FIENNES, Nathaniel I (c.1608-69), of Broughton, Oxon., Bromby, Lincs. and Newton Tony, Wilts.

Like his elder brother James* before him, Fiennes owed his seat at Banbury to their father, whose already formidable influence in godly north Oxfordshire had been sealed by his election in June 1632 as high steward of the town close to Broughton Castle.70Broughton Castle mss. Apparently a virtual unknown in 1640, it might have been anticipated that he would be a mere mouthpiece in the Commons for Saye and Sele, whose oppositional views on religion and politics he shared.71Clarendon, Hist. i. 247. However, while the Fiennes operated as a remarkably coherent and loyal family unit, and while at critical points their political fortunes were to be intertwined, contemporaries soon recognised Nathaniel as a significant thinker and actor in his own right. He had, as Edward Hyde* acknowledged, ‘a very good stock of estimation in the House of Commons upon his own score’.72Clarendon, Hist. iii. 254. During a political career of three distinct phases – April 1640 to his ultimately disastrous spell as a parliamentarian army officer in 1642-3; his rehabilitation in autumn 1645 to the purge of December 1648; and his service from 1654 to 1659 as a councillor of state, negotiator with foreign ambassadors, key figure in the Commons and, latterly, Speaker of the Other House – Fiennes survived court martial and the death penalty to re-establish and even enhance his reputation as an able leader, a robust and unfettered analyst, an intelligent and reasonable negotiator and draughtsman, and an effective communicator. Having earned, and then re-earned, respect even from some of his enemies, his evident faithfulness to his original convictions ensured that as the Restoration approached, he vanished as suddenly from public life as he had appeared in it.

Preparation for public life

Fiennes’s unusually prolonged education for the second son of a peer is almost certainly testament to genuine intellectual capacity, but also perhaps to the extent of Saye and Sele’s disenchantment with life in England in the late 1620s and early 1630s. Nathaniel, briefly a pupil at Winchester, owed his election in 1624 to a scholarship and perpetual fellowship at New College, Oxford, to his kinship to its founder, William of Wykeham, but although this may explain his not taking a degree, it does not account for his staying about five years to study civil law.73Winchester Scholars, 170; Al. Ox.; Ath. Ox. iii. 877. Admitted in July 1629 to the university of Leiden, where he pursued jurisprudence, the following May he transferred to Franeker in the Dutch province of Friesland.74Index to English Students at Leyden, 98; Album studiosorum academiae Franekerensis, 88. This centre of Ramist philosophy attracted a steady trickle of Englishmen, drawn by the growing reputation as a Calvinist theologian of William Ames, a professor there since 1622. A crusader for student discipline and piety, Ames was also opposed to ecclesiastical hierarchy.75K.L. Sprunger, The Learned Doctor William Ames (Urbana, 1972). In February 1633 Fiennes, again with his younger brothers Joseph (who probably died soon after) and John*, enrolled at Basel in company with Charles Rich* and his brother Henry, sons of Saye’s business associate Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick.76Die Matrikel der Universität Basel, 350-1. Although the university may not have enjoyed quite the standing it had had in the previous century, when Thomas Bodley and Henry Unton were among many English students, it was still a notable meeting place of young men from all over Europe, offering Ramism and Reformed theology in the context of the lay-dominated Protestantism of a Swiss city-state. It had drawn Basil Feilding, the later parliamentarian commander and 2nd earl of Denbigh, in 1631, and Richard Boyle*, Lord Dungarvan, arrived later in 1633 or in 1634 with Charles Cotterell.77Die Matrikel der Universität Basel, 330, 357; E. Bonjour, Die Universität Basel von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart 1460-1960 (Basel, 1960), 221-41. The Richs and Feilding went on to the Académie at Geneva, but although Edward Hyde*, earl of Clarendon, claimed that Nathaniel Fiennes also visited the republic, with an imputation that he had imbibed Presbyterianism there, he soon left Basel for Padua in the more permissive republic of Venice, and there is no evidence that he stopped at Geneva on the way home.78Die Matrikel der Universität Basel, 350; Clarendon, Hist. i. 247; Monografie Storiche sullo Studio di Padova, 197; Le Livre du Recteur de l’Académie de Genève ed. S. Stelling-Michaud (Geneva,1959-80) i. 170-87.

The impression usually derived from Clarendon that Fiennes was continuously abroad through the 1630s is misleading. By 1636 he was back in England, where in August he married at Hawnes in Bedfordshire Elizabeth Eliot, daughter of the most prominent opponent of crown policies in the 1620s parliaments.79Par. Regs. of Haynes, 15. The dates and places of baptism of their two sons, Nathaniel II* and William (later 3rd Viscount Saye and Sele), have not come to light, but the former at least is likely to have been born before 1640. A letter from Fiennes to his kinsman Sir Robert Harley*, addressed in February 1637 from the Holborn residence of Saye and Sele’s associate Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke, implies a long stay in London and sustained scholarly pursuits, as well a breadth of puritan contacts in England.80Add. 70105. In an indenture of November 1637 Nathaniel I stood trustee with his brother John and family friend John Crew I* to a settlement of land in Co. Wicklow by Calcott Chambre, an Oxfordshire gentleman.81Add. 46921, f. 144b. None the less, it is still possible that, as Clarendon asserted, in 1639 it was on a (circuitous) way back from another stay in the Low Countries that he visited Scotland.82Clarendon, Hist. i. 99n. On 10 August a son of Saye and Sele, most plausibly Nathaniel in view of later events, was noted among Englishmen attending the General Assembly.83P. Donald, An Uncounselled King (Cambridge, 1990), 219.

Short Parliament and the Scots, 1640

As suggested, it hardly required residence in north Oxfordshire to secure Fiennes’s election to Parliament in the spring of 1640. During the short session, he was named to only one committee, that to prepare an act for the reformation of abuses in the ecclesiastical courts (1 May), but although a parliamentary novice he was already taking the initiative: it was recorded that ‘Mr Fiennes had this bill’.84CJ ii. 17b. A speech by ‘Mr Fiennes’ on 24 April relating to a petition from Oxfordshire constables about local prisons is likely to have been made by his brother James, who had been on the commission of the peace.85Aston’s Diary, 45; CSP Dom. 1640, p. 370. At least three of the four other interventions by a man of this name recorded by Sir Thomas Aston – a motion for taking a vote (30 Apr.); a plea for caution in supplying money for prosecuting war against the Scots (2 May); and a clarification on the intricacies of dealing with the king (4 May) – are, judging by the brothers’ respective form, more likely to have been by Nathaniel.86Aston’s Diary, 48, 102, 124, 138.

Unsurprisingly as the son of a peer who had defied Charles I in April 1639 over the oath to support the king’s military intervention in Scotland, Fiennes took a close interest in the continuing campaign through the summer of 1640.87M.L. Schwarz, ‘Viscount Saye and Sele, Lord Brooke and aristocratic protest to the first Bishops’ War’, Canadian Jnl. of Hist. vii. 17-36. In a newsletter dated 22 July directed to someone in the circle of Edward Montagu I*, Viscount Mandeville, he touched on conflict in Catalonia and clashes between Spanish and Dutch forces in the Netherlands, but also dwelt at length on discontent among soldiers levied at home for service in the north, noting an especially violent instance where an officer had reportedly been murdered by his men on suspicion of being a papist.88Hunts. RO, M32/5/17. Fiennes was probably the ‘N.F.’ who on or just before 5 September signed a letter to Covenanter leaders claiming that peers meeting in London had publicized ‘the hazard that a few pernicious particular counsellers’ had brought to kingdom and church in promoting war against the Scots and their broader aim of undermining ‘religion and liberties’. Stressing the weakness of the king’s army at York, the letter encouraged Scottish leaders to persevere in securing their demands. Among peers signing an accompanying statement of solidarity were Saye and Mandeville.89P. Donald, ‘New light on Anglo-Scottish contacts of 1640’, Hist. Res. lxii. 221-9.

Champion of reform, Nov. 1640-Aug. 1641

In the October elections both Fiennes brothers were again returned to Westminster. Continued failure to distinguish between them in records of the first few weeks of the Long Parliament makes it difficult to pinpoint exactly when Nathaniel emerged as an opposition leader in the Commons of the stature described by Clarendon.90Clarendon, Hist. i. 247, 263n. Of the six committee nominations for ‘Mr Fiennes’ between 6 November and 12 December, that to discuss a fast day with the Lords (9 Nov.) might be assigned to James, who had done similar service in the spring, and that to the committee of privileges (6 Oct.) to Nathaniel, because he was specifically named on 18 December; the remainder might possibly be ascribed to Nathaniel.91CJ ii. 21a, 23b, 44a, 44b, 49b, 50a, 53b. Sir Simonds D’Ewes* noted that it was he who on 19 November proposed that taxpayers should be rated only where they resided and (with Oliver St John*) that the Lords should be allowed to proceed as they wished in the examinations of peers called as witnesses in the trial of Thomas Wentworth†, first earl of Strafford.92Procs. LP i. 189. Unfortunately, in view of Nathaniel’s later clash with William Prynne, D’Ewes did not clarify which Fiennes was named with him on 3 December to the committee to consider the petitions of Prynne and others complaining of their treatment at the hands of the court of high commission, but past and future activity, together with his interest in law, suggest that it was Nathaniel who spoke up in debate on the disorders of soldiers (4 Dec.), on rating (5 Dec.) and on franchise disputes (11 Dec.).93CJ 44b; Procs. LP i. 441, 475, 570; Northcote Note Bk. 30. He probably argued in justification of the London ‘root and branch’ petition against bishops (also on 11 December, the day it was presented to the House), instancing parallel shortcomings in Gloucestershire, where the Fiennes family had estates.94Northcote Note Bk. 52-3.

From mid-December Fiennes’ contribution to proceedings comes into sharper focus. On the 14th he was named to the committee investigating the assessment and collection of coat and conduct money, and particularly the misdemeanours of lord and deputy lieutenants.95CJ ii. 50b. Clearly committed to redressing the perceived grievances of the king’s personal rule, he was still prepared to respect procedural nicety. The next day he opposed an apparently popular motion by Sir William Waller* that grand jurors be privy to the preparation of impeachment proceedings against the lord keeper, John Finch†, 1st Baron Finch, for his conduct over Ship Money, on the ground that the accused had not been forewarned.96Northcote Note Bk. 86. Having denounced as illegal several of ecclesiastical Canons issued by Convocation and spoken ‘especially’ against the so-called ‘Etcetera’ oath, on the 16th he was among those nominated to prepare new canons and to investigate the allegedly subversive role of William Laud, archbishop of Canterbury.97Procs. LP i. 622, 625-6; vii. 168; CJ ii. 52a One of the committee delegated to consider the petition of one of Laud’s most notorious victims, John Bastwick (17 Dec.), it was he who moved that another be set up (18 Dec.) to investigate the cases of MPs imprisoned in previous parliaments in breach of privilege; for the Speaker to refuse to put votes on the matter to the question would itself constitute such a breach.98Procs. LP i. 657, 660; CJ ii. 52b, 53b.

In the new year Nathaniel’s legal studies abroad doubtless enhanced his usefulness as a draughtsman of the bill for regular parliaments. Evidently the Fiennes who on 30 December was selected for the task, on 12 February he was appointed one of the managers of the committee convened to press the reluctant king for his assent to the resultant Triennial Act.99CJ ii. 60a, 83b. Longstanding family involvement in colonial and commercial enterprise was reflected in his addition to the committee for adventurers and planters of Virginia (4 Jan.) and for drafting a bill curbing the export of raw wool (3 Feb.).100CJ ii. 64a, 77b. But his most high-profile contribution to the Commons was in religious policy, where at this juncture long-standing religious preferences coalesced almost certainly with a desire to cultivate the Scots. Added on 23 January to the committee to suppress idolatrous innovations and relics of popery in churches, on the 25th he was a reporter of a conference with the Lords on the reprieve of the Roman Catholic priest, Joseph Goodman, and placed on committees to expedite the execution of laws against Jesuits and seminary priests (26 Jan.) and to probe the actions of Sir Kenelm Digby and others in recruiting recusants to raise money for the king’s expedition against the Scots (28 Jan.).101CJ ii. 72a, 73a, 74b.

On 8 February Fiennes moved that the Root and Branch petition be committed, embarking on a series of vigorous and prolonged exchanges with Lord George Digby* during which he delivered a sustained attack on episcopacy.102Procs. LP 390, 392; vii. 173. He dismissed the argument that the petition should not be entertained because it was popular: on the contrary, it would look like arbitrary wilfulness to reject it out of hand. When petitioners came

as humble suppliants … desiring the altering of laws, that have been found burdensome unto them, nd that of the Parliament, where, and wherein only, old laws may be repealed, and new laws may be made, they come in the right manner, to their right and proper place.103N. Fiennes, A speech … made the 9th of Feb. 1640 (1641), 5 (E.196.32).

The removal of bishops which they sought did not strike at monarchy: were it otherwise, ‘I shall never give my voice, nor consent to [it] as long as I live’.104A speech … made the 9th of Feb. 1640, 7. In fact, it would have the reverse effect, since division over church government and ceremonies had been ‘the chief and principal cause of all the evils which we have suffered’. It was the prelates and their adherents who had not only worked at the reintroduction of ‘superstition and idolatry into this realm’ but also, having ‘always look[ed] upon parliaments with an evil eye’, bred disaffection towards them in kings, and tried to ‘make the impression upon his Majesty’s royal mind’ that those who complained about ceremonies ‘did strike at his royal person’. Their attempts at ‘reducing all to canonical obedience, by fair means or by foul’ had had effects in ‘our neighbour Kingdom’ which were well known. The remedy was the removal and replacement of persons and institutions which produced such evils: civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions should be separated, with the latter greatly reduced; there should be greater equality between clergy, with the arbitrary power of bishops eliminated and preaching promoted.105A speech … made the 9th of Feb. 1640, 8-28.

Fiennes’s motion was successful. Scots commissioner Robert Baillie rejoiced that ‘our party carried it, that it should be referred to the committee of religion; to which were some four or six added, young Sir Harry Vane, Mr Fiennes, and some more of our firm friends’.106CJ ii. 81b; Baillie Lettrs. and Jnls. i. 245. But Fiennes had not finished, proceeding in a subsequent speech to ‘open the foulness’ of the Canons, which he believed to contain ‘sundry matters, which are not only contrary to the laws of this land, but also destructive of the very principal and fundamental laws of this kingdom’. Those who had drafted the first clause had

assumed unto themselves a parliamentary power, and that too in a very high degree, for they have taken upon them to define what is the power of the king, what the liberty of the subjects, and what propriety he hath in his goods. If this be not proper to a Parliament, I know not what is.107[N. Fiennes], A second speech … Touching the Subjects Liberty against the late Canons, and the New Oath (1641), 1-2 (E.196.35).

Furthermore, contrary to scripture, precedent and the practice of the Reformed church, the ecclesiastical hierarchy had assumed divine right authority to itself, while at the same time pressing that of the king to unwarranted extremes:

these divines … tell us that kings are an ordinance of God, of divine right, and founded in the prime laws of nature, from whence it will follow that all other forms of government, as Aristocracies, and Democracies, are wicked forms of government contrary to the ordinance of God, and the prime laws of nature, which is such new divinity as I never read in any book, but in this new Book of Canons.

Indeed, Fiennes contended with a somewhat characteristic sleight of hand, divine right kingship should itself be viewed from a different perspective.

We all know that kings, and states, and judges, and all magistrates are the ordinances of God, but … give me leave to say they were the ordinances of men, before they were the ordinances of God.

