FAIRFAX, Sir Thomas (1612-71), of Denton, Otley, and Nun Appleton, Bolton Percy, Yorks.

Background and early career

Fairfax was ‘martially disposed from his youth ... his extraction, disposition and education bespake him for a soldier’.92Sprigge, Anglia Rediviva, 7, 8. His upbringing was overseen largely by his grandfather, Sir Thomas Fairfax† (created 1st Baron Fairfax of Cameron in 1627), who had enjoyed a distinguished military career in the Anglo-Spanish war of 1585-1604.93Hopper, Fairfax, 12; Oxford DNB, ‘Thomas 1st Lord Fairfax’. So obsessed was Sir Thomas with soldiering that even the deaths of two of his sons at the hands of imperialist troops during the Thirty Years’ War did not discourage him from filling his grandson’s head with stories of battles won and honour lost. He seems to have used his own eldest son (Thomas’s father), Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*, as a cautionary tale, dismissing him as but a ‘tolerable country justice’ and pinning all his hopes for vicarious glory on his grandson. ‘Tom, Tom, mind thou the battle’, he is supposed to have said at one point, ‘thy father is a good man, but a mere coward at fighting. All the good I expect is from thee’.94Markham, Fairfax, 11; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, i. 162. Not surprisingly, the young Thomas grew up eager to prove himself in battle; and in March 1629, he and John Hotham* – who, like Fairfax, had been admitted to Gray’s Inn less than a year before – obtained a pass to travel into the Low Countries, where they enlisted as volunteers under Horace, 1st Baron Vere of Tilbury (who had served with Lord Fairfax against the Spanish in the 1590s) in the army of the Dutch stadtholder, the prince of Orange.95APC 1628-9, p. 371; C.R. Markham, The Fighting Veres (1888), 436.

Fairfax’s first experience of war – the siege of the Spanish stronghold of Bois-le-Duc (‘s-Hertogenbosch) – was a rather tedious affair as campaigns go, but at least it would have acquainted him with some of the latest military techniques, not to mention some of England’s leading swordsmen. Serving alongside him under Vere were a host of future civil war officers, among them Lionel Copley*, Philip Skippon* and possibly (Sir) Richard Cave*.96H. Hexam, A Historicall Relation of the Famous Siege of the Busse (1630), unpag. After the siege was successfully concluded in 1629, Fairfax travelled into France to improve his ‘outward fashion’, but found acquiring the traits of gentlemanly refinement rather dull by comparison with campaigning. Moreover, in France he felt cut off from news about the progress of the war. Early in 1632, he returned to England, dejected but eager (or so he informed his grandfather) to join the ‘famous actions’ of the Swedish army under Gustavus Adolphus. He was encouraged in this course by some of his friends and relations.97Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, i. 163-6. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) for him, Lord Fairfax needed persuading that his grandson’s desire to join the Swedish army was a wise move; and the death of Gustavus in November 1632 probably killed the idea altogether. Until the late 1630s, Fairfax would have to satisfy his appetite for soldiering as a captain of foot in the West Riding militia.98Add. 28082, f. 80.

Fairfax’s marriage in 1637 to Anne, the fourth daughter of Lord Vere, brought him close to the heart of England’s puritan establishment. Lord Vere had died in 1635, but his widow, Mary Lady Vere, was if anything even more committed to the advancement of godly religion than he had been.99‘Horace Vere’, Oxford DNB. The early rounds of horse-trading that preceded the match were conducted on the Fairfaxes’ side largely by Thomas’s uncle Sir William Constable*, who was part of a puritan network that included the future parliamentarian stalwarts William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke and Sir Matthew Boynton*.100Supra, ‘Sir Matthew Boynton’; ‘Sir William Constable’; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, i. 296-300, 302-3. To help advance the negotiations, Constable used the services of the godly divine William Gouge, a clerical protégé of another member of this circle, England’s greatest puritan grandee, Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick.101Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, i. 296; ‘William Gouge’, Oxford DNB. The marriage service itself, which was held at Hackney on 20 June 1637 and celebrated by a ‘great feast ... many at it’, may have been conducted by another divine who was, or would become, closely associated with Warwick, Calybute Downing.102Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, i. 308; Adamson, Noble Revolt, 24, 30.

Yet while the members of the Warwick-Saye network were hostile to Charles I’s personal rule, Fairfax’s own reservations (if any) about royal policies during the 1630s may well have been tempered by the influence of his grandfather, who seems to have shared with Lord Vere an ‘instinctive allegiance to his king’.103‘Horace Vere’, Oxford DNB. Moreover, although the Fairfaxes were firm Calvinists and found Laudian ‘innovations’ obnoxious, they were apparently more at ease with the basic features of the English ecclesiastical landscape than were most members of the Warwick-Saye group. Richard Baxter was almost certainly correct in including Sir Ferdinando among those parliamentarians who were ‘conformable to episcopacy’ and ‘zealous for the liturgy’.104Supra, ‘Sir Ferdinando Fairfax’; R. Baxter, Penitent Confession (1691), 30; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, ii. 180; Hopper, Fairfax, 154. In addition, the Fairfaxes were on close terms with the two northern peers most intimately associated with the Caroline court during the 1630s – Thomas 1st Viscount Wentworth† (the future earl of Strafford) and Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland.105Supra, ‘Sir Ferdinando Fairfax’; Bodl. Fairfax 31, f. 42.

