FITZJAMES, Henry (c.1627-86), of Covent Garden and Millbank, Westminster.

Still a youth at the outbreak of the civil war, this MP in time took up arms for Parliament. By December 1645 he was serving as a captain-lieutenant to his eldest brother John Fitzjames*, who had been commissioned in May 1644 as a colonel of horse under Sir William Waller* and whose regiment was a year later reformed as part of the brigade of Edward Massie*.20SP 28/266/3, ff. 69, 71; Northumberland MS 547, ff. 13v-14. Notably loyal to his commanders, Colonel Fitzjames appears at this point to have sent Henry (more often called Harry) to serve directly under Massie for a period, commending him to the special care of his friend Colonel Edward Cooke*.21Northumberland MS 547, f. 14v. Harry may have returned to serve in Dorset, and is listed in his brother’s regiment when the Massie brigade (by then disbanded) petitioned for arrears in June 1647.22Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 240; Temple, ‘Massie Brigade’, 439, 445. By that time he had joined his brother Thomas Fitzjames* at the Middle Temple.23MTR ii. 951.

It was perhaps through the agency of Chaloner Chute I*, also of the Middle Temple, that shortly before 2 September 1650 Fitzjames was able to contract what must have been a financially advantageous marriage with Chute’s kinswoman.24Northumberland MS 549, ff. 55, 65. His bride, Frances, had recently been widowed as a result of the death of her first husband John Tufton, who was son and heir of Richard Tufton† (d. 1631) of Westminster and first cousin of John Tufton, 2nd earl of Thanet. Apart from her jointure and any income she may have enjoyed during the minority of her small son, another Richard Tufton – which was potentially significant, since her former father-in-law had been a property developer in the fashionable suburb – Frances seems to have enjoyed an augmentation of her inheritance owing to a breakdown of relations between her parents, Sir George Chute (d. 1648) and Dame Anna Chute (d. 1656), and her two brothers.25PROB11/208/599, PROB11/257/381; MI (Richard Tufton), Westminster Abbey; ‘Richard Tufton’, HP Commons 1604-1629; R. Pocock, Memorials of the Family of Tufton (1800), 44-5.

At the least, the marriage brought a London residence and, through the Tuftons, royalist connections. In May 1653 Fitzjames, described as being of Covent Garden, appeared before Middlesex magistrates and with John Hele*, George Colt and Henry Cary*, 4th Viscount Falkland, entered recognisances to keep the peace, apparently after an incident in Hyde Park.26'Mdx. Sessions Rolls: 1653', Mdx. Recs: iii. 212-220; CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 322. Through his brother he had an association with Anthony Ashley Cooper* and, as later became evident, at some point he also became an intimate of Richard Cromwell*.

Before elections to the third protectorate Parliament, Fitzjames told his brother John that he hoped to gain a seat for one of the Surrey boroughs.27Northumberland MS 552, f. 69v. Sir George Chute had had land in Lambeth and elsewhere in the county, but is not clear precisely how Fitzjames came to be returned for Haslemere, on the borders with Hampshire and Sussex.28VCH Surr. iv. 57. In what later emerged to have been a double return, it was he, among three candidates, who on 3 March 1659 was declared unequivocally elected.29CJ vii. 618b, 622a. He had himself been nominated to the elections committee on 28 January.30CJ vii. 594b. His action on 2 February as a teller for the minority who wished to disable Major Lewis Audley* from being a justice of the peace for Surrey presumably stems more from his family’s and his friends’ long-standing hostility to the New Model army, of which Audley had been a notable officer, than from any close acquaintance with the latter’s activity as a magistrate.31Burton’s Diary, iii. 44; CJ vii. 597b But he set himself against civilian republicans too when on 14 February he was a teller for the majority who declined to consider any more questions on the way to recognising Richard Cromwell’s title to be lord protector.32CJ vii. 603b. His only other committee nomination was on 8 April, to investigate the detention in Italy of Thomas Howard, 16th earl of Arundel (understood to be a Protestant unlike the rest of his family) and the alleged misdemeanours committed by his younger brother Henry Howard, later 6th duke of Norfolk, at parliamentary elections.33CJ vii. 632a.

Following the fall of the protectorate Fitzjames remained close to Richard Cromwell, to the extent of being cited as his second in a putative duel, while at the same time having contacts with royalists.34CCSP iv. 442–3; CSP Dom. 1659–1660, p. 268; Carte, Orig. Letters and Pprs. ii. 286–7; HMC Portland viii. 11. Like his brother John, he signed the address of the nobility and gentry of Dorset to Charles II in June 1660.35Som. and Dorset N. and Q. xvi. 222. That month he was commissioned as a captain in the regiment that had once been commanded by John Lambert* but was now under Richard Ingoldsby*.36Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist., i. 161.

Subsequently, while maintaining a house at Millbank, he pursued a military career at home and overseas, becoming close to James, duke of York; in 1679 his son George went to Flanders as the duke’s cupbearer.37SP29/317, f. 12; SP44/20, f. 178; SP44/29, f. 271; Som. and Dorset N. and Q. xii. 339; CSP Dom. 1672, p. 276; 1679–1680, p. 340; CTB iv. 641. He was outlawed for debt before the middle of 1672, and as a result lost some of his Westminster property, but he was knighted before February 1673.38HMC Portland iii. 334. His first wife died in October 1678 and early in 1679 he obtained a licence to marry a Mistress Frances Barker of Sonning, Berkshire, but this came to nothing. Instead, in July, when he was described as being of St Martin-in-the-Fields, he married another widow with London and Surrey connections, Jane Hoare.39St Sepulchre, Holborn, par. reg.; Som. and Dorset N. and Q. xvi. 223. He then seems to have settled with her in Bow and, presumably by virtue of her property just over the county boundary, was soon named to the Essex commission of the peace.40C231/7, p. 30. He was buried in Bow in March 1686, his widow being granted administration of his estate in May.41Som. and Dorset N. and Q. xvi. 223. Both his brothers had sat in Parliament after 1659, but his stepson Richard Tufton was unsuccessful when he stood as a tory for Westminster in 1681.42‘John Fitzjames’, ‘Thomas Fitzjames’, ‘Westminster’, HP Commons 1660-1690.