He acknowledged this was controversial – ‘I know I am upon a great and high point’ – but St Peter himself had enjoined submission to established earthly authority ‘for the Lord’s sake’, by implication because it was primarily helpful rather than mandatory.108Fiennes, A second speech … Touching the Subjects Liberty, 3. On the bishops’ contrary interpretation, the king was permitted to do anything not prescribed in scripture, including making laws and raising taxes without parliaments, while they took to themselves coercive power to impose oaths for life, beyond the kingdom and above parliamentary jurisdiction. It was ‘not true that discipline is necessary to salvation’ yet they not only insisted upon it, but did so in the most trivial matters.109Fiennes, A second speech … Touching the Subjects Liberty, 15. For them ‘misbehaviour’ was defined as failure to kneel at the general confession, or to remove hats during the reading of the lesson, while nonconformity could extend to any trivial matter they found objectionable.

If a man will not think what they would have him think, if a man will not say what they would have him say, if a man will not swear what they would have him swear, if a man will not read what they would have him read, if a man will not preach what they would have him preach, In short, if a man will not do what ever they would have him do, then he is an inconformist.

Their stance struck at the heart of a subject’s liberty.110Fiennes, A second speech … Touching the Subjects Liberty, 10-11, 19-20.

With a radical perspective, probably owing much to his continental experience, but also advanced ideas of what belonged to English parliamentary prerogative, Fiennes remained at the centre of discussion of religion through the spring and summer, a formidable and probably sometimes unsettling presence. Nominated to committees to prepare acts for the abolition of superstition and idolatry and advancement of true worship (13 Feb. 1641), disablement of clergy from temporal office (8 Mar.) and suppression of pluralism (10 Mar.), on in mid-March he crossed swords again with George, Lord Digby*, this time over insistence on the removal of Catholics from the court.111CJ ii. 84b, 99a, 101a; Procs. LP ii. 772-3. While Digby argued for conciliation, Fiennes (who was charged with taking this and other measures to the Lords, and, like Digby, with reporting the subsequent conference) insisted that there was ‘no reason that the queen should be incensed by our desire to have the laws put in execution’; if ‘the French make a quarrel of this’, they were capable of doing so whatever happened.112Procs. LP ii. 759; CJ ii. 106a, 106b. Nathaniel must have been the Fiennes placed on the committee to prepare an act to prevent subversion by recusants (26 Mar.).113CJ ii. 113b. The same day, when Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland, argued that the shortcomings of individual deans and canons were insufficient reason for their abolition, according to D’Ewes, ‘Mr Fiennes answered all this’.114Procs. LP iii. 155.

On 1 March Fiennes was one of the six leading Members proposed by Alderman Isaac Pennington* as negotiators from the House for a loan of £100,000 from the City of London.115CJ ii. 94b; Procs. LP ii. 586, 588-90. When they were repulsed, and Digby and others criticized Penington for ‘undertaking so much by himself, which he could not effect’, it was Fiennes, noted D’Ewes, who spoke in his defence.116Procs. LP ii. 614; Harl. 164, f. 129v. With Hampden and Denzil Holles*, Fiennes was one of the larger delegation sent to the City on 25 March to try for a larger sum.117CJ ii. 113a. Increasingly in evidence as a messenger to the Lords and a reporter of conferences, he was especially employed in joint discussion of the prosecution of Strafford and the affairs of the three kingdoms (6, 12, 22, 24 and 25 Mar.).118CJ ii. 98a, 103a, 109a, 110b, 112a, 112b. His close relationship with his father gave him a position useful to fellow activists: when on 24 March the Commons acted to obstruct conversation between Members and Strafford, whose trial had begun two days earlier, Fiennes could authoritatively confirm that the Lords had done the same.119Procs. LP iii. 109 It was he who confidently asserted on 19 April, at a joint committee where his father also spoke, the dubious claim that Strafford could be arraigned for treason, since it was ‘treason by common law to subvert the fundamental laws, as to bring a monarchy into an anarchy’; no Tudor legislation could remit this.120CJ ii. 121b, 122a, 126a; Procs. LP iii. 571-2; Verney, Notes, 54. That month he was also a reporter, most notably with Holles, of conferences on control of the navy, a fast day, and the treaty with Scotland.121CJ ii. 116b, 117b, 118b, 120b, 122b, 123b, 125b, 126a; Procs. LP iii. 477, 479. Although the two co-operated closely on some matters, in the debate on negotiations with the Scots which regularly engaged them over succeeding weeks, they twice (22 May, 19 June) told on opposing sides in divisions on the detail.122CJ ii. 142a, 154b, 181a, 189b; Procs. LP iv. 506, 538, 553.

Following the discovery on 3 May of the plot to seize the Tower of London, which would have enabled Strafford’s escape, Fiennes was one of the small group who retired ‘after their several protestations for secrecy’ to prepare an oath, to be taken by all ‘for the defence of established religion, of the king’s person, and the liberty of the subject’.123Procs. LP iv. 181; CJ ii. 132b. He took the hastily-prepared Protestation the same day.124CJ ii. 133a. In the days that followed he had a hand in preparing the preface to the version that was to be disseminated for general subscription, and sat in the close committee (consisting otherwise of Holles, Hampden, John Pym*, Sir John Culpeper*, Sir John Clotworthy* and William Strode I*), which investigated the plot.125Procs. LP iv. 210, 214, 217-9; CJ ii. 135a. Apparently deputizing for Pym, who had been ‘visited by the hand of God’, he reported their findings at length on 8 June, detailing examinations which had revealed a three-pronged design to garrison the Tower with troops under Captain Billingsley (an officer in the Irish army), to use the army to intimidate Parliament, and to call in French assistance.126CJ ii. 171a; Procs. LP v. 31-48. In the meantime he was a member of committees chosen to prepare an act to back up the oath (6 May) and to set the agenda for discussion with the Lords of the related matters of what to do with the queen mother, Marie de Medici, an unwelcome visitor from France, and how to approach the ‘tumults’ that had arisen in London and elsewhere, calling for Strafford’s speedy execution (11 May).127CJ ii. 136b, 143b. According to D’Ewes, it was he who on 11 May clarified for the House what was meant by the ‘doctrine professed in the Church of England’ to which the oath required assent; his stance on other occasions would indicate that his definition rested exclusively on the Thirty-Nine Articles rather than any particular discipline or ecclesiology.128Procs. LP iv. 318, 324.

While his or his brother’s attempt to revive the committee investigating Ship Money abuses failed for the time being (17 May), Fiennes was to the fore in debates on other aspects of revenue.129Procs. LP iv. 413, 420, 506. He was a minority teller on 24 May against voting on whether the customers and others involved in the collection of tonnage and poundage should be declared delinquents (the clerk of the Commons mistakenly recorded him as a teller in favour of this motion), and he proposed that money could be raised for present necessities by offering, to whoever would lend, ten per cent interest and discharge from financially burdensome office (28 May).130Supra, ‘Henry Belasyse’; CJ ii. 155b; Procs. LP iv. 549, 553, 628, 629, 631. As the bill to exclude bishops from temporal office stalled in the Lords in early June, it seems to have been Fiennes above all who pressed the point (4 June) that they should not vote in the Upper House, as John Moore* noted, ‘because the bishops being lords of parl[iament] it sets too great a distance betwixt them, and the rest of their brethren in the ministry which occasioneth pride in them, discontent in others, and disquiet in the church’.131CJ ii. 165b, 167b; Procs. LP iv. 719, 727. The influence of his years exposed to the practice of Netherlands separatists and Swiss Zwinglians was apparent in his arguments (11 June) that there were no distinctions of rank between clergy in the early church or the contemporary Reformed church in Switzerland, France and elsewhere. Episcopacy in England, as established by Elizabethan statute, was an expedient to prevent schism and heresy, continued only at the will of the king; it had now proved wanting and had thus no justification.132Procs. LP v. 92, 96, 99. Warming to his theme the next day, he was heard to have declared even from St Augustine’s time, ‘how bloody and rebellious’ the bishops had been, ‘and always persecutors of religion, and setters up of superstition’.133Procs. LP v. 112, 113, 116; vii. 181. For some who had initially sought reform of episcopal power, this went too far. Falkland questioned Fiennes’s conclusion that the sins of individuals should lead to the abolition of the office itself: that argument would ‘take away as well judges and other officers as bishops’.134Procs. LP v. 113. Apparently impervious to this logic, Fiennes pushed the debate forward, speaking against deans and chapters (15 June), moving for consideration of ‘punishment’ for the Canons (5 July) and publicising votes against them (27 July), defending the Protestation (10 July), threatening the episcopate with praemunire (30 July) and taking a leading part in impeachment proceedings (30 July, 11 Aug.).135CJ ii. 230b, 251b, 252b; Procs. LP v. 162, 168, 497, 588; vi. 104, 152.

Meanwhile Fiennes worked with Pym, Hampden, Holles and others to keep control of the response to the recent plot to free Strafford, deflecting calls for an interim report from the close committee.136CJ ii. 174a, 175b, 207b; Procs. LP v. 132, 162. On 28 June he claimed that a report he had made on 17 June had been ‘very falsely printed’.137Procs. LP v. 383. He was a prime mover in action against Lord Digby over his published speech against Strafford’s attainder (13 July), pressed the case against the conspirator Henry Percy (24 July) and in debate on 12 August on the technicalities of what constituted treason in the context of machinations by army officers like Sir John Suckling, he (or less plausibly, his brother) was tenacious in applying a broad definition.138CJ ii. 209b; Procs. LP v. 616; vi. 84, 385. It is likely that he was privy to the information received by Pym on a second army plot, revealed publicly only in the autumn. Nominated to committees discussing the disbanding of the armies in Ireland (agreed by the king) and the north (once the treaty with Scotland was concluded) (10 and 25 June) and the settlement of money due for billeting (2 July), he showed himself keen to meet the grievances of those who had suffered from the military presence (28 July).139CJ ii. 172b, 188b, 196a; Procs. LP vi. 118. With other Commons leaders he reported on discussion with the Lords on diverting soldiers into French or Spanish service.140CJ ii. 252b. Fiennes was also on committees which conferred with the Lords (29 June) on Pym’s Ten Propositions for a way through differences with the king, sought to prioritize and expedite Commons business in anticipation of a recess and the king’s absence (12 and 28 July), and polished an act for raising money (28 July).141CJ ii. 190b, 208a, 227a, 228a. Party to the Commons’ attempt to thwart the queen’s plans to pawn the crown jewels in Holland, he also moved on 28 July that the Scottish parliament might be asked to postpone the king’s intended visit there to give sufficient time for him to ratify the treaty and despatch other business.142Procs. LP vi. 127, 129. In early August he was part of the core group liaising with the Lords over the confirmation of the treaty and the unprecedented prolongation of parliamentary proceedings while Charles was away, as well as of the committee of eight entrusted with preparing remonstrances on the state of the kingdom and church (which were to culminate in the Grand Remonstrance presented to the king on 1 December); bringing in the latter was entrusted to him and Sir Henry Vane II*.143CJ ii. 234a, 240b, 242a, 246a, 246b, 249a, 253a; Procs. LP vi. 332-3, 338.

Commission to Scotland

The king arrived in Edinburgh on 14 August 1641. Four days later Parliament resolved to send commissioners after him. Having chosen William Russell*, who had recently succeeded his father as 4th earl of Bedford, Edward Howard*, 1st Baron Howard of Escrick, Sir Philip Stapilton* and John Hampden, the House then added Fiennes and Sir William Armyne*, officially in case of sickness among the others.144CJ ii. 262b, 263a, 265b; Procs. LP vi. 468, 474; Nicholas Pprs. i. 17. In hindsight at least, Clarendon saw it differently. Whereas the ostensible purpose of the expedition was ‘to attend his majesty … and to be present when the Act of Pacification should be transacted in that Parliament, and to preserve the good intercourse and correspondence which was begun between the two nations’, the commissioners were to ‘spy’ on the king, ‘to lay the scheme how the next year should be spent, and to bespeak new laws for this kingdom’. In all this Howard of Escrick ‘was naturally to be governed’ by Fiennes and Hampden.145Clarendon, Hist. i. 370-1. Clarendon may have been right, at least to an extent: it is plausible that Saye and Sele, for one, was keen to have a reliable informant as to what transpired; as the envoys departed, he took the opportunity to take his eyes of events at Westminster and visit Broughton.146Nicholas Pprs. i. 27.

It is notable that, starting with one from York on 25 August, letters from the four commissioners from the Commons were usually described as coming first from Fiennes.147CJ ii. 274b, 280b; Procs. LP vi. 589, 592, 597-8, 651, 658, 661-2, 680. He may have thus have been the chief author of the report received by Pym in mid-October outlining the plot by to derail the king’s implementation of the Covenanters’ demands by seizing leading peers, which was subsequently published.148D’Ewes (C), 8; The Discovery of a late and bloody conspiracie at Edenberg in Scotland (1641, E.173.13). While Hampden and Armyne returned home, Fiennes and Stapilton remained at their post during the whole of the king’s visit, relaying the welcome news that the Scots stood steadfastly by their alliance with the English Parliament.149D’Ewes (C), 36, 66, 85-6, 103. As emerged on his return, they ‘had provided an house ready furnished in Edinburgh for Mr Nathaniel Fynes and the rest of our Committee there; and would not suffer them to pay any thing for it’.150D’Ewes (C), 223.

Opposition leader 1641-2

Still in Edinburgh on 3 November, by the 30th, when he was made a reporter with Hampden and others of a conference with the Lords, Fiennes was back at Westminster.151D’Ewes (C), 118; CJ ii. 327b. As political tensions increased in the context of ever darker news of the Catholic rebellion in Ireland, on 3 December Fiennes was listed second after Pym in nominations to the committee persuade the Lords of the urgency of assenting to legislation sent up from the Commons.152CJ ii. 330b. Re-appointed (3 Dec.) with his colleagues of the summer to treat with Scots commissioners the earls of Lothian and Lindsey on Irish and treaty business, that month he also worked closely with Pym, Holles and a handful of others in conferences with the Lords.153CJ ii. 331a, 335b, 341a, 353a, 354b; D’Ewes (C), 228, 301, 337 As the king gave a conciliatory answer to the Grand Remonstrance (23 Dec.) and both sides feared a coup, Fiennes was one of four Members (the others being Pym, Dungarvan and Sir John Clotworthy*) who claimed to have witnessed revelations by Mountjoy Blount, 1st earl of Newport, of a design to secure the queen and her children in the event of conflict. On the 28th both Houses petitioned the king that he investigate the incident, which had allegedly taken place at Kensington the previous August in the presence of several opposition peers.154CJ ii. 359a; D’Ewes (C), 353. With Pym, Hampden and Sir Henry Vane, Fiennes was manager of a conference with the Lords two days later to discuss the safety of the kingdom.155CJ ii. 363b.

Although Fiennes was not among the Five Members whom Charles sought to arrest on 4 January 1642, he was patently an opposition leader and regarded by some as no less threatening to the crown than the others. An intercepted letter sent that day to Orlando Bridgeman* and later put before the House declared that Fiennes, Oliver St John* and Sir Walter Erle* should be ‘serve[d] with the same sauce’.156CJ ii. 369b; R. E. A Letter directed to Master Bridgeman (1641, E.28). Once the king’s intentions had become known on the 3rd, Fiennes, Stapilton and John Glynne* managed two conferences with the Lords on the security of the House; these three with Sir Henry Vane II* and Sir John Hotham* managed another on the morning of the 4th.157CJ ii. 367a, 368a. D’Ewes recorded that Fiennes ‘and others’ moved that some Members be sent to investigate the armed men said to be gathering around Whitehall. Despite the fact that this had not been agreed upon before a lunchtime recess, Fiennes evinced his confidence and initiative by reporting when the Commons reassembled that he had gone there anyway and established who was commanding the soldiers.158D’Ewes (C), 380. Following the arrival at Westminster of the king and his military escort and the abortive arrests, (of which Hercules Langrish testified to have given him imminent warning) Fiennes played a key role.159D’Ewes (C), 395. One of the ten who retired immediately the doors were locked on 5 January to discuss the response to these unprecedented events, D’Ewes singled him out among those who had spoken of their illegality; according to D’Ewes, it was on his own motion that Fiennes later took to the Lords the message that the Commons proposed to adjourn.160CJ ii. 368b, 369a; D’Ewes (C), 386-8.