Despite their dislike of Laudianism, the Fairfaxes seem to have had few qualms about taking up arms on Charles I’s side against the rebellious Scottish Covenanters. In the spring of 1639, during the build up to the first bishops’ war, Wentworth and Sir Edward Osborne*, vice-president of the council of the north, appointed Sir Ferdinando a deputy lieutenant and militia colonel for the West Riding, while Thomas was granted a commission as a captain in the regiment of Warwick’s younger brother Henry Rich, 1st earl of Holland, the king’s general of horse.106E351/292; Bodl. Fairfax 31, f. 134; Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P10a/273-8, 324-6. Both the Fairfaxes showed every sign of being willing to fight against their fellow Protestants. Indeed, it is probable that Thomas was part of the force that Holland led against the Covenanters at Kelso on 3 June 1639.107Supra, ‘Sir Ferdinando Fairfax’; Markham, Fairfax, 30. On 12 June, Lord Fairfax wrote to his grandson, urging him to ‘show your valour upon the common enemy’.108Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, i. 356-7. Nevertheless, after the king concluded a peace with the Covenanters at Berwick on 18 June, Fairfax wrote to Lady Vere expressing relief at the treaty and praying that God ‘would be pleased to preserve it from a relapse, which, if it were in the power of some [the Warwick-Saye group, for example], I might fear it would fall into’.109Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, i. 386. Fairfax’s prayers were not answered, however, and prior to the second bishops’ war of 1640 he was re-commissioned as a captain in the royal army, this time in the regiment of horse commanded by one of the English veterans serving under the Dutch, Sir John Conyers.110E351/293; ‘Sir John Conyers’, Oxford DNB. According to Gilbert Burnet, Fairfax was part of the English force that was ignominiously routed by the Covenanters at Newburn on 28 August.111‘Thomas Fairfax, 3rd Lord Fairfax’, Oxford DNB. Fairfax’s presence in the royal army would explain his failure to join Yorkshire’s ‘disaffected’ gentry in their petitions to the king that summer and autumn, complaining about the local impact of the war. Fairfax had returned to Yorkshire by 5 October, when he was among the signatories to the indenture returning his father and another leading petitioner, Henry Belasyse, as knights of the shire to the Long Parliament.112C219/43/3/89. His knighthood at Whitehall on 28 January 1641 may well have been a reward for the loyalty that he and his family had shown during the bishops’ wars.113Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 208. However, the timing of this honour suggests an ulterior motive on the king’s part – that is, to underline his support for the Protestant cause during the negotiations at court for a match between his daughter Princess Mary and the heir of Fairfax’s former employer, the prince of Orange.

The death of Lord Fairfax in May 1640 and the arrest of Strafford by the Long Parliament in November would have given Sir Ferdinando (now 2nd Baron Fairfax) and Thomas greater freedom to express their misgivings at the direction that royal policies had taken during the 1630s. Following his election for Yorkshire to the Long Parliament, Lord Fairfax aligned himself with those at Westminster eager to reform the perceived ‘abuses’ of the personal rule.114Supra, ‘Sir Ferdinando Fairfax’. Sir Thomas, on the other hand, apparently spent most of 1641 living quietly in Yorkshire. In the spring of 1641, he joined Lord Fairfax and several other Yorkshire MPs in a petition to Parliament for a statute establishing a court of justice in the north (in place of the proscribed council of the north); and in November, he informed his father that he had represented the county’s request for a new court to Charles when the latter had passed through York on his return to London from Scotland.115Bodl. Fairfax 32, ff. 39, 41; HMC Lords, n.s. xi. 255-6. That same month, he considered standing in the forthcoming by-election at Knaresborough, but having declared his ‘indifferency’ in the matter he wrote to the borough’s MP, Sir Henry Slingesby, asking him to support the candidacy of Sir William Constable – though to little effect, for the early rounds in what proved to be a protracted electoral dispute went to Constable’s rival.116Supra, ‘Knaresborough’; Bodl. Fairfax 32, f. 35.

News of the Irish rebellion rekindled Fairfax’s martial ambitions, but his fragile health – he suffered badly from the stone, strangury and gout for much of his adult life – meant that his desire ‘in this employment in Ireland’ was vetoed by Lord Fairfax.117Bodl. Fairfax 32, ff. 19, 41, 43; Fairfax 33, f. 28; ‘Thomas Fairfax, 3rd Lord Fairfax of Cameron’, Oxford DNB. His contribution to suppressing the rebellion was largely confined to signing petitions from many of Yorkshire’s leading gentry to the Lords and Commons early in 1642, requesting, among other things, that the votes of the papist peers be abolished, that ‘ceremonial burdens’ in religion be removed and that the peers work more closely with the Commons for the relief of Ireland’s Protestants.118PA, Main Pprs. 15 Feb. 1642, f. 55; LJ iv. 587a; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, ii. 367-72. Over the winter of 1641-2, which he spent mostly in the Fairfaxes’ town-house in York, he maintained a watching brief on Catholic activity in Yorkshire and made regular reports to his father concerning the strength of the popish threat in the region. Although he seemed inclined to give more credence to the Catholic menace after the king’s attempted arrest of the Five Members early in January 1642, he held to the view that Protestant military strength in the north was sufficient to suppress any uprising.119Bodl. Fairfax 32, ff. 21, 23, 24, 27, 30, 32, 49, 66, 70; Sotheby’s sale, London 14 Dec. 1993, Fairfax pprs. Lot 101: Fairfax to Lord Fairfax, 28 Jan. 1642; Hopper, Fairfax, 23-4. What worried him more, perhaps, was