FITZWILLIAM, William (c.1609-1659), of Milton, Northants., and the Savoy, London

The Fitzwilliams owed much of their status and local influence to a wealthy London merchant, Sir William Fitzwilliam, who may have been the scion of the Fitzwilliams who had settled at Greens Norton, near Northampton, by the early fifteenth century and who claimed descent from the ancient Yorkshire family of Fitzwilliam.22Finch, Wealth of Five Northants. Fams. 100, 188. Sir William had risen to become Cardinal Wolsey’s treasurer and high chamberlain and a member of the royal council. In the early sixteenth century he had purchased the manor of Milton and other property in the Peterborough area and had been chosen sheriff of Northamptonshire twice during the 1520s.23Finch, Wealth of Five Northants. Fams. 100-1; VCH Northants. ii. 474, 476, 487; Oxford DNB, ‘Sir William Fitzwilliam (1460?-1534)’. His grandson (Fitzwilliam’s great-grandfather) had served two terms in the exalted, if onerous, office of lord deputy of Ireland under Elizabeth – an honour that almost certainly influenced the purchase by Fitzwilliam’s father in 1620 of an Irish peerage, by which he became Baron Fitzwilliam of Lifford, in Donegal.24CP; Oxford DNB, ‘Sir William Fitzwilliam (1526-1599)’. Various members of the family had sat for Peterborough since the mid-sixteenth century – the last to do so before Fitzwilliam himself being his uncle, who had been returned for the borough to the 1621 Parliament.25HP Commons 1558-1603, ‘Hugh Fitzwilliam’; ‘John Fitzwilliam’; ‘William Fitzwilliam’; ‘Sir William Fitzwilliam II’; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Walter Fitzwilliam’.

Although Fitzwilliam’s grandfather had enjoyed an annual income of perhaps £2,500, his decision in the early seventeenth century to sever the family’s court connection would contribute considerably to its parlous financial situation by the 1630s. Lord Fitzwilliam, despite living in genteel obscurity in Northamptonshire and selling off or mortgaging land, had incurred debts of over £20,000 by 1642, which Fitzwilliam blamed on excessive household expenditure. Fitzwilliam’s advantageous marriage in 1638 to the widow and daughter of wealthy London mercers enabled him, slowly, to pay off most of his father’s debts and to redeem much of the family estate from mortgage without having to sell large parcels of it in the process.26Finch, Wealth of Five Northants. Fams. 127-34. Nevertheless, as he would confide in 1647 to one of his creditors – the prominent Northamptonshire royalist Sir Justinian Isham† – whose loan he repaid by way of selling property, ‘I choose rather to suffer loss in the sale of my lands then to be any longer oppressed with so many and so great debts’.27Northants. RO, IC/253, 256, 262, 266, 267, 271.

Lord Fitzwilliam was reported to the privy council as a muster defaulter on several occasions during the 1630s – the council refusing to extend the exemption the nobility enjoyed in this regard to the Irish peers – and by 1637 owed at least £28 for his Ship Money assessment.28CSP Dom. 1635, p. 524; 1636-7, p. 480; 1637-8, p. 89; R. Cust, ‘A Rutland quarrel, the court of chivalry, and the Irish peerage during Charles I’s personal rule’, MH xxxv. 165. But it was his proprietorial interest in the Peterborough area, rather than his opposition to crown policies, if such it was, that explains his son’s return for the borough in the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640. Fitzwilliam received no committee appointments in this Parliament and made no recorded contributions to debate.

The election at Peterborough for the Long Parliament resulted in a double return – although as Fitzwilliam was named on both indentures, the Commons (at the committee for privileges’ recommendation) ordered, on 9 November, that he should be admitted into the House.29Supra, ‘Peterborough’; CJ ii. 23a. When the disputed election at Peterborough was reviewed in January 1641, it was resolved that Fitzwilliam should sit ‘till his election be decided’, and there the matter rested.30CJ ii. 63b. His first committee appointment was on 12 March, on a bill to establish a hospital in Newark.31CJ ii. 102b. Having taken the Protestation early in May, he was named to another committee for founding a hospital – this time in Hereford – later that same month.32CJ ii. 133a, 160b. His only other Commons appointment that year was to a minor committee set up on 20 July.33CJ ii. 217a. Again, he made no recorded contribution on the floor of the House.

At the outbreak of civil war, Fitzwilliam was identified as a supporter of Parliament and was thus sent by the Commons into Northamptonshire in August to help execute the militia ordinance there.34CJ ii. 711a. On 1 September, he was commissioned as a deputy lieutenant for Northamptonshire by the parliamentarian lord lieutenant of the county, Henry Mordaunt, 2nd earl of Peterborough.35Northants. RO, F(M) Charter/2097. Nevertheless, he is known to have attended the House itself on only two occasions in 1642, when he was named to committees on 27 and 28 October for providing the City with an account of the battle of Edgehill and to discuss the provision of soldiers’ quarters in London with the municipal authorities.36CJ ii. 825a, 825b. In the spring of 1643, he was named to committees for examining the arms raised and issued to the army and for the provision of horses in the City.37CJ iii. 12a, 89a. But these were his only committee appointments during 1643 and would prove to be the last of his entire parliamentary career, such as it was.

Fitzwilliam took both the vow and covenant – introduced in June 1643 upon discovery of the Waller plot – and the Solemn League and Covenant, on 30 September.38CJ iii. 118b, 259a. But he seems to have spent much of the period between the introduction of the Covenant and Pride’s Purge, in December 1648, away from the House. Thus he was granted leave on 21 August 1645 and 1 June 1646; he was declared absent and excused at the call of the House on 24 April 1648; and on 26 September he was declared absent, fined and then excused a month later.39CJ iv. 249a, 559b; v. 543b; vi. 34b, 56b. The Commons assigned responsibility for bringing in Northamptonshire’s assessment money to Fitzwilliam and Sir Gilbert Pykeringe* on 25 November.40CJ vi. 88a. But this did not prevent his exclusion from the House at Pride’s Purge – or what he termed ‘the breaking out of the army’ – a fortnight later.41[W. Prynne], A Vindication of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (23 Jan. 1649), 29 (E.539.5); Northants. RO, IC/266. How he had offended the officers and their Independent allies is a mystery. He referred in his correspondence in 1649 to ‘insolencies’ committed by the soldiery in Northamptonshire ‘under the pretence of seeking for Levellers’.42Northants. RO, IC/266. Yet despite the fact that there seems to have been little love lost between Fitzwilliam and the army, he continued to receive appointment to local parliamentary commissions under the Rump and retained his place on the Northamptonshire bench. It was only after the fall of the Rump that he was generally omitted from local office.

Fitzwilliam died at his house in the Savoy, London, early in 1659 and was buried alongside his ancestors in Marholm church, Northamptonshire, on 21 February of that year.43CP; Marholm par. reg. He left a brief will, bequeathing all his personal estate to his wife, but there is no evidence that it was ever entered in probate.44Northants. RO, F(M) Charter/2323. His heir sat for Peterborough in the Cavalier Parliament and in two of the Exclusion Parliaments and was created Earl Fitzwilliam in 1716.45HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘William Fitzwilliam, 3rd Baron Fitzwilliam of Lifford’.