His intense activity continued in the six months after the king left London on 10 January and the Commons had reconvened at Westminster on the 11th. A frequent messenger to and manager of meetings with the Lords, he was one of the inner core of Members continually on committees (most notably that sitting at Grocers’ Hall from 17 January) vindicating the actions of the Members accused of treason, discussing issues of security (at first around the Palace and in London, but later of ports, forts and the kingdom at large) and taking the lead in preparing and reporting increasingly defiant petitions and answers to the king.161CJ ii. 371a, 372a, 373b, 375b, 377b, 384a, 385a, 388a, 389a, 389b, 393a, 398a, 401b, 409a, 415a, 432b, 436a, 438b, 448a, 461a, 463a, By at least 7 February he was a key promoter of the Commons’ attempt to put the militia under parliamentary control and to justify their action, while on 22 February he was among a group of MPs (a majority of them lawyers) sent to observe the impeachment of attorney general Sir Edward Herbert*.162CJ ii. 416b, 446b, 449a, 478b. Meanwhile, with Hampden and Stapilton, he was heavily engaged in negotiations with the Scots and with matters related to the two parliaments’ plans for intervention to crush the rebellion in Ireland, including garrisioning Carrickfergus.163CJ ii. 377b, 383a, 386a, 392a, 392b, 393b,394b, 398a, 399a, 400a, 407a, 419a. Their responsibilities included raising and handling money for the payment of troops, and on 17 February it was Fiennes who commended to the House an offer by London merchants to advance £60,000 for the cause.164CJ ii. 401b, 410b, 412a, 413a, 414a, 442b, 451b, 453a, 458a; Master Fynes his speech in Parliament: touching the proffer of the citie of London (1642, E.200.29); CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, p. 638. In February he was also placed on two committees for religious reform and one to investigate suspect behaviour by Lord Falkland, whose sympathies were turning towards the king.165CJ ii. 419b, 421a, 437b.

Two days after Parliament passed the Militia Ordinance, Fiennes was one of the delegation named on 7 March to wait on Charles at Newmarket with a declaration requesting him to return to London.166CJ ii. 469b. In the fortnight after his return from this sterile encounter he was six times named a messenger or reporter of conferences with the Lords and sat on committees responding to the king’s rejection of the Ordinance (29 March) and rallying fellow MPs to stay loyal to Parliament’s line.167CJ ii. 479a, 479b, 480b, 486a, 487b, 495b, 496b, 504b. April saw him equally involved in important business, including: attempts to place command of the navy with Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick, and thwart Charles’s direct communications with local government officials; further action on religious reform; cultivation of the Scots; and further dealings with the king over the desired removal of the magazine from Hull to London and obstruction of Charles’s going to Ireland.168CJ ii. 495b, 510b, 512a, 513b, 517b, 518a, 519a, 519b, 522a, 524b, 525b, 531a, 535b, 539b, 541b On 9 April Fiennes subscribed £600 towards the war effort there, the same sum as Pym and Bulstrode Whitelocke; on the 25th he carried to the Lords the warrant for levying ships and 100,000 men for the service.169Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 564; CJ ii. 540a, 540b; LJ v. 12a; CSP Irish Adventurers 1642-59, p. 179.

Absent from the Journal for the next three weeks – except for 6 May, when with Pym, Hampden, Henry Marten*, and Sir Samuel Rolle* he drafted instructions to be sent to Hull, where Sir John Hotham had refused the king admittance – Fiennes was as busy as ever from mid-May to later July with central aspects of Parliament’s case against the king and preparations to fight the war which seemed increasingly inescapable.170CJ ii. 560b. Part of a lawyer-dominated committee of 16 May to establish precedents for parliamentary action independently of royal assent, he promoted the resulting declaration to that effect and carried it to the Lords (23 May).171CJ ii. 572b, 580a, 582a, 583a. Often acting with Pym, Holles, Hampden and Henry Marten he was involved in instructing Major-general Philip Skippon* to disobey the king’s summons to York (17 May), preparing further orders for the garrison at Hull (20 and 24 May), setting up a war chest and authority for mustering men (24 and 27 May), and drafting the further declarations justifying such action which culminated in the Nineteen Propositions sent to Charles (30, 31 May).172CJ ii. 575a, 582a, 585a, 586a, 588b, 594a, 596a. As before he had frequent contact with the Lords.173CJ ii. 581b, 582b, 587b, 598a, 597b. While the king gathered support in the north, through June Fiennes dealt further with the Scots commissioners, was delegated to communicate with the earl of Warwick and prepare an order for searching ships (4 June), sat on defence committees, and was a prominent figure in debating and answering Charles’s proclamations and response to the Propositions.174CJ ii. 601a, 603a, 605b, 608a, 608b, 609b, 617b, 619a, 620b, 625b, 627b, 629b, 630a, 631b, 635b, 637a, 638b, 639b, 641b, 643a, 648b.

On 4 July 1642 Fiennes, like his father, was appointed to Parliament’s military and political executive, the Committee of Safety; in contrast to his father, war service was to make him a rare attender.175CJ ii. 651b; L. Glow, ‘The Committee of Safety’, EHR lxxx. 313. He made relatively few appearances in the Commons Journals between then and 23 July, when they cease until the autumn.176CJ ii. 670a, 677b, 683b, 684a, 685a, 687b. On 6 August he signed, with Parliament’s commander-in-chief, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, Pym, and Sir John Meyrick*, a Committee order for uniforms for the Irish expedition, and thus was possibly not the ‘Colonel Fiennes’ reported to have tamely surrendered to Spencer Compton, 2nd earl of Northampton, at Banbury cannon and other munitions sent by Parliament to defend Warwick Castle.177CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 366, 368. However, he had received permission in late June to send a selection of weaponry to Oxfordshire and by 20 August he held a captaincy under Essex.178CJ ii. 644b; SP28/1a, f. 12; CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, p. 642; Ath. Ox. iii. 878.

War, faction and the brink of disaster, 1642-3

From the start Fiennes’ military career was dogged by controversy and failure, his reputation suffering, like his brother John’s, from a tendency of observers to conflate the mistakes of both. It is not clear which brother’s ill-disciplined troop allegedly robbed Nehemiah Wharton near Northampton just before 13 September.179CSP Dom.1641-3, p. 388. Both brothers participated in the confused and costly engagement at Powickbridge near Worcester on 22 September, but Nathaniel seems to have been something of a part-time officer in these months, deploying his other talents to the cause.180CJ ii. 779b; Add. 18777, f. 9v; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 23-4; Clarendon, Hist. ii. 322-5; J. Corbet, An historicall relation of the military government of Gloucester (1645), 12; CSP Ven. 1642-3, p. 170. On 12 October (while Fiennes was with Essex at Worcester) George Thomason acquired what can only have been his recently-published pamphlet on the abolition of episcopacy, which argued that the establishment of a lay-controlled church under Parliament would buttress royal authority, increase the king’s revenue, promote union between British and other Reformed churches, and bring about a good understanding between king and people.181HMC Portland i. 64; Unparallel’d reasons for abollishing episcopacy… by N. F. Esquire (E.121.39). The Commons again appointed him a commissioner to treat with Scotland (10 and 21 October), and he was back in London by the 27th to report with others on the battle at Edgehill.182CJ ii. 802b, 818a, 825a; Add. 18777, ff. 37v, 44. His vindication of John Fiennes’ allegedly cowardly retreat on that day, together with a more general defence of parliamentarian conduct there and at Worcester was printed by official command on 9 November.183N. Fiennes, A most true and exact relation of both the battels fought … against the bloudy cavelliers (1642, E.126.38/39). After business for Essex, including a march to Winchester on which he reported as ‘colonel’ on 16 December, he was at Westminster before the end of the year in a small committee addressing supply for the Scots army.184CJ ii. 846a, 892b, 904a; PA, Main Pprs. 16 Dec. 1642; Add. 31116, pp. 29-30.

Several times in January 1643 Fiennes was once more prominent in Commons debate on the prosecution of the war, and on propositions to and from the king and the Scottish commissioners, being twice a teller in divisions and once more a draughtsman of instructions to the Hothams.185CJ ii. 917a, 918b, 921b, 923b, 928a, 949b; Add. 18777, f. 126v. But he was soon back in the field. He seems to have been the Colonel Fiennes noted by Sir Samuel Luke* as being ‘about some design’ and advancing first from Devizes to Chippenham (12 Feb.) and then to Salisbury (15 Feb.), although an ordinance for him to raise a regiment of horse in Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and Oxfordshire was not issued until the 23rd.186Jnl. of Sir Samuel Luke, 3-4, 8; SP28/1a, ff. 82, 141; SP28/5, f. 283; A. and O.; CJ ii. 976b, 977a. By the end of the month he was in the strategically important city of Bristol, where there was much sympathy for the king and where Fiennes soon supplanted the commander, Colonel Thomas Essex, on grounds of his insufficiency. On 7 March he got wind of a conspiracy by Robert Yeomans, the previous sheriff, and George Boucher to deliver it to royalist forces.187Add. 18777, f. 174v; Jnl. of Sir Samuel Luke, 15-16, 22; CCC 1629; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 153. His letter of 11 March to his father describing the ‘extraordinary deliverance from a cruel conspiracy and malice, from malignants within the City, and from a powerful invasion from without’ which ‘God discovered unto us … some two hours before it was to be acted’ was read in committee on the 14th and ordered to be published.188N. Fiennes, An extraordinary deliverance, from a cruell plot, and bloudy massacre (1643, E.93.10).

The danger was not past, however. By now a seasoned communicator, Fiennes exposed the garrison’s continuing vulnerability in a series of letters of 10 March (also signed by Alexander Popham*, Clement Walker* and others), 19 March to Hampden (desiring ‘leave to quit the charge’ of governor, which had fallen to him) and 20 March to Lord General Essex (in which he warned that there was ‘not one experienced officer’).189N. Fiennes, A relation made in the House of Commons (1643), 13-15, 21-2 (E.64.12). Restive citizens petitioned Parliament on 8 April about allegedly purloined goods and on the 14th the Commons chivvied Fiennes to do justice ‘speedily’ on the conspirators, according to instructions sent by Lord General Essex.190CCSP i. 239; CJ iii. 45b, 48b; LJ v. 647b648b; Clarendon, Hist. iii. 37n. A week later Fiennes’ letter to Saye revealed the difficulties of this in the context of more profound worries: ‘I am utterly discouraged in the employment I have here, because I do not see a way of subsistence for the forces that are here’.191Fiennes, A relation in the House of Commons, 23. The current mayor and several leading citizens wrote to Parliament on 29 April praising Fiennes as ‘a gentleman of unwearied pains and watchfulness, not omitting anything that may conduce to our safety’.192CJ iii. 71a. But the sentence against the conspirators given on 8 May, following court martial on articles presented by Clement Walker, and the hangings which followed – ‘that unparalleled act of inhumanity’ as glossed by royalists – was to be a millstone round his neck.193Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 154; A Letter to a noble lord at London from a friend at Oxford (1643), 5; The several examinations and confessions of the treacherous conspirators (1643, E.104.4); The two state martyrs (1643); Clarendon, Hist. iii. 107; F. Quarles, The loyall convert (1644), 15, and The profest royalist his quarrell with the times (1645), 12. Tension escalated as Patrick Ruthven, earl of Forth, threatened to execute parliamentary prisoners at Oxford if there were further deaths, and Fiennes and Walker retaliated with threats to punish those whom they had intended to spare.194Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 155; HMC Portland i. 118. While on 17 June the Commons registered its formal approval of Fiennes’ action at the court martial, three days later he was among those excepted from the tactical pardon issued by the king.195CJ iii. 131b; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 334.

As the parliamentarian position in the west country deteriorated and rumours circulated of an attempt to take Bristol, Sir William Waller requested reinforcements from the city that would significantly deplete the garrison.196CCSP i. 239-42; Fiennes, A relation in the House of Commons, 26-7. Despite a conviction that the defensive forces were overstretched notwithstanding his efforts at improving the fortifications, Fiennes let the troops go, reasoning (as he later claimed) that if Waller were defeated Bristol would be untenable anyway. Waller’s rout at Roundway Down on 13 July was thus a double blow, spreading dangerous apprehension among local gentry. Since his desperate letters to Essex and Saye seeking reinforcements and additional resources appeared fruitless, Fiennes accepted the workings of providence (as he said) and, with the help of money from Sir John Horner*, knuckled down to hold Bristol with what soldiers he could muster.197Fiennes, A relation in the House of Commons, 3-6, 23-6; Colonell Fiennes letter to my Lord General, concerning Bristol (1643), 5 (E.65.26a). When it came to the test, he withstood siege for less than four days. An attack by royalists under Prince Rupert began on 22 July. After sustained onslaught on the extensive but thinly manned walls, artillery from the heights above the city to the north, incursions into the suburbs where the invaders found assistance from sympathetic citizens, and (finally) a council of war, on 26 July Fiennes surrendered. Although in time the indefensibility of Bristol was comprehensively demonstrated, it is not clear how much the speed of his action stemmed from a cool appraisal of the hopelessness of persistence and how much from a loss of nerve on the part of a man ‘who had more of the learning of the gownmen, (whether … lawyers or divines) than he had of the sword’.198Warwick, Mems. Charles I (1702), 259. At the least, he underestimated the effect on parliamentarian morale of a apparently hasty capitulation of England’s second city and miscalculated the surrender articles. Vacating Bristol in advance of the deadline, Fiennes found his forces and the civilians escaping with them subject to deprivation even of the weapons and goods that had been allowed them.199Fiennes, A relation in the House of Commons, 7-11; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 284; Clarendon, Hist. iii. 112; A copie of the articles agreed upon at the surrender of the city of Bristol (1643, E.63.15); Add. 18980; Add. 31116, p. 133.

Initially royalists celebrated their welcome victory as the result of a costly, but irresistible attack: against a barrage of artillery and ships in the harbour declaring for the king, ‘the town was not likely to hold out long’.200Mercurius Aulicus no. 30 (29 July 1643), 400, 402 (E.64.11). According to Clarendon, writing with hindsight, the perception at the royalist council of war had been that the assault would be relatively easy given weaknesses in the fortifications, disaffection in the city and Fiennes’s ‘little reputation … in war’; there had been dismay in their camp at the initial stiffness of resistance, and even when the tide had turned, Fiennes’s giving way had owed a good deal to violence within the city and to ‘hectoring’ by the royalist Colonel Gerard, ‘a haughty young man, of a very different temper from [Colonel Fiennes, who] was sent to treat with him’.201Clarendon, Hist. iii. 103n-105n, 107-10. However, as Fiennes arrived in London in early August to report to a dismayed Commons the ‘deadly news from Bristol’, their enemies began to emphasize the store of munitions found in Bristol, to attribute the surrender to Fiennes’s cowardice and to depict fatal dissension within the parliamentarian ranks.202Add. 31116, p. 135; CJ iii. 194a; Mercurius Aulicus no. 31 (5 Aug 1643), 421 (E.65.13); no. 32 (12 Aug 1643), 427-8 (E.65.26). Fiennes’s Relation and a letter to Essex, in which he claimed he had ‘kept the town … far beyond the enemy’s expectation’ and yielded to local pressure not to ruin it to no purpose, were published by parliamentary order, and Fiennes wrote to Sir Ralph Hopton*, royalist governor of Bristol, complaining about breaches of the negotiated articles.203Fiennes, A relation in the House of Commons; Colonell Fiennes letter to my Lord General, 1, 3; Add. 18980; CSP Ven. 1643-7, p. 6; A true relation of the taking of Bristol (Oxford, 1643); J. Taylor, Mercurius Aqvaticus (1643, E.29.11). But the damage could not be contained.

