FENWICK, John (c.1612-44), of Hexham Abbey, Hexham, Northumb.

Fenwick commanded a troop of Northumberland militia in the first bishops’ war and was commissioned in the second as a captain in Commissary-general Henry Wilmot’s* regiment of horse.14E351/292, 293. As the eldest son of Sir John Fenwick he ranked among Northumberland’s leading gentlemen, and on 2 April 1640 he was one of a handful of signatories to the election indenture returning his father and Sir William Withrington for the county.15C219/42/1/164. In the elections to the Long Parliament that autumn, he was returned for Morpeth, taking the senior seat, with another future royalist, Sir William Carnabye, taking the junior.16Supra, ‘Morpeth’. Fenwick doubtless owed his return to his family’s proprietorial interest at Morpeth – the borough lying just a few miles from one of its principal residences, Wallington Hall. He was apparently inactive in the House, receiving no committee appointments and making no recorded contribution to debate. His only identifiable concerns as an MP related to his northern background. Thus on 4 March 1641, he and Carnabye offered to stand bound for £500 towards a City loan for paying off the king’s and the Scottish armies in the north, where they had been quartered since the second bishops’ war.17CJ ii. 133b; Procs. LP ii. 628, 629. More revealingly, he was one of four Northumberland MPs who voted against the earl of Strafford’s (Sir Thomas Wentworth†) bill of attainder on 21 April.18Procs. LP iv. 42, 51. His connection with the doomed lord lieutenant was through his father, who had been a leading figure in Strafford’s political network in the north during the personal rule of Charles I.19Infra, ‘Sir John Fenwick’.

Fenwick had returned to Northumberland by 6 January 1642, when he was a signatory to the indenture returning his father as a knight of the shire for the county in place of Henry Percy*.20C219/43/2/86. His appointment the following month as a collector for the billet money owed to Northumberland, and his nomination on 7 April as one of the county’s commissioners in the abortive bill for scandalous ministers, suggest that he was deemed well-affected to Parliament’s cause.21CJ ii. 461b, 516a. Indeed, when he and his father were granted leave on 28 June, it was to go into the north upon the service of the House.22CJ ii. 643b. The nature of this service was never specified, although on 7 September the Commons recommended both Fenwicks to the lord general, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, as commissioners for preserving Northumberland against the king’s party.23CJ ii. 757a.

The Commons’ trust in the Fenwicks was misplaced, however, for both father and son sided with the king during the civil war – Fenwick accepting a captaincy under the royalist commander in the north, the earl of Newcastle. His motives in taking up arms against Parliament are obscure. Filial loyalty may have one factor; aversion to a godly reformation in religion another. Early in 1643, one parliamentary newsletter claimed that he had defected to Ferdinando, 2nd Baron Fairfax* after the Catholics in Newcastle’s army had objected to the motto on his colours: ‘For the king and Protestant religion’.24Certaine Informations no. 2 (23-30 Jan. 1643), 15. But this story is almost certainly apocryphal. If Fenwick had indeed deserted the royalists it would have been a major coup. Yet Fairfax makes no mention of any such occurrence in his reports to Parliament. Moreover, by early 1644, Fenwick had been promoted to colonel of horse in Newcastle’s army, and as such distinguished himself in the royalists’ efforts to resist the invading Scottish Covenanters.25Luke Letter Bks. 588. His inclusion on the Oxford Parliament’s list of those absent on military service was the immediate cause of his disablement by the Commons on 22 January 1644.26Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 575; CJ iii. 374a.

Fenwick fought on the king’s side at the battle of Marston Moor where he was killed. According to his uncle, Sir Henry Slingesby*, his body was never found – and it is therefore very unlikely that the skull on display in the Old Gaol Museum in Hexham and identified as that of Fenwick is indeed his.27Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 114. Fenwick died childless and apparently intestate.