outside of the county in which they held shrieval office.45CJ vii. 389a; Burton’s Diary, i. p. lxxi. One of the Members who spoke in support of this amendment was Fitch’s ally, Charles Howard.46Burton’s Diary, i. p. lxxiii. However, the question of Fitch’s return was not resolved before this Parliament was dissolved early in 1655. Shortly after his election, the protectoral council had revived an order of the Nominated Parliament for settling confiscated lands in Scotland worth £200 a year upon him – Fitch having petitioned the council for satisfaction of his ‘arrears, sufferings and faithful services’.47CJ vii. 329a; CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 260, 276. However, the trustees of forfeited estates in Scotland claimed that the lands were so encumbered with debts and other charges as to be of little or no value.48TSP iv. 549.

In the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, Fitch was returned for Inverness-shire.49Supra, ‘Inverness-shire’. He was named to five committees, including those for Scottish affairs and for bringing in a bill for the relief of poor creditors and debtors.50CJ vii. 427a, 435b, 447a, 457a, 459a. All of his appointments occurred between 23 September and 25 November 1656. Thereafter, he probably returned to his military duties in Scotland. He was elected for Inverness-shire again in 1659 and was unique among the army officers returned for Scottish constituencies in that he subsequently aligned with the commonwealthsmen – the protectorate’s republican opponents.51J.A. Casada, ‘The Scottish representatives in Richard Cromwell’s Parliament’, SHR li. 139. The fact that he did not receive any committee appointments and made no recorded contribution in debate suggests that he failed to take his seat before this Parliament was dissolved on 22 April 1659.52TSP vii. 613. Nevertheless, he was apparently in London by the end of April, when Edmund Ludlowe II* linked him with ‘divers captains and other inferior officers’ in the army who were ‘well-affected to the commonwealth’.53Ludlow, Mems. ii. 61. This faction supported the army grandees of the so-called Wallingford House group in bringing down the protectorate in April but was more committed than the latter to recalling the Rump.

Fitch was one of the signatories to the 13 May 1659 petition from a group of senior officers, headed by Major-general John Lambert*, pledging their loyalty to the restored Rump. However, one of the petitioners’ proposals for securing the ‘fundamentals of our Good Old Cause’ was the establishment of a ‘select senate, coordinate in power’ with a unicameral Parliament – a scheme favoured by Lambert and Sir Henry Vane II* but firmly opposed by Hesilrige and his closest parliamentary allies.54The Humble Petition and Addresse of the Officers of the Army (1659, E.983.7); Prose Works of Milton ed. Ayers, vii. 71-3. On 10 June, the restored Rump voted that Fitch be appointed lieutenant of the Tower of London – a move that Ludlowe interpreted as part of a strategy by Hesilrige ‘to keep the sword subservient to the civil magistrate’.55CJ vii. 679a; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 134. Bulstrode Whitelocke* certainly identified Fitch as Hesilrige’s ‘creature’ and claimed that his appointment as lieutenant of the Tower offended the City.56Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 351.

Despite his close association with Hesilrige, Fitch retained the lieutenancy of the Tower when Lambert and his allies dissolved the restored Rump in October 1659.57CCSP iv. 408, 410. By December, however, he was plotting with Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper*, Thomas Scot I* and other members of Hesilrige’s faction to hand control of the Tower to forces loyal to the Rump. Lieutenant-general Charles Fleetwood* got wind of the design and on 11 December, the eve of its execution, had Fitch put in ‘gentle confinement’ in Wallingford House.58Mercurius Politicus no. 598 (8-15 Dec. 1659), 954 (E.195.45); Clarke Pprs. iv. 187, 188; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 169; CCSP iv. 481, 487. Following the second restoration of the Rump, late in December, Fitch was confirmed as colonel of a regiment of foot and given lodgings in St James’s, but he was not restored to the lieutenancy of the Tower.59CJ vii. 824b; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 325; Mercurius Politicus no. 600 (22-9 Dec. 1659), 978, 984 (E.195.47). General George Monck* used Lambert’s abortive rising of April 1660 to purge Fitch from the army – a blow softened by the £781 that Fitch received that same month for his salary arrears as lieutenant of the Tower.60CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 598; Wanklyn, Reconstructing the New Model Army, ii. 141; D.P. Massarella, ‘The Politics of the Army 1647-60’ (York Univ. DPhil. thesis, 1977), 726.

Fitch remained in London for over a year after the Restoration and was apparently considered a ‘dangerous man’ by the new regime.61CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 98; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 518-19. He was probably the ‘Fitz’ who was allegedly involved in buying arms in Amsterdam for enemies of the crown in England in 1663.62CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 406. By the summer of 1666, he was living in Rotterdam, where he died – and presumably was buried – in mid-July, when he drew up his will.63PROB11/321, f. 373. Identifying the former MP as the testator, Thomas Fitch of Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, would be problematic but for the fact that he made Jacob Willett of London – his friend and former agent during his time in the army – one of his executors.64SP19/85, f. 24; SP28/233, unfol. (warrants 11 Feb. 1651, 20 Sept. 1653); PROB11/321, f. 372. Fitch described himself in his will as ‘aged and weak of body’ and referred to ‘that small estate the Lord hath lent me in this world’. He asked that his widow raise their four children ‘in the knowledge and fear of the Lord and in some honest callings’. He made bequests of £100 and charged his estate with annuities of £25 for each of his children.65PROB11/321, f. 372. None of his immediate family sat in Parliament.