By 23 September Fiennes’s former subordinate Clement Walker had broken ranks and published a pamphlet accusing him of ‘deserting’ Bristol, prompting Fiennes to request the House that the matter might be dealt with by a council of war. When it was objected that, since Fiennes was an MP, this would constitute a breach of privilege, Fiennes and Pym responded fatefully that, in a delegation of power, when a Member took employment under Parliament’s lord general he subjected himself to martial law.204C. Walker, An Answer to Col. Nathaniel Fiennes Relation (1643, E.67.36); Add. 18778, f. 55. Their risky strategy was accepted and the matter referred to the earl of Essex.205CJ iii. 254a. Meanwhile, the Fiennes family counter-struck. Arrested and brought before the Lords on 2 October, Walker heard depositions that he had abused Saye verbally as ‘a base beggarly lord’ and his sons as ‘cowards’; found guilty of scandalous words, he received a fine and was committed to the Fleet prison.206LJ vi. 240b-241a. Within a few days Fiennes issued a rebuttal of Walker’s offending pamphlet, printing it with marginal annotations denying its veracity point by point.207Colonell Fiennes his reply to a pamphlet (1643, E.70.1). On 9 October the Commons accepted from Sir William Waller, who (to compound his troubles from other quarters) was implicitly criticized in Nathaniel’s justificatory writings, the surrender of his commission and Colonel Fiennes appeared to be riding high.208CJ iii. 269a. But, as Mercurius Aulicus reported gleefully, following this swords were drawn between Fiennes and Presbyterian partisans in Westminster Hall.209Add. 18778, f. 64; Mercurius Aulicus no. 40 (7 Oct 1643), 557 (E.71.8); no. 41 (14 Oct 1643), 580 (E.72.1); Clarendon, Hist. iii. 254. Walker and his allies launched their own series of salvos. A petition conveyed to the Commons by Sir Henry Cholmley in which Walker complained of Saye’s ‘malice against him’ provoked a debate as to whether the earl had breached privilege to a greater extent than had the government of Charles I.210Add. 31116, pp. 165-6. Subsequently, further petitions from Walker and William Prynne* first requested more time to assemble the case against Fiennes and then prompt prosecution, until on 15 November – still expressing a preference for a parliamentary trial – they brought to the Commons articles of accusation and impeachment against him, not just for his conduct at Bristol but also for laying an ‘extraordinary great blemish’ on Parliament and the general.211Add. 31116, pp. 169, 183; PA, Main Pprs. 23 Oct. 1643; LJ vi. 260a; Articles of impeachment and accusation … against Colonell Nathaniel Fiennes (1643), esp. 9 (E.78.3); CJ iii. 311a, 311b; W. Prynne, The doome of cowardice and treachery (1643).

Fiennes’s decision to request a court martial instead of proceedings in Parliament perhaps rested on an expectation that he would get a more sympathetic and informed hearing before the military high command than in a Commons dominated by Waller’s Presbyterian friends. However, he had underestimated his opponents and was unfortunate that his case ran more or less concurrently with that against the Hothams, whose side-changing more patently constituted treachery. Prynne exploited Fiennes’s correspondence of the spring to cast him as a commander who had lost heart before he began. His self-aggrandizing account of Fiennes’s trial – which opened at St Albans on 14 December even as MPs continued to debate the legitimacy of the defendant’s divesting himself of privilege – depicts a governor greedy for power but then keen to divest himself of all responsibility and blame others, above all Waller; in this light, the defendant would have been convicted on the weakness and inconsistency of his case. Yet it seems clear that, as Saye claimed later, the guilty verdict and death sentence delivered on 29 December were imposed primarily to make an example of Fiennes and, at a critical moment in the conduct of the war, to discourage other commanders from readily yielding to the enemy.212Add. 31116, p. 203; State Trials i. 766-815; Bodl. Art 4º S11 Art. BS [W. Fiennes], Vindiciae Veritatis (1654), 45-52; Clarendon, Hist. iii. 254-5; Mercurius Aulicus no. 49 (9 Dec. 1643), 703 (E.79.1); no. 51 (23 Dec. 1643), 725 (E.80.8); no. 1 (6 Jan. 1644), 762, 766 (E.29.9); CSP Ven. 1643-7, p. 57. As indicated, they were also a means to strike at Saye himself.

Reprieve and rehabilitation, 1644-5

If Prynne is correct that Fiennes was ‘astonished’ at the verdict and made a fruitless attempt to reverse his earlier decision to opt for court martial by claiming parliamentary privilege, then he was not (unlike his father) expecting a pardon, at least until he withdrew the claim later that day.213State Trials i. 815; Vindiciae Veritatis, 48; Harl. 165, f. 245v. That pardon was offered by Essex within a few days. It was being reported by mid-January that Fiennes had promptly gone abroad with the sanction of MPs.214Mercurius Aulicus no. 2 (13 Jan 1644), 780 (E.30.1); CSP Ven. 1643-7, p. 62. Clarendon’s recollection that he ‘went for some time into foreign parts’ is plausible.215Clarendon, Hist. iii. 255 Not only does his prolonged sojourn on the continent in the 1630s indicate long-lasting connections there, but his links to Lincolnshire, where he had held property at least since his marriage, appear relatively weak at this date. In the Commons Journals the only signs of ties there occur in June 1641, when he was added to a committee related to the division of the fen lands of Theophilus Clinton, earl of Lindsey (which may be explained primarily by kinship), and in October 1642, when as ‘Nathaniel Fiennes of Lincolnshire’ he was nominated a peace commissioner with the Scots.216CJ ii. 192a, 818a. He had not, at this stage, held office in local government; his estate at Bromby was far from the centre of administration, and close to the North Sea coast.

Yet some local contact persisted. It presumably underpinned the proposal on 6 July 1645 that Fiennes be named a commissioner for associating the northern counties.217CJ iv. 166b. This may have been an attempt at political rehabilitation in the context of his father’s commanding position in the Lords and on the Committee for Advance of Money.218J.S.A. Adamson, ‘The Peerage in Politics, 1645-9’ (Camb. Univ. PhD thesis, 1986), introduction. While this proposal was rejected, following the surrender of Bristol by Prince Rupert to General Sir Thomas Fairfax* on 10 September, Fiennes’s re-entry into public life was remarkably swift: two days later he was summoned to attend the House.219CJ iv. 273a. The testimony of leading army officers that Rupert’s capitulation providentially vindicated Fiennes’s conviction of the untenability of the city was doubtless important, but the speed with which the event was turned to Fiennes’s advantage argues some prior lobbying.220Vindiciae Veritatis, 60-2; E. Bowles, Manifest truth (1646), 69-70; J. Sprigge, Anglia Rediviva (1647), 119-20; [C. Walker], Hist. of Independency (1648) 34 (E.463.19). Independents in the army and the Commons who recognised the value to them in the House of one acknowledged ‘a better orator than soldier’ may have been eagerly awaiting an opportunity.221G. Langbaine, A review of the Covenant (Oxford, 1645), 27-8 (E.2.27).

Independent leader, 1645-7

Although four weeks passed between Fiennes’s first committee nomination on 20 September 1645 and his second, he was soon back at centre stage.222CJ iv. 280a, 312a. Over the winter and spring he was involved in a range of Commons business, including an ordinance for purging the Bristol corporation (24 Oct.), the regulation of the Committee for Advance of Money (17 Feb. 1646) and dealing with individual delinquents (14 Feb., 19 Mar.), but most of his time was spent either on religion or, especially, on all aspects of negotiations with the Scots and the king.223CJ iv. 318a, 319b, 441a, 445b, 480b. This pattern was to be repeated for many months to come.

Fiennes sat on committees including both Presbyterians and Independents on church government (20 Sept. 1645), providing godly preaching in Cambridge (17 Oct.), investigating the dissemination of the Remonstrance of the ‘dissenting brethren’ to the Westminster Assembly (11 Dec.), and extending Presbyterian organisation in the province of London (21 Jan. 1646), but his Independent stance was apparent, for example on 4 March when in a division on the ordinance for church government he told with Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire against Holles and Stapilton.224CJ iv. 280a, 312a, 373a, 413b, 463a. With the latter he was among six MPs delegated on 4 April to confer with Paul Best, who had published a work asserting the inequality of the Trinity, a heresy equally unacceptable to all.225CJ iv. 500a. A fortnight later, however, sent to the Westminster Assembly with Evelyn and Samuel Browne* to communicate the Commons’ complaint of breaches of privilege in their recent petition, he couched his remarks more in sorrow than in anger, but firmly and characteristically rejected any attempt by that delegated body of divines to claim divine right, an infallibility to which Parliament did not pretend, and thereby ‘to stifle … in the birth’ its legislation and ‘make it of none effect’.226CJ iv. 511a, 518b; The Minutes and Pprs. of the Westminster Assembly ed. C. van Dixhoorn and D.F. Wright (2012), iv. 84, 86-91. It is likely that his contribution to debate on exclusion from the sacrament (23 May) was to minimise clerical power and that he interpreted his role as commissioner under the resulting ordinance (4 June) as agent of light-handed state regulation to weed out scandalous radicals.227CJ iv. 553b, 563a.

Meanwhile Fiennes resumed his previous role as a lynchpin of joint Commons and Lords action over the Scots, albeit now with an agenda much less accommodating to his former northern allies. One of the Members chosen on 21 October 1645 to confer with the Lords over Parliament’s demands that the Scottish army in the north be withdrawn and the proposals of Scottish commissioners in London for treating with the king, ten days later he carried Commons votes to the Lords for their concurrence.228CJ iv. 317a, 327a. In the interim he had been among MPs engaged on the delicate task of handling the discovery in Lord Digby’s captured correspondence of Charles’s dealings with foreign powers.229CJ iv. 318a. Three of his five remaining appearances in the Journal that year related to the Scots treaty, on which he reported progress on 24 November.230CJ iv. 340a, 347b, 348a, 353b.

In a winter of evidently spasmodic activity in the House Fiennes was clearly still employed on peace negotiations in January and February 1646, when he was also on the committee preparing an ordinance for the execution of martial law (1 Jan.) and was a reporter of a conference on the navy (7 Feb.).231CJ iv. 394b, 399b, 422b, 424b, 428a, 431a, 454b. Visibly busy in March, in addition to being a reporter, teller, messenger and draughtsman in relation to king and Scots, he was also involved in matters as diverse as raising money for the army, the treatment of foreign ambassadors, Parliament’s entente with the prince elector, and valuing items found in Windsor Castle.232CJ iv. 458b, 461a, 462b, 468a, 468b, 471b, 478b, 479b, 485b, 488b, 490a, 491a, 500b. In April, as the Scots pressed for a speedy settlement prescribing Presbyterianism in England, Fiennes less noticeable in the House, but his speech to the Assembly suggests he was no less active behind the scenes and preaching from a different text. With the fall of Oxford and a decisive shift in the political dynamic, from May to mid-July a score of appearances in the Journal reveal Fiennes once again dealing with the Scots commissioners, liaising with the Lords over the disposal of the king (in Scottish hands) and the Propositions of Newcastle, and reporting the declaration of the liberties of the English Parliament, of which he was conceivably the primary author.233CJ iv. 540a, 541a, 541b, 548a, 548b, 550b, 553a, 560b, 570b, 584a, 584b, 585a, 586b, 587a, 589a, 590b, 591b, 592a, 606a, 613b.

One of four MPs deputed to prepare an ordinance for expelling papists and those who had been in arms against Parliament from within the lines of communication (4 May), Fiennes was probably already emerging as an advocate for the views of the New Model in discussions surrounding the future of the militia, and was reporter of a conference with the Lords seeking to assert parliamentary control (17 June).234CJ iv. 524b, 531b, 564a, 576a, 576b, 579b. On 14 July he told with Sir Arthur Hesilrige* (against Holles and Stapilton) for the majority who rejected the Western Association’s proposal that the Exeter garrison should be reduced.235CJ iv. 617a. Named first in the committee set up to investigate the remonstrance of the City of London against Parliament on 11 July, he also sat on that to receive complaints against delinquents (23 July) and continued to monitor the French ambassador, Jean, marquis de Montreuil.236CJ iv. 615a, 615b, 625b, 641a, 643b. His interest in law was reflected in membership of committees to debate landlord/tenant relations (10 June) and the regulation of local administration and judges (22 June), while his inclusion on that preparing an ordinance for the regulation of the University of Oxford is unsurprising (1 July).237CJ iv. 571a, 583a, 595b. Occasionally he was nominated to consider the cases and petitions of individuals, and he had an apparently peripheral involvement in moves to sell delinquents’ lands and compensate supporters of Parliament.238CJ iv. 538b, 550b, 571b, 619b, 620a, 651a. But his second major preoccupation of the summer of 1646 took him largely away from the floor of the House. Added to the Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs on 7 May, his presence was recorded 11 times between June and October.239CJ iv. 532a; LJ viii. 305a; CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 455, 462, 463, 483, 486, 487, 497, 506, 520, 524, 529.

Through the last four months of 1646 Fiennes’s parliamentary service ran in familiar lines. General business came his way in committees on the Newcastle election (11 Sept.), complaints of the Levant Company (17 Sept.), the channelling of subjects’ petitioning through the Commons (3 Oct.), the dispute over ownership of the papers and effects of the recently-deceased earl of Essex (17 Oct.), and the refinement of the Committee for Compounding at Goldsmiths’ Hall (10 Dec.).240CJ iv. 666b, 671a, 681b, 696b; v. 8b. He had relatively rare opportunities to exercise a private interest in committees nominating sheriffs and justices of the peace (30 Oct.) and allotting compensation to those like Lord Saye who had suffered financially from the abolition of the court of wards (24 Nov.).241CJ iv. 709b, 727a. But religion and settlement of peace in the three kingdoms remained paramount. Nominated on 16 October to the committee to prepare the ordinance for printing the Bible and publishing the Septuagint from manuscript, the next day, consistently with his opposition to ecclesiastical courts, he was a teller with Hesilrige against the ordinance continuing Sir Nathaniel Brent as a judge of the prerogative court of Canterbury for the probate of wills notwithstanding the abolition of episcopacy.242CJ iv. 695a, 696b. In November he sat on committees to fix maintenance for bishops who had not joined the king and for ministers more generally, while on 12 December he was among those named to investigate William Dell’s anti-Presbyterian fast sermon and a publication on divine right government of the church by certain London ministers.243CJ iv. 712a, 719b; v. 10b, 11a.

The ending of hostilities in the summer had merely created new hurdles for negotiators at Westminster. Having been among the drafters in August of an ordinance designed to punish propagators of anti-Scottish propaganda, Fiennes was later involved in haggling over the paying off of their army in northern England, no longer needed as a political lever.244CJ iv. 644b, 721a,; v. 1b, 12a. Alone of the 1641 commissioners still exercising a particular responsibility for framing Parliament’s communication with the Scots, he was thus at this period closely concerned with discussion of the disposal of the king and the maintenance of fragile unity between Scotland and England.245CJ iv. 675a, 708b; v. 30a, 31b, 32a. Despite this, at this date he was added to the Derby House Committee of Irish Affairs for the purpose of dealing with the submission of James Butler, 1st marquess of Ormond (14 Oct.).246CJ iv. 693b.

The first seven months of 1647 saw a marked reduction in Fiennes’s recorded contribution to business in a Commons where Presbyterians were in the ascendant, but he was apparently still a significant presence in and around Westminster. His scholarly talents as well as his local interests were again employed on preparation for the visitation of Oxford University (13 Jan., 10 Feb., 14 May), and he was added to the committee for the library at Lambeth Palace in order to trawl the books of the Jacobean archbishop of Canterbury Dr Richard Bancroft ‘to see if any concern the state’.247CJ v. 51b, 83a, 84a, 174a. He was involved in a handful of cases concerning individuals, including the settlement of a Worcestershire parsonage on his kinsman Dr Thomas Temple (13 Jan.), of differences between Edward Vaughan* and Sir Thomas Myddelton*, former commander in north Wales, and of lands on Oliver Cromwell*.248CJ v. 52a, 90a, 162b, 181b. With other prominent MPs – among them his erstwhile antagonist Sir William Waller – he was selected for a delegation to attend the prince elector at Whitehall (25 Mar.).249CJ v. 125a. More importantly, in January he was named to the committee to consider the future of the navy in the light of proposals submitted by Andrewes Burrell and among those who sought to address the alleged shortcomings of the Presbyterian-dominated accounts committee (headed by Fiennes’ old enemy Prynne), while on 3 February he was a reporter with Holles, John Stephens* and Sir William Lewis* of a conference with the Lords on sequestrations.250CJ v. 47a, 62b 73b; To the Right Honourable, the High Court of Parliament, the humble remonstrance of Andrewes Burrell Gent (1646, E.335.6). In April he was high on the long list of MPs delegated to consider the controversial question of the London militia.251CJ v. 132b. He was probably a supporter of the army on the Derby House Committee of Irish Affairs – the body which discussed the contentious plan to disband much of the New Model and send other regiments to Ireland (27 Mar.). His membership of this committee was confirmed on 7 April and he attended eight of its meetings between April and November.252CJ v. 127b, 135b; LJ ix. 127b; SP21/26, pp. 44, 48, 49, 57, 71, 96, 104, 117. Having been named to a committee in October 1646 on a petition from parliamentarian officers concerned about potential prosecution for actions during the war, Fiennes was among those nominated on 7 May, following pressure from army agitators at the end of April, to prepare an ordinance of indemnity.253CJ iv. 694b; v. 166a.

On 28 May 1647 Fiennes obtained leave to go into the country.254CJ v. 190b. Since he had already been absent from the Journal for five weeks between mid-February and late March, this move may simply have reflected cumulative frustrations with the fact that Presbyterians appeared to have carried the day in relation to settlement with the king and dissolution of the army, but it is noteworthy that this leave coincided with a point at which Oxford and the artillery housed there became a focus of attention. As confrontation between the army and Parliament looked even more likely, however, it is possible that he either postponed his absence or hurried back to London to press the Independents’ cause. At the division in the Commons on 3 June over whether the Houses’ 29 March declaration condemning supporters of the army as enemies of the state should be expunged from the Journals, Fiennes told for the majority ‘yeas’.255CJ v. 197a. With the army advancing towards London, on 14 June Fiennes was deputed with Bulstrode Whitelocke*, Evelyn and three others to prepare urgently a declaration of what Parliament had done to meet the army’s demands; the declaration was refined at an expanded committee later in the day.256CJ v. 209b, 210a. A newsletter described the tense debate which ensued as Stapilton, Holles, and Sir William Lewis argued for bringing the king to London for (Presbyterian-led) peace talks, and St John, Fiennes and Hesilrige argued against it.257Clarke Pprs. i. 135. Fiennes’s next appearances in the Journals were on 8 July, when he and Evelyn were among authors of an ordinance meeting army demands that Reformadoes (ex-soldiers from regiments outside the New Model) be expelled from London, and on 23 July, when both were among those who prepared Parliament’s declaration condemning the Solemn Engagement to uphold the Covenant and restore the king issued by City apprentices and reformadoes.258CJ v. 237b, 255b. In the interim he had plenty of time for digesting the manifestoes of the radicals and refining his personal political ideas.

Pursuit of a settlement, 1647-8

Following the Presbyterian coup of late July, Fiennes was one of the Independents who fled to the army and signed a declaration in support of Fairfax and his men on 4 August.259LJ ix. 385; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 755. During this period he was reported to have been with Saye, St John, Evelyn, William Pierrepont* and others meeting army officers at Syon House, residence of Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland, to discuss a separate treaty with the king. While some commentators that summer were aware of him simply as a general supporter of that cause and a target of Presbyterian emnity, it is plausible that Fiennes had a major part in formulating the Heads of Proposals published by Fairfax on 1 August.260Adamson, ‘The Peerage in Politics’, 181, 183, 185, 203; An answer of a letter from an agitator in the city to an agitator in the army (1647), 5. Once the Independents returned to Westminster, Fiennes was not only on the large committees (11 and 18 Aug.) for an ordinance repealing all acts passed during the Presbyterian reign of 26 July to 6 August, but also on a smaller one to refine it (20 Aug.).261CJ v. 271b, 278a, 279b. Added with Evelyn on 1 September to the committee investigating the July disorders that had so intimidated Members, he carried the addition to the Lords the next day, and when an interim report proved not to express sufficient disapproval of those proceedings, on 2 October he was given the chairmanship.262CJ v.288a, 289a, 322a, 324a, 332b.

As weeks went by Fiennes was involved not just in routine matters like preventing adulteration of the coinage (2 Sept.) or dealing with local petitions (15 Sept.), or on religious issues where he had a long record of engagement (the ordinance on tithes), but also in strategic business.263CJ v. 289b, 301b, 302a. Having worked on the ordinance appointing Colonel Robert Hammond governor of the Isle of Wight, Fiennes was added on 9 September with erstwhile courtier Sir Henry Mildmay* and radicals Colonel Thomas Rainborowe* and Henry Marten* to the Committee for the Admiralty and Cinque Ports and on 23 September to the Committee for the Army, replacing John Glynne, imprisoned a fortnight earlier for his part in the summer’s coup.264CJ v. 291a, 297b, 315a; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 819. As Charles announced his readiness to reconsider Heads of Proposals and they were re-published, it was noticed that Vane, St John and Fiennes joined Cromwell and Henry Ireton* in speaking up for accommodation with the king.265Clarendon MS 2604, cited in Clarke Pprs. i. 231n. Some detected a ‘cabinet council of the grandees’, comprising Evelyn, Pierrepont, Fiennes, Vane, Cromwell and Ireton, outmanoeuvring more radical elements in the army.266J. Wildman, Putney Projects (1648), sig. F3 (E.421.9); F. White, A copy of a letter sent to his Excellencie Sir Thomas Fairfax (1647), 1-2 (E.413.17) Others found evidence of manipulation of the Commons by Saye, who at this time with Northumberland dominated the Lords.

And that you may know how this wheel moves in the Lower House too, you are to understand that Nath. Fines … uses upon all such good occasions, to give his lordship a meeting in the court of requests at Westminster, where the two twins of valour use to compare notes …[they] are resolved never to come more within reach of soldiers and guns, but cast about which way to make friends of the unrighteous Mammon.267Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 6 (19-26 Oct 1647), 44 (E.411.23).

Saye claimed first choice in nominations to the prospective remodelled revenue committee, reported in Mercurius Pragmaticus in early November, and had

bespoken a place in that committee for his Son John, or Nathaniel, no matter which of them it is, for both may do well enough with their father’s bags, and be able to defy all the world with them, and his spiritual armour, upon condition they be not put upon that ungodly work of taking and keeping garrisons.268Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 9 (9-16 Nov 1647), 70-1 (E.414.15).

Although compared with other leading MPs Nathaniel Fiennes officially had little to do with money, and smears on his military record were easily made, the conclusion that he was a powerful influence seems broadly just – with the proviso that some committees were large enough to defy easy management. Through October, November and December 1647, in addition to being one of a small group of Members entrusted with the sensitive task of cataloguing parliamentary, administrative and sequestration papers, and he found time to support with Vane and John Selden* resistance to the visitation of Oxford University – in the short term a mostly unsuccessful rearguard action against the extension of Presbyterian influence. 269CJ v. 348a; Reg. Visitors Univ. Oxford, p. lxxi; Wood, Hist. Univ Oxford, ii. pt. ii, 533-4, 538, 544. But above all he sat on committees in three vital areas. He communicated with the Scots commissioners (2 Oct., 23 Nov., 15 Dec., 24 Dec.).270CJ v. 325a, 367a, 385a, 404a. In the month in which the Leveller-inspired Case of the Army Truly Stated was published, he discussed John Lilburne’s attacks on the Lords (15 Oct.) and the payment of arrears to the army (20 Oct.).271CJ v. 334a, 340a. Critically, he was at the forefront of negotiations with and over the king; he helped refine propositions on the settlement of Presbyterianism, on the concomittent toleration of nonconformists, and on doctrine, and (6 Nov.) advanced the resolution that Parliament should impose a settlement for the good of the kingdom.272CJ v. 321b, 327b, 336a, 346b, 352b, 370b. On 12 November he was on the committee investigating Charles’s escape from Hampton Court the day before.273CJ v. 357a.

Fiennes was finally named on 21 December to a small committee to prepare immediate measures for assessments, but the king’s Engagement with the Scots, and Parliament’s disengagment from negotiations with both, evidently occupied most of his time for the next three months.274CJ v. 396a. During this time he was almost invisible in the Journal. On 3 January 1648 Fiennes was among Members deputed to prepare a justification of the Vote of No Addresses it had just taken and the same day he was nominated with Evelyn to the newly reconstituted Committee of Both Kingdoms – now renamed the Derby House Committee – replacing the deceased Stapilton and imprisoned Glynne.275CJ v. 416a; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 953; [Walker], Hist. of Independency, 74. Although he did not take the oath for the Committee until 20 January, he had already participated in a conference on the safety of the kingdom, and once installed he appeared at least 11 times between then and mid-March; he also attended the Derby House Committee of Irish Affairs four times between 8 February and 14 March.276CJ v. 436b; CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 1, 5, 8, 14-16, 18-20, 28-9; SP21/26, pp. 13, 134, 137, 141. There is no reason to doubt the claim by the author of Vindiciae Veritatis (almost certainly Saye) that the declaration justifying Parliament’s actions to the Scots commissioners, which was presented to the Commons in February, taken to the Lords by Fiennes on 2 March, and, following authorisation on the 4th, to the printer, was in essence Fiennes’s work.277Vindiciae Veritatis, 77/Kk3; CJ v. 476a, 477b; LJ x. 86b; CAM 69; A Declaration of the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament (13 Mar. 1648, E.432.1). At the time commentators almost unanimously concurred, suspecting a carefully laid strategy by him and his associates; opinion either that he was sufficiently otherwise occupied or liable to exhibit unpalatable views perhaps underlies the vote on 25 January against his inclusion with four other prospective commissioners to Scotland.278CCSP i. 410; Ludlow, Mems. i. 182; Hamilton Pprs. ed. Gardiner, 155; Hamilton Pprs: Addenda ed. Gardiner, 24; [Walker], Hist. of Independency, 82; Anarchia Anglicana (1649), 6 (E.570.4); CJ v. 442b.

The declaration began by accusing the Scots commissioners of ‘disaffec[ting] the people of both kingdoms to the proceedings of the Parliament of England; and … [disposing] them to close with the king and his party, upon terms apparently destructive to both kingdoms’.279A Declaration of the Lords and Commons, 6; Vindiciae Veritatis, (appdx.) 2. They had also taken English interests to be identical to Scottish ones, whereas, ‘we affirm those things which may be esteemed most common to both kingdoms, are not held by them in common, neither are their Interests therein to be exercised in common, but distinctly, according to the several rights and customs of each kingdom respectively’.280A Declaration of the Lords and Commons, 17-18; Vindiciae Veritatis, (appdx.) 7. Contrary to the Scots’ contention, the prospect of an equitable resolution with the king was as distant as it had ever had been, ‘the king having so often and so peremptorily declared his averseness to the most material points’ in Parliament’s propositions.

If we cannot have peace but upon these terms, viz. The will of the king, and the advantage of the crown in the king’s esteem; upon these terms we needed not to have had any war, which had been much the more Christian resolution, and would have saved the effusion of much blood.281A Declaration of the Lords and Commons, 20; Vindiciae Veritatis, (appdx.) 8.

The Scottish argument that the king’s presence in Parliament would be a remedy for the conflict missed an essential point. The cause of trouble was not Charles’s ‘local absence from his Parliament’ but rather ‘his distance from them in affections, and his opposition to their counsels, and endeavours to destroy them’. If he returned ‘with the same affections and intentions’ all would be lost.282A Declaration of the Lords and Commons, 21-2; Vindiciae Veritatis, (appdx.) 9. Securing safety came before securing religion. The commissioners appeared to have forgotten, in demanding the Covenant as a cornerstone of a treaty, that the king had already rejected the abolition of episcopacy. How were they to untie the ‘knot’ that the Covenant must be guaranteed and Charles must not be ‘displeased’?283A Declaration of the Lords and Commons, 37; Vindiciae Veritatis, (appdx.) 16. In any case, the English were in no hurry to reinstate clerical government: they had ‘got so far out of the darkness of those popish and prelatical principles, as not to revive them under any image or shape whatsoever’.284A Declaration of the Lords and Commons, 43; Vindiciae Veritatis, (appdx.) 18. Heresy would not be tolerated and the ministry would be maintained, but the magistrate, who had no less of a conscience than the minister or elder, would be the arbiter. The Thirty-Nine Articles, frequently invoked in the declaration, were evidently the touchstone of orthodoxy, but (in contrast to the rigidity of the Scots) the English state would aim at ‘golden mediocrity’, acknowledging a difference between requiring conformity to ‘all substantial parts of the worship of God’ and requiring ‘an exact conformity to all circumstances in worship’.285A Declaration of the Lords and Commons, 55-7; Vindiciae Veritatis, (appdx.) 24.

Returning to his earlier theme, Fiennes asserted that in insisting the English were bound by their Covenant to support the king’s just power and greatness, the Scots had forgotten the violation of their own Covenant in going to war against him. Charles too had violated his coronation oath not to diminish the privileges of Parliament and the liberties of his subjects: it was he who had erred.

It is much more likely that a king should be mistaken … than that the whole kingdom represented in Parliament, should desire what would be for their own hurt, and … it is much more likely that a king should make use of one of his kingdoms to oppress the other, and set one part of his subjects against the other that he might make himself absolute over them, than that he should hinder one kingdom to wrong the other, or all the subjects of a kingdom to wrong themselves.286A Declaration of the Lords and Commons, 64-6; Vindiciae Veritatis, (appdx.) 28-9.

Examples of this ‘are still fresh and bleeding’. It was for this reason that the English Parliament had made its sole shift from its previous negotiating position, namely, that whereas once it had said it was the king’s duty to pass all legislation for the good of the kingdom, it now declared it was his duty to pass what Parliament judged good. Essential to this was parliamentary control of the militia, ‘the foundation of security to us and our posterity, and … the principal immediate ground of our quarrel’.287A Declaration of the Lords and Commons, 67-8; Vindiciae Veritatis, (appdx.) 29. It was ineffectual to rely simply on Magna Carta, warned Fiennes with Hobbesian logic.

All this signifies nothing, if the militia by sea and land be in one man, they are absolute slaves, and by so much in a worse condition, because thinking themselves to have liberty, this conceit becomes a snare to them. How ridiculous are those laws which may be violated by force, and by force shall not be defended? What a mock authority is that of the courts of justice, and of the high court of Parliament it self, if it be not accompanied with the power of the sword, when by the power of the sword it shall be opposed, affronted, resisted, their summons scorned, their messengers kicked about the streets, and their votes and judgements derided? Surely those people have but an imaginary freedom whose freedom hath no other than paper, or parchment walls at best to defend it.288A Declaration of the Lords and Commons, 71; Vindiciae Veritatis, (appdx.) 31.

By interfering in England, the Scots were helping the king ‘oppress his subjects and … spoil them of all their rights and liberties’ (31), and indeed, ‘by his secret procurement … cut their throats’; ‘shortly we shall not govern our own estates or families, nor buy, nor sell, without the joint advice and consent of the commissioners of Scotland’.289A Declaration of the Lords and Commons, 71, 80; Vindiciae Veritatis, (appdx.) 31, 34.

Having effectively burnt his boats with the commissioners – although he was careful to suggest that they did not necessarily represent all Scots – and established a commanding position for future negotiation of a settlement grounded on limited monarchy, Fiennes promptly retired from the public stage for a further three months. He was given leave to go into the country on 14 March 1648.290CJ v. 497a. At the end of March he was at Wallingford with St John and Evelyn, where with Saye, who was possibly newly returned from seeing Charles on the Isle of Wight, they tried to persuade Thomas Wriothesley, 4th earl of Southampton, to mediate a treaty with the king.291Bodl. Clarendon 31, f. 51; ‘William Fiennes’, Oxford DNB. But while Saye had returned to London by 20 April, Fiennes’s absence from the Commons was excused on the 24th.292CJ v. 543a. His whereabouts are unknown, but he had ample time for political bargaining, although one hostile newsbook accused him merely of lining his pockets. Noting meagre attendance at Derby House, ‘many of that Committee being otherwise employed upo[n] important affairs’, in May Mercurius Pragmaticus accused ‘my good Lord Say and his valiant son Nathaniel’ of ‘making up the accounts of the kingdom into bags’.293Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 9 (23-30 May 1648), n.p. (E.445.21) The newspaper repeated the charge a month later: the younger son, ‘born to live by his wits, not by his sword’, ‘and his father drive a trade now together, as partners upon the public stock, and by their good wills they’ll never leave, till the whole kingdom prove bankrupt’.294Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 12 (13-20 June 1648), sig. M2 (E.448.17)

Present nine times at Derby House between 7 and 22 June, Fiennes was probably back in the Commons by the 10th, when he was named to the committee to draw the case for the trial of Sir John Owen, captured in north Wales after campaigning for the king in the risings of the late spring.295CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 105, 110, 115, 119, 124, 126, 128, 130, 141; CJ v. 593a. On 14 June he was placed on a committee investigating the insurrection in Kent, but in later June and July, with royalist insurgents still far from defeated, he was again absent from Derby House, and from the Journal.296CJ v. 599b. The impression that negotiation had taken him temporarily away from London is strengthened by the near coincidence of his return to Derby House (2 Aug. and then 8 Aug., beginning a spell of assiduous attendance ending only on 1 Dec.) and the Irish committee (11 Aug.) with that of his re-appearance in the Journal.297CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 228-337, passim; SP21/26, pp. 168-71. On 3 August he and four others were delegated to prepare instructions for the committee to treat with the king, while on 8 August he was nominated to a group drafting an answer to a petition about the peace from the city of London.298CJ v. 659b, 664a. Doubtless alluding to Fiennes, Evelyn and friends, Mercurius Pragmaticus reported the ‘high scornful language’ of the ‘whole faction’ against the Scots and their allies in the Lords. Referring either to the Declaration or to a speech in the Commons, it noted that

Nat. Fines argued, that the Scots were in no case to be treated as friends, because they had behaved themselves as enemies, and broken the large treaty and union between the kingdoms ipso facto, by seizing Berwick, and invading England, and therefore that the Parliament of England had no reason to invite them. In this the rest of the fraternity agreed.

For the rest of the year Fiennes’s visible contribution to the Commons was intermittent but significant. Following Cromwell’s defeat of the Scottish Engager army at Preston, on 29 August Fiennes was placed on the committee dispersing the vanquished soldiers and considering relief for areas burdened by prisoners, while after the repeal of the Vote of No Addresses, on 2 September he and Sir John Potts* were chosen to draft a letter to the king relating to what became known as the Newport treaty.299CJ v. 692a; vi. 2b. Returning to an old task, on 30 September he was added to a committee sorting out books and papers at Lambeth House.300CJ vi. 39a. Probably already running out of credit with the army, on 4 October ‘Nat. Fines of Bristol’, as Mercurius Pragmaticus continued to dub him, was sent with St John and two others to St Albans to congratulate General Fairfax on his recent victories and reassure him that Parliament had not forgotten army grievances.301CJ vi. 43a; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 28 (3-10 Oct. 1648), Pp4v (E.466.11). Fiennes got a chance to make a gesture in this direction on the 23rd, when he was ordered to bring in an ordinance to secure arrears for Lord Foliat, a former governor of Londonderry, but in the meantime, apparently convinced that the now weakened king could neither dictate terms nor break them later, he remained wedded to supporting the treaty.302CJ vi. 59b; A Declaration of the Lords and Commons, 83; Vindiciae Veritatis, (appdx.) 36. In debate on the proposition on delinquents ‘the Independent Grandees, valiant Mr Nath. Fines and sweet Sir John Evelin of Wilts’ had joined Presbyterians in arguing for a reduction in the number of delinquents excepted from pardon.303Mercurius Militaris no. 2 (10-17 Oct. 1648), 15 (E.468.35). The tenet he would not abandon was revealed in his nomination on 26 October to a committee to prepare an instruction to the commissioners on the Isle of Wight expressing dissatisfaction with the king’s answer to the proposition on abolishing episcopacy.304CJ vi. 62a. On the 30th Fiennes, Evelyn and two others took the result their committee’s deliberations to the Lords, together with the Commons vote forwarding the sale of bishops’ lands. According to the Lords’ Speaker, Fiennes insisted that ‘nothing will sooner expedite’ the end of episcopacy as agreement to the vote.305CJ vi. 65a, 65b; LJ x. 570b.

In a context where others outside the orbit of the army and the radicals were holding out equally trenchantly for a Presbyterian settlement in all senses of the word (such as Fiennes had previously decried), this was a complex course to steer. It was difficult to escape the slur of self-interest, fairly aimed or not. When Saye returned from the Isle of Wight in early November having ‘suffered a great metamorphosis’ into ‘a professed babe of the court’, he was charged with having in effect sold out on a promise of becoming lord treasurer, with Fiennes as secretary of state.306Mercurius Militaris no. 5 (14-21 Nov 1648), 35 (E.473.8). As fears grew of a violent coup, on 4 November Fiennes was placed on a committee conferring with the common council on the security of the Houses, while he and Evelyn were still involved in the details of the postponed treaty (13 Nov.).307CJ vi. 68b, 69b. On the day the king rejected proposals from the council of army officers Fiennes was among those nominated to prepare justification of Parliament’s action in the recent war (17 Nov.), while on the 18th and 21st he was a manager of conferences with the Lords.308CJ vi. 79a, 80b, 82b. This was to be his last such service. On 1 December the commissioners delivered Charles’s final answer to the House and Fiennes, to the apparent surprise of his old antagonist Mercurius Pragmaticus, ‘on the whole very rationally and honestly’ advised acceptance. The king, he reportedly argued

had done enough to secure religion, laws, and liberties, in granting the militia, resigning himself and all affairs of state up to the discretion of both Houses, and yielding to abolish whatsoever was offensive in the government of the church; and that these things being provided for, which were the only things which the Parliament had so often declared, to be the ground of their quarrel, his Majesty must needs have given sufficient satisfaction.

Furthermore, he had ‘offered reasonably’ in leaving delinquents to the law. Even on bishops he had ‘granted in effect all that was desired’ in conceding that episcopacy would not be re-established unless after three years Parliament agreed to it. To refuse this would be ‘to betray the weakness of the Presbyterian cause in the opinion of the world, as if it would not endure the test of a three years trial’.309Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 37 (5-12 Dec 1648), sig. Ccc2 (E.476.2). Fiennes risked infuriating Presbyterians, while he must have known that an army which only a few days earlier had given a strong hint of its intentions in its Remonstrance was unlikely to be convinced, but his line was consistent with his earlier writing, a legally-based Erastian settlement was beyond doubt important to him, and, perhaps with an overdose of aristocratic confidence, he may have thought he would carry with him a hitherto silent majority of moderates.

Fiennes’s gamble, if that is was it was, failed. On 6 December he was among MPs detained in the purge of the Commons. But, although he did not go quietly – allegedly ‘demanding by what power he was committed, it was answered, by the power of the sword’ – he was soon, like Sir Benjamin Rudyerd*, released.310Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 37, sig. Ccc3v; Mems. of the Verney Fam. i. 443; The articles and charge of the armie against fourscore of the Parliament men (1648), 6; W. Prynne, The substance of a speech made in the House of Commons (1648), 115. Perhaps this was, as suggested, ‘because he penned the Declaration showing the reasons for no further addresses’, thereby giving radicals a store of justificatory ammunition.311Mercurius Elencticus no. 5 (5-12 Dec 1648), 527 (E.476.4). The irrepressible Prynne could not help implying in print that Fiennes was still at Cromwell or Ireton’s beck and call to ‘argue and plead their just right’ in the illegal actions which followed.312W. Prynne, A legall vindication of the liberties of England (1649), 46. However there is no extant evidence for this: Fiennes’s second political career had effectively ended.

Retirement and building bridges, 1649-53

For the next five years he apparently lived, like his father, in semi-retirement, although it is not clear where. It is conceivable, given his sustained interest in Oxford University, that he spent some time at Broughton. Amid the political turmoil, a list of founders’ kin and Winchester scholars was presented to the consideration of the visitors and the warden of New College for admission to that college, ‘according to the desire of Mr Nathaniel Fines, signified upon the eight of December 1648’.313Reg. Visitors Univ. Oxford, 239. He must have resided partly in Lincolnshire where he may have remained on the commission of the peace for Lindsey (on which he had been placed in March 1647) and where he was appointed a commissioner for assessment in April and December 1649 and for the Great Level of the Fens in May.314C231/6, p. 81; A. and O. Rare glimpses of him surface in 1652. On 26 June that year John Harington* dined with him and John Crewe I*.315Harington’s Diary, 76. In August Fiennes wrote from London to his old friend the former Viscount Mandeville, now earl of Manchester, discussing financial business that he appeared to be undertaking with and for the earl.316Hunts. RO, M28/7/16, 18. He was also able to make good a £600 subscription in Irish land made with Henry Pitt in 1642, when in August and September 1653 they drew by lot land in Leinster and Westmeath, an investment which appears to have been expanded over the following months.317Bodl. Rawlinson D.892, ff. 203-4; CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 422, 453, 461, 519, 560.

Fiennes’s second marriage to Frances Whithed, shortly after 20 August 1653, gave him a probably very welcome portion of £1,600, and a father-in-law who was also a victim of the purge.318Hants. RO, 5M50/2037; s.v. ‘Richard Whithed I’; cf. Bodl. Rawlinson D.892, f. 200v. Richard Whithed I*, whose eldest son was in turn the son-in-law of Fiennes’s brother-in-law Richard Norton*, was a Presbyterian who had noticeably supported negotiations with the king in 1648, but who retained office and influence in Hampshire after his exclusion from Parliament. In September Fiennes joined the Oxfordshire commission of the peace for the first time, probably an indicator that he was seen by those at Whitehall who were working for a more settled government as a useful ally locally.319C231/6, p. 268.

Protectorate councillor and MP

The inauguration of the protectorate is likely to have been seen by Fiennes as a move towards legitimacy, and possibly also as offering opportunities to exercise the public role for which he was eminently qualified. Even though he remained in retirement, Saye’s decision in 1654 to publish his Vindiciae veritatis, with its determined championship of his sons’ records, must have represented a measure of endorsement of Nathaniel’s simultaneous move out of the shadows. When on 26 April, in an act of complete rehabilitation, ‘Colonel Nathaniel Fiennes’ was admitted to Cromwell’s council, he had already been sitting for at least the previous three weeks on its sub-committee for Ireland: on 5 April he was present with his brother-in-law Sir Charles Wolseley*.320CSP Dom. 1654, p. 119; CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 530; Clarke Pprs. v. 180. He took the oath on 27 April and was immediately set to work on preparing an ordinance for paying soldiers’ arrears.321CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 123-4. From the first he appears to have been a hard-working councillor, operating in a very wide range of areas, including universities, the law (notably the regulation of chancery) and Irish affairs.322CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 181, 208, 214, 220, 252, 285, 346. He was one of seven councillors ordered to advise on the Instrument of Government (12 May) and, more visibly engaged than previously on financial tasks, he helped draw the preamble for the assessment ordinance (31 May).323CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 174, 191. Important indicators of activity to come were his appointments to work on ordinances for the treasurers at Haberdashers’ Hall (8 June) and naming Admiralty commissioners (1 Sept.), and especially that on 20 June as a commissioner for foreign treaties.324CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 203, 215, 246. Bulstrode Whitelocke submitted the treaty with Sweden to Fiennes and Walter Strickland* on 7 July, noting that ‘they narrowly sifted every particular’ before reporting their approval to the council; they signed on 10 July, endorsing a secret clause on customs payments.325Whitelocke, Diary, 390; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 924-5; CSP Dom. 1654, p. 355. Fiennes also signed a treaty with Portugal on 22 July.326Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 375.

With his elder brother James apparently out of the reckoning, Fiennes must have seemed to the regime the obvious candidate for a county seat with James Whitelocke* in the 1654 election. ‘Colonel Fiennes’s’ parliamentary contribution mirrored much of his work on the council, although he was apparently absent from its formal meetings for the first five weeks after Parliament opened and a much less frequent presence until the dissolution; it reflected some of his particular preoccupations. He was probably promoting a conciliar line when on 6 September, with lord president Henry Lawrence I*, he told for the majority against Hesilrige’s attempt to derail the Instrument, and bolstered the government on the committee to curb abuses in printing (22 Sept.).327CJ vii. 367a, 369b. Eight times during the session he was named in connection with aspects of the act settling the government, including to the committee to enumerate heresies, where he should have been a moderating influence on those who sought to restore some kind of Presbyterian discipline.328CJ vii. 377b, 369a, 370a, 392b, 398a, 399b, 403a, 415a. Having been made a commissioner for the ejection of scandalous ministers (28 Aug.) and for appointing visitors to universities (2 Sept.), he was nominated to consider the ordinance regarding scandalous schoolmasters (25 Sept.) and to deal with petitions regarding the profession of civil law from Doctors’ Commons (4 Nov.) and the University of Cambridge (22 Dec.).329A. and O.; CJ vii. 370a, 382a, 407b. He sat on the committee investigating the proceedings of the judges appointed by the Nominated Parliament to sit in Salters’ Hall and hear the cases of poor prisoners, and like fellow councillors Wolseley and John Disbrowe* he pursued chancery reform into the Commons.330CJ vii. 368a, 374a. He was also placed on committees for Scottish and for Irish affairs (29 Sept.), to review the size of the army and navy (26 Sept.), and to consider public accounts, revenue and excise (22 Nov., 13 and 18 Jan. 1655) as well as a handful of miscellaneous committees including one examining Lincolnshire fen drainage (31 Oct. 1654).331CJ vii. 370b, 371b, 380a, 387b, 415b, 419a.

Once the Parliament had been dissolved Fiennes resumed his regular attendance at the council, taking further business on which he had been engaged in the Commons. One of a quartet of councillors delegated to confer with the commissioners of the great seal on an ordinance for chancery reform (23 Apr.), he also dealt with problems in upper bench and with salaries in the probate and exchequer courts.332CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 82, 137, 148, 166. Now routinely engaged in money and naval matters, he was involved in the response to the March 1655 risings; with Wolseley, Mulgrave and Jones he chose new militia commissioners.333e.g. CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 82, 89, 117. He prepared settlements for the governments of Scotland and Jersey and was one of the committee for foreign plantations (2 Mar. 1655).334CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 37, 58, 65. His forte remained foreign relations. Having negotiated with the Danes at the end of 1654, in April and May 1655 he was treating with the Swedes and the French.335TSP iii. 32; Swedish Diplomats at Cromwell’s Ct. 1655-1656 ed. M. Roberts (Cam. 4th ser. xxxvi), 56, 64, 71. A visit to the country in early June for his wife’s confinement, reported by the Dutch ambassador, marked the start of a three-month break in conciliar attendance.336TSP ii. 528. He was soon back in London to receive his patent and on 15 June take the oath as one of the new commissioners of the great seal, to the annoyance of Whitelocke, who reckoned (somewhat unfairly given Fiennes’ extensive legal education and lengthy acquaintance with the practice of politics) that he ‘never had the least experience in this business’.337Whitelocke, Diary, 409; Clarke Pprs. iii. 42, 44; Swedish Diplomats at Cromwell’s Ct. 80-1; TSP ii. 568. Despite, or because of, taking on such a weighty role, he retired again for a while to the country, writing to Secretary of state John Thurloe* in early August from Broughton; that month he joined the Oxford city commission of the peace.338Bodl. Rawl. A 29, f. 110; C181/6, p. 126.

Fiennes’s sabbatical makes it probable that he was not party to early planning of the regime of the major-generals. The claim by Clarendon that he prepared the declaration issued in October justifying their rule cannot be entirely dismissed, given his record as a draughtsman, the likelihood of general conciliar responsibility, and the lack of positive authorial identification.339C. Durston, Cromwell’s Major-Generals (Manchester, 2001), 32. On 4 October Fiennes was one of six councillors to whom ‘Lambert’s paper’ of further orders and instructions for the major-generals was referred.340CSP Dom. 1655, p. 370. Furthermore, he had, after all, held out for prioritizing security in his answer to the Scots. However, not only did the tenor of this declaration otherwise run counter to his conduct in 1648 and to his habitual preference for the authority of the legitimate lay (and perhaps by implication, civilian) magistrate, bounded by Parliament, but he was also plausibly preoccupied elsewhere.

From his return to the council on 3 September Fiennes sat with John Lambert* on sub-committees related and unrelated to the late risings, including one (12 Sept., where he was first-named) to examine the state of Admiral Blake’s fleet; the two were paired in early October to entertain the Venetian ambassador.341CSP Dom. 1655, p. 312, 322, 329, 343, 355, 363, 370, 395; 1655-6, pp. 6, 20, 26, 37; CSP Ven. 1655-6, p. 121. Dutch ambassador Nieuport learned that autumn that Lambert, Fiennes, Lawrence and Strickland comprised the ‘few gentlemen’ called on by Cromwell for ‘the most secret and important deliberations’ on the Baltic; on 14 November all except Lawrence were ordered to meet daily on Swedish business until they had something to offer the council.342Swedish Diplomats at Cromwell’s Ct. 165n; Abbott, Letters and Speeches, iv. 24; CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 20. None the less, Fiennes had his particular concerns. On 25 September he was awarded immediate possession of Derby House, which he had hired apparently as an appropriate base from which to fulfil his duties as commissioner of the great seal.343CSP Dom. 1655, p. 352. Doubtless by virtue of his office, on 23 November he was elected to the bench at the Middle Temple.344M. Temple Bench Bk. 203; MTR iii. 1087, 1105. He seems to have taken the lead in drafting the declaration justifying the recent disastrous expedition to Jamaica and preparing related documents on relations with the Spanish; on 1 November he was added to the trade and navigation sub-committee.345CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 397, 399, 400; 1655-6, p 1. While several protectorate grandees participated in the splendid banquet at Whitehall staged for Louis XIV’s ambassador, it was Fiennes and Strickland who had been engaged in discussions with Bordeaux in October and November.346Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 937; Burton’s Diary, i. p. cxxxviii; Swedish Diplomats at Cromwell’s Ct. 215.

At the end of 1655 royalist intelligence reported that Fiennes, with St John, Thurloe and Lawrence, constituted Cromwell’s chief councillors.347CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 80. One sign of his prominence was his acquisition the following year from Francis Jones, a member of the Cromwell-Bouchier kinship network, of the manor of Newton Tony.348VCH Wilts. xv. 147. Although he continued to acquire and exercise local office in East Anglia, Wiltshire was nearer to his centre of gravity in Oxfordshire and it became his main country residence.349C181/6; C181/7.

At Whitehall navigation, trade and diplomacy were Fiennes’s chief employments in 1656, although there was the ever-present possibility of diversion by what the Swedish ambassador noted in February as ‘the press of business as lord keeper’.350CSP Dom. 1655-6, passim; Swedish Diplomats at Cromwell’s Ct. 264. By January he appears to have been principal negotiator with the French, and experience of naval affairs, together with a working command of Dutch and German probably enabled him to emerge assume the same role with Nieuport and with the Swedes, notwithstanding the impression sometimes conveyed by Whitelocke.351TSP iv. 392, 588-9, 619-20; Whitelocke, Diary, 424-9, 435-6, 439-40; Swedish Diplomats at Cromwell’s Ct. 243. His absence from London for a brief period in late March/early April appears to have been plausibly adduced to account for delays in proceedings.352Whitelocke, Diary, 429, 434-5; The Swedish ambassador acknowledged Lord Fiennes as ‘the principal person among my commissioners’ and ‘a very reasonable man’, and reported back to his government on 6 June that he had been ‘engaged all week’ with him on various drafts of an article on passports. 353Swedish Diplomats at Cromwell’s Ct. 280, 282, 293, 301, 303, 305-6. Whitelocke’s claim that the diplomat complained at dinner a few days later that ‘the business of ambassadors should be so much neglected and that Fiennes attended more to private business than to the public’ may have been sour grapes: on his own telling, meetings were intensive until the treaty was concluded and signed on 17 July.354Whitelocke, Diary, 441-4; Swedish Diplomats at Cromwell’s Ct. 308-12, 318.

Perceptions of Fiennes’s standing with the protector probably combined with a reasonably well-grounded confidence that the commissioner had a genuine concern for scholarship to ensure that he was returned to the 1656 Parliament as MP for the University of Oxford. Although he chaired a council meeting on 25 July, he was in the country, plausibly in Oxfordshire, when Lawrence wrote on 28 August to summon absent councillors back to prepare for the forthcoming session.355CSP Dom. 1656-7, pp. 41, 90. From the time he and Commissioner John Lisle* conducted the Speaker to his chair on 17 September conciliar and official functions shaped much of his activity in the House.356CJ vii. 423a. Among 25 appearances in the Journal in September and October were nominations to committees to annul Charles Stuart’s ‘pretended title’ to the throne (19 Sept.), to address the office and security of the protector (26 Sept.), to review ordinances and statutes (27 Sept.), to consider trade (20 Oct.) and to regulate alehouses (29 Sept.), a favourite aim of some who had dominated local government under the major-generals.357CJ vii. 425a, 429a, 429b, 430a, 442a. As before, Fiennes was placed on the Scottish and the Irish committees (23 Sept.), although he confessed to Henry Cromwell* on 28 October that not only had he ‘possibly … been backwards in ceremonies and compliments’ to the lord deputy (‘for besides that your lordship knoweth I am not a man of that stuff, I have very little leisure for such things’) but ‘my employments lying chiefly in another way have taken from me the opportunity of being fully acquainted with the Irish affairs’.358CJ vii. 427a; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 185-6. On 22 September Fiennes justified to the Commons, as compliant with Parliament’s own ordinances, the council’s action in excluding many elected Members, and the same day led with Disbrowe the majority who rejected a call from the disaffected for adjournment.359CJ vii. 426b. A week later he convinced the House of the necessity of war with Spain, subsequently sitting on committees to prepare a justificatory declaration (1 Oct.) and to seek consent from Cromwell for a day of thanksgiving to celebrate success against a Spanish fleet coming from the West Indies (2 Oct.).360CJ vii. 431a, 431b, 432b. Meanwhile, he was involved in various legal measures, successfully throwing his weight behind the retention of a bill on copyhold tenure (against some who considered it brought in contrary to parliamentary rules) and (with Lisle) the rejection of a clause prescribing judicial presence in the bill for the security of the protector.361CJ vii. 428a, 433b, 434b, 435b, 437a, 441b. His and Lisle’s nominations as commissioners of the great seal were confirmed by Parliament on 11 October, although Thomas Burton’s account of proceedings at an appeal committee which sat on 10 December suggests that not all Members found their judgements in that office either clear or consistent.362CJ vii. 437b, 491a; Burton’s Diary, i. pp. clxxxii, 105-6.

Placed on the committee to consider the alleged blasphemies of James Naylor and others at Bristol on 31 October, Fiennes was absent from the Journal in November and rarely at the council, but in December he was prominent in debates on the case.363CJ vii. 448a; CSP Dom. 1656-7, pp. 140-199. While deploring ‘such a horrid blasphemy’, Burton noted, on 5 December he urged against being over hasty, while on the 9th he ‘made a long speech to extenuate the offence’; rejecting punishment by death or mutilation, he argued for confinement in Bridewell and a whipping as an inducement to repentence, and in the meantime for referring the matter to Cromwell’s judgement (which he doubtless knew would be lenient).364Burton’s Diary, 29, 90. Although he was clearly uncomfortable with a petition of Londoners for the remission of Naylor’s sentence (27 Dec.), this was on the ground that the ‘petition was of dangerous contents, to debar the civil magistrate in matters of religion’, clearly a red line. He was happy to ‘enlarge’ on the mercy that had already been mixed with justice, acknowledging perhaps with a glance over his own shoulder that ‘it has been usual to demur, after judgements of this nature passed, and provided they should not be drawn into precedent’; according to Burton he added significantly that ‘it is safest for the people when least use is made of the legislative power’, finally moving for postponement of the debate, presumably in better hope of a positive conclusion.365Burton’s Diary, 219, 263, 265.

Perhaps because of his conciliar experience of petitions from those who had suffered in the wars, Fiennes was harder on delinquents. While convinced of the principle ‘jus non est violandum [the law is not broken], upon any terms’ he saw no reason why those who had openly opposed Parliament should not pay more tax than others, especially since they were excluded from the burden of public office, and told with Lisle for the majority yeas in the subsequent vote for a bill laying militia assessments on those who had been in arms or were delinquents (25 Dec.).366Burton’s Diary, 242-3; CJ vii. 475a. He seems not to have been averse to taxing the Scots, arguing against a clause in the bill of union which would have specifically limited their liability to impositions decided in Parliament (14 Jan. 1657).367Burton’s Diary, i. 347. On the other hand, he was not prepared to support the extension of taxation to the inns of court (23 Dec. 1656) and must have been relieved to be eventually indemnified for bonds he had entered into at Bristol to raise money for parliament (30 Dec., 6 Mar. 1657).368Burton’s Diary, 267; CJ vii. 476b, 499a. Added on 1 December 1656 to the committee on the petition of doctors of common law, he continued to promote their interests; Oxford University wrote to him on 17 December thanking him for his friendship and patronage and for ‘giving his hand for the continuing and upholding of the civil law, when ready to go to ruin or fall’.369CJ vii. 462b; Wood, Life and Times, i. 210. Having already addressed the matter on the council, on 19 January 1657 he duly brought in their petition for freedom from suits at law over the university’s discipline, arising from a disputed election at All Souls.370Burton’s Diary, i. 353-4; CJ vii. 482a; CSP Dom. 1656-7, pp. 225, 235. He also presented the case of Corpus Christi College for their right to presentation to Wiltshire and Gloucestershire rectories.371Burton’s Diary, i. 268; CJ vii. 477a, 498a.

Slurs on Fiennes’s past recurred. Burton recorded a crowded committee meeting on 10 January 1657 when, in response to a rumour that pickpockets were present and even lurking under the table, ‘Colonel Fiennes drew his sword and vapoured hugely, how he would spit him; but the fellow escaped, if there were any such’.372Burton’s Diary, i. 336-7. But his talents and his high favour with Cromwell were also recognised.373CCSP iii. 239. As the Humble Petition and Advice was debated between February and June 1657, Fiennes argued strongly in favour of granting Cromwell the crown.374Henry Cromwell Corresp. 205, 229; Mems. of the Verney Fam. ii. 44. In the Commons he was nominated to committees refining successive clauses of the remonstrance, including provisions for Scotland, Ireland, the Other House, and the recognition of Protestant Reformed ministers of differing persuasions.375CJ vii. 499b, 501b, 502a, 507b, 508b, 520b. He was included in the list of ‘kinglings’, who voted to retain the offer of the crown to Cromwell in the first article, on 25 March.376Narrative of the Late Parliament (1658), 22 (E.935.5). He was in the group chosen on 9 April to hear Cromwell’s scruples about the kingship and persuade him otherwise, and with Philip Jones* the messenger who twice put off the delegation when it arrived at Whitehall with the excuse that the protector was indisposed.377CJ vii. 521b; Burton’s Diary, ii. 4-5. When Cromwell finally received them on 16 April, Fiennes was one of the ‘six grandees’ who according to Burton ‘spoke very learnedly and soberly to the point of kingship’.378Burton’s Diary, ii. 5. His approach was essentially pragmatic. The supreme power required clear definition: ‘either this must be done, you must enumerate all the powers of protector, or what is left enumerated must be the same thing as the law says is the duty of a king’; ‘either [Parliament] must fit all laws to the name, and that is impossible, or leave the name unbounded and that’s intolerable’.379Monarchy asserted, to be the best, most ancient and legall form of government (1660), 22-3. The committee had concluded that kingship was a ‘politic necessity’ to avoid what is ‘boundless and lawless’. Echoing his reasoning of a decade earlier, Fiennes argued that ‘particular forms of magistracy and government’ were ‘first ordinances of men, before they are ordinances of God’, to be obeyed for fear and for conscience sake.380Monarchy asserted, 61-2. Kingship had carried ‘the unquestionable stamp of humane authority … for many hundred years together’ and had proved ‘most suitable to the laws of these nations, most agreeable to the desires and dispositions of the people, and most likely to maintain quiet and peace in the nations, with justice and liberty’, whereas experience had shown the other means for which Cromwell had argued to be ‘shaking and uncertain’ and to have attained their ends ‘but imperfectly’.381Monarchy asserted, 63-4. While Fiennes acknowledged the ‘dissatisfaction as to this particular of many godly men’ who had given ‘great and worthy service’ as soldiers, ‘there is a certain latitude wherein there may be had a respect to friends, when the public good of the whole nations is in question’; faced with a fait accompli, these men would submit for the Lord’s sake, especially since what Parliament had offered with integrity should be heeded as ‘the revealed word of God’.382Monarchy asserted, 66-7.

When Cromwell failed to share the revelation, Fiennes sat on committees to achieve the end of ‘bounding’ the executive by other means (24 Apr., 19 and 27 May).383CJ vii. 524a, 535a, 540b. As chairman of the group devising a new protectoral oath he was mindful of the reciprocal responsibility of MPs, asking (as Burton noted) if it were ‘reasonable that he should be bound and we free’. The gentleman who in conscience could not take an oath was ‘not fit to sit here, for he must either have a prejudice against his Highness or the liberties or freedom of the people’.384Burton’s Diary, ii. 293-4. However, to insist on ‘further approbation’, as had been proposed not just for the council of state but also for the protector’s nominations to the Other House, would be to ‘lessen that power you intend them in the constitution’.385Burton’s Diary, ii. 301. Having reported on 25 June Cromwell’s acceptance of his oath as drafted, Fiennes was among those nominated to organise his installation and on the 26th carried the seal in the investiture procession.386CJ vii. 574a, 575a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 512.

Fiennes’s contribution to the Parliament which adjourned that day had been as varied as ever. He sat on committees considering private petitions and the settlement of land on General George Monck*.387CJ vii. 464b, 485a, 501a. He was also involved in discussion of more general matters: sabbath observance (18 Feb.); the proliferation of building around London (9 May); confirmation of the liberties of the county palatine of Durham (23 May); inspecting the treasuries of the three kingdoms (30 May).388CJ vii. 493b, 532a, 538a, 543a. In debate on the Marriages Act (29 Apr.), Burton recorded a characteristically tolerant and practical approach to the provision for civil marriages: ‘I would have that clause left out, which makes all other marriages void’.389Burton’s Diary, ii. 71

Freed from parliamentary business, Fiennes resumed more regular attendance at the council table, taking on 13 July the oath prescribed in the Additional Petition and Advice.390CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 26. Unfinished parliamentary business such as the All Souls election dispute, eventually referred by Cromwell solely to Fiennes and the lord chancellor, mixed with his usual concerns.391CSP Dom. 1657-8, pp. 181, 236-7, 278; Reg. Visitors Univ. Oxford, 428n, 437-8. Once again he was prominent in dealings with foreign powers and policy: Denmark and its German neighbours; forces sent to France; Portugal; relief to foreign Protestants (as in Jan. 1656).392CSP Dom. 1657-8, pp. 27, 30, 131, 229, 230, 256; 1655-6, p. 99. He heard the rival petitions of the Levant Company and Sir Sackville Crowe, erstwhile ambassador in Constantinople, and entered serious objections to the new charter for the East India Company, which was duly amended.393CSP Dom. 1657-8, pp. 62, 115, 131; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iv. 642, 663. Otherwise he worked on raising money through assessments and excise, advancing godliness and sundry local matters; on 9 November he was ordered with Lisle to assay coin.394CSP Dom. 1657-8, pp. 15, 27, 28, 29, 106, 109, 110, 115, 134, 158, 159, 189, 205, 206, 226; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iv. 663. In the process he recommended his brother-in-law John Whithed to Henry Cromwell for service in Ireland (successfully) and his brother John and kinsman Edmund Temple for profits from their discoveries of lands there.395Henry Cromwell Corresp. 185, 246, 303, 320, 359, 432, 475-6; CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 134.

Speech-maker and Speaker in the Other House, 1658-9

Fiennes had probably taken an active part in Commons proceedings for the last time. On 9 December a writ was issued summoning him to the Other House when Parliament resumed on 20 January 1658.396Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iv. 685n; TSP vi. 668. When the day came, poor health which cut short Cromwell’s speech meant that Fiennes not only administered the oath to Members with Lisle, as prescribed, but also delivered the chief opening oration.397CJ vii. 578a; Whitelocke, Diary, 483; Mems. iv. 315-29; Clarke Pprs. iii. 132-3; HMC House of Lords, n.s. iv. 505, 507. A tour de force of extended biblical metaphor and analogy, it did not convey specific government intentions for the session, but it was an eloquent attempt to rally the troops. With his two houses of Parliament, Ephraim and Manasseh, the chief magistrate was building the house of Israel. ‘God be praised’, the three nations were now in ‘a quiet posture, a posture looking towards settlement’.398The speech of … Lord Fiennes … on Wednesday the 20th of January, 1657 (1658), 3 (E934.6); T. Carlyle, Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, iii. 158-9. Light had sprung from darkness. But there was discontent and impatience that, as was inevitable, progress had been slow: ‘those that shall pluck up the flood-gates of the great deep, and let in the surging and raging waves of war into a nation, cannot stop them and bound them when and where they please’.399The speech of … Lord Fiennes … on the 20th of January, 7. Those called to public service were to be neither ‘restive’ nor ‘slow’ to do his work, steering between the rock of the ‘spirit of Imposing upon men’s consciences, when God leaves them a latitude, and would have them free’ and the quick sand ‘an abominable licentiousness to profess and practise any sort of detestable opinions and principles’.400The speech of … Lord Fiennes … on the 20th of January, 12. Unity was not to be bought at the expense of uniformity. In a balanced system, the chief magistrate and Parliament should strive for one mind; the Commons preserves the commonwealth by providing and strengthening the sinews of war, the Other House by the administration of justice; lawyers and other learned men were to lend their advice. Members were to come prepared for compromise; those friends who stayed at home idle were misguided, but would not be antagonised needlessly. While parliamentarians were not afraid of their enemies, at home or abroad, the old enemy popery was still abroad and supply had fallen short of expectations. The peace and welfare of three nations depended on (what must have seemed to his hearers the all-too-frail) protector: Fiennes therefore exhorted them to pray for the continuation of God’s spirit.401The speech of … Lord Fiennes … on the 20th of January.

The Commons, who heard his speech repeated verbatim on 25 January, may have been unimpressed by his sermon; many were unconvinced by his defence of the Other House.402CJ vii. 581b, 582b-587a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 348 seq.; CSP Dom. 1657-8, pp. 274, 276. However, it can have been no surprise when Fiennes was elected its Speaker.403 Clarke Pprs. iii. 133. Taking his place on 21 January, he moved for the appointment of ministers to pray each day of proceedings, but relatively little else emerges of his contribution apart from the fact that he had a full attendance record for the brief session.404 HMC House of Lords, n.s. iv. 508-24. On 25 January he conveyed a summons from Cromwell to the Banqueting House to hear the protector communicate to Parliament his concern that they address pressing business, and on the 28th he reprised that communication for fellow lords.405 Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iv. 712; HMC House of Lords, n.s. iv. 514, 518. As the protector evidently debated how to proceed in the week that followed, one witness wrote that ‘Lord Fiennes near to him asked his Highness what he intended’; the answer came that ‘he would dissolve the House’.406Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iv. 728.

As before, after the dissolution on 4 February Fiennes found plenty of employment as a councillor. To urgent matters of dealing with royalist insurgents, including the revival of a high court of justice, were added recurrent issues like regulation of courts, propagation of the Gospel, foreign relations, and the Piedmontese Protestants.407CSP Dom. 1657-8, pp. 291, 296, 329, 331, 366, 381; 1658-9, pp. 31, 33. He was the first-named of the nine grandees who, as Thurloe explained to Henry Cromwell on 22 June, ‘daily meet for considering what is fit to be done in the next parliament’.408TSP vi. 192. Himself routinely in contact with the protector’s younger son, Fiennes also worked regularly with Richard Cromwell* through that spring and summer.409TSP vi. 872; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 388; CSP Dom. 1657-8, pp. 329, 338, 344, 366, 381; 1658-9, pp. 31, 101, 112. Present at Oliver’s deathbed, he supported Richard’s succession, being described in a letter of 5 November as belonging to that half of the council who were ‘strict adherents to the protectoral party’.410‘Nathaniel Fiennes’, Oxford DNB; TSP vii. 495. Lady Fiennes had a near-fatal illness that autumn, but he managed to attend some council meetings (26 Oct., 9 Nov.) and on several occasions was in London to confer on matters relating to the Swedish and Dutch treaties, while his legal commitments continued.411Mems. of the Verney Fam. ii. 128; CSP Dom. 1658-9, pp. 167, 178, 263; TSP vii. 434, 504, 513. He walked with Lisle in the protector’s funeral procession on 23 November.412Burton’s Diary, ii. 528.

Fiennes worked with Whitelocke to recommend a suitable candidate for at least one Wiltshire constituency in the December election, but in this case without success.413Whitelocke, Diary, 503. However, his elder son and namesake – apparently as unknown to the political elite as he had once been – was returned for Banbury. When Parliament met on 27 January 1659 Fiennes again spoke after the protector. The Venetian ambassador considered his offering a great harangue, which only repeated what had already been said; William Hooke’s report to John Winthrop was somewhat kinder, observing that Richard Cromwell ‘spake with general acceptation and applause … even far beyond the Lord Fiennes’.414CSP Ven. 1657-9, p. 288; Clarke Pprs. iii. p. xxv; Clarendon, Hist. vii. 99. The latter certainly set out to ‘echo’ the protector. Praising his predecessor as ‘a man of war, [who] yet … died in peace’, one who was ‘dextrous and wonderfully successful in keeping love between dissenting brethren’, he also adduced progress made by Oliver in encouraging godly preaching, caring for universities and schools, choosing pious councillors, and filling the benches with learned judges.415The speech of … Nathaniel Lord Fiennes … the 27th. of January, 1658 (1659) (E.968.2), 1, 9. The late Parliament had made good laws and the Petition and Advice had been carefully drawn. The present Parliament should build on this, letting the plant root. Wise to the wiles of the spirit of darkness, parliamentarians should hold fast to their constitution. The fate of the commonwealth was critical in the context of general instability and the growth of Habsburg power in Europe. The most immediate issues were the public revenue and the need to nurture the faithful and patient army, but much had already been achieved in enlarging territories, discouraging piracy and increasing the country’s reputation. As he reiterated, because ‘much on my mind’, on Parliament’s deliberations depended the hopes and expectations of the Protestant churches of Christ throughout the world. He prayed that all the people of God might have cause to bless them.416The speech of … the 27th. of January, 1658, 28, passim.

Fiennes was again elected Speaker of the Upper House, and in a much longer session than the previous year was again present every day, although with little more indication of his exact contribution.417CCSP iv. 140; HMC House of Lords, n.s. iv. 524-67. On 30 January he was also reaffirmed as a commissioner of the great seal alongside Lisle and, this time, Whitelocke. The latter claimed surprise at this turn and noted, perhaps disingenuously, that ‘some thought that Fiennes desired’ this extra appointment

finding Lisle not so capable of executing that place as was expected, and his [own] want of experience in that business and multitude of other occasions, and his attendance on Richard and the council made him willing to have Whitelocke’s help.418Whitelocke, Diary, 506.

Arguably Whitelocke underestimated both Fiennes’s accumulated experience and his possible ambition for far-reaching responsibilities; equally, Whitelocke’s complaint that he had been left to shoulder ‘the greatest burden of the place’ of commissioner might be misleading.419Whitelocke, Diary, 508. As the Commons once again disputed the Upper House’s authority and composition, Fiennes’s position as Speaker might be seen as exposed and uncomfortable, but also as undemanding from day to day. In February and March he managed a direct appeal from the protector for advice on deployment of the navy, but it was not until 14 April that he received from the Commons their first declaration sent up for concurrence.420Whitelocke, Diary, 511: HMC House of Lords, n.s. iv. 539-42, 549-50, 557-8. He was consulted by Richard a week later for an opinion on whether to dissolve the Parliament, but his views do not appear.421Whitelocke, Diary, 512. When the protector was persuaded, apparently without conciliar sanction, to proceed, Fiennes was instructed to inform the Commons. He duly sent for them, but in a gesture that must have resonated with him, they shut the doors.422Clarendon, Hist. vii. 103; CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 336; HMC House of Lords, n.s. iv. 566-7.

Navigating the end of the commonwealth, 1659-1660

This time the dissolution that swiftly followed marked the effective end of Fiennes’s parliamentary career, and his public service ceased soon after. As a victim of Pride’s Purge he had no place in the returned Rump; as a peer (by the reckoning of the many who still referred to him as Lord Fiennes) he was anyway in limbo. The creation of a new great seal in May negated his commissary office.423Whitelocke, Diary, 514; CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 357. Royalist intelligence rejoiced that month that ‘not only the licentious press damns Fiennes, Glynne, St John, Maynard, Thurloe, Jones, but the Members themselves do cry them in the house’. 424Nicholas Pprs. iv. 140. Whitelocke claimed of himself that when he learned that the commissioners were discontinued because the House did not wish them to be MPs, he was content to be omitted: it is plausible that by this time Fiennes concurred.425Whitelocke, Diary, 518. Those like Fiennes and Lisle ‘obnoxious for their adherence to Oliver’ were, noted one observer hopefully in reference to the Act of Indemnity in preparation, ‘excepted and destined in their persons for the public sacrifice’ and thus likely to turn against those perpetuating the republic.426Nicholas Pprs. iv. 165. Certainly, having been confirmed as custos rotulorum in Lincolnshire as late as September 1658 and as a local justice in November, starting with Oxford city in April 1659 Fiennes began to forfeit his many appointments to commissions of the peace.427C181/6, ff. 353, 387, 396, 402.

Evidence for Fiennes’s activity in the next 12 months is thin. On 31 July Lady Frances Fiennes, more probably his elder brother’s wife than his own, obtained a pass to go abroad; if it was none the less the former Frances Whithed, it is just possible that she could have been an envoy to exiled royalists.428CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 562. Examinations of Oxford artisans in September the wake of Sir George Boothe’s* rising revealed rumours that Fiennes and his father had been offered command of a force to replace the imprisoned Henry Cary, 4th Viscount Falkland*; one believed he had taken it up.429CCSP iv. 387-8. A more reliable source noted on 7 February 1660, as a recall of the Long Parliament began to seem likely, that

Lord Fiennes is gone to Broughton … and would not sit because they act on a commonwealth bottom. If a free election come and he be chosen, he will sit, or if this sits and the Lords called in (of which there is some hopes) then he will sit as two houses.430Mems. of the Verney Fam. ii. 152.

However, he maintained contacts within the House. This much is implied in a report made to Hyde later that month told that ‘ the party for restoring Dick Cromwell increases; Nath. Fiennes, Col. [John] Birch*, St Johns, and several others in the House are of it’.431CCSP iv. 572. A distinctly Presbyterian turn in his connections was noticeable when on 3 March ‘Lord Fiennes’ dined at Warwick House in Holborn with his old friend the earl of Manchester, Speaker of the Lords in the Convention Parliament and soon to be made commissioner of the great seal, and the latter’s cousin Edward Montagu II*, Sir Dudley North* and ‘Lord’ George Berkeley*.432Pepys’s Diary, i. 75.

Fiennes at least did enough to ensure that he could weather the Restoration in relative peace. In the summer and autumn of 1660 he was omitted from further commissions of the peace, but while his father had to sue out a pardon, Fiennes, with his university friends and attachment to the Thirty-Nine Articles, and his unenviable reputation for cowardice, probably seemed less dangerous.433C181/7, pp. 30, 32, 69, 83; Broughton Castle mss, 28 Sept. [1660]. With his father, ‘Lord Fiennes’ was still fondly remembered in Independent Connecticut, but in his last decade he appears to have been close to the Presbyterian Whitheds; at least by 1672 his widow was hostess to a Presbyterian minister at Newton Tony.434CSP Col. America and W. Indies, 1661-8, p. 53; CSP Dom. 1671-2, pp. 550, 555; Whitehead, Hist. of the Whitehead Fams. 19-22. The whole family had had to trim their sales to cope with debt in the late 1640s and 1650s, and later Fiennes and his partner Pitt experienced some difficulty in collecting Irish rents, but Nathaniel seems to have been fairly prosperous.435Bodl. Rawl. D.892, ff. 200-207v. Inventories taken in January and February 1670 revealed a study of books worth £30 at Newton Tony and large flocks of sheep both there and at Bromby Hall, and detailed a substantial degree of comfort in the Lincolnshire house.436‘Inventory of the goods of Nathaniel Fiennes, died 1669’, Cake and Cockhorse ix. 38-48. Fiennes made his will on 5 October 1669, ‘in reasonable health’, leaving Bromby to his son Nathaniel; Newton Tony went to his wife Frances for life, and was thereafter to be sold to provide for their surviving daughters. His brother-in-law Richard Norton* was one of two overseers, with Richard Fiennes and Henry Whithed as executors.437PROB11/334/450. Fiennes died on 16 December 1669 and was buried at Newton Tony.438MIs Wilts. 1822, 294. Nathaniel II did not long outlive his father; his younger brother William succeeded his uncle James* as 3rd Viscount Saye and Sele.439CP. No further members of the immediate family sat in Parliament.

Reputation

The brief military career of ‘Fiennes of Bristol’, immortalised in the unprepossessing uniform he wears in his only surviving portrait, hung like a millstone round his neck for many decades, defining him as a belligerent, vainglorious coward, as an incompetent leader and, by extension, as a useless spin-doctor, of overblown, unconvincing apologetics. The evidence suggests that, privileged scion of nobility as he was, he lacked skill in managing other men. The combat with his political Presbyterian enemies Clement Walker and William Prynne, which was fought fiercely by both sides and by the latter almost to the death, intertwined with his record (shared with Saye and Sele) of apparent cultivation, exploitation and then betrayal of the Scots, could be viewed as both treasonous and cynical. There was an irony and distastefulness that one who had inveighed against Presbyterian rule of church and state should in and after 1660 be so closely associated with a cause which first helped effect the Restoration and then sink into obscure nonconformity.

Yet, as noted, Fiennes’s less intemperate enemies recognised his intellectual capacity, and he clearly worked closely with his educated friends. A broadly educated scholar, he brought knowledge to parliamentary debate and, probably, considerable competence to day-to-day government. A robust thinker, he was a major draughtsman of key documents, a notable negotiator, an important exponent of religious policy, and a staunch defender of his English university. An accomplished debater, he could shock with his controversial statements but exhibit both subtlety and humanity in his dazzling rhetoric. The grudging admiration of Thomas Carlyle, bowled over by the rationality, tolerance and ‘gorgeous figurative style’ of Fiennes’ speech as Speaker of the Other House, hints at a man indispensable to the complex narrative of mid-seventeenth century Westminster politics.440Carlyle, Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, iii. 158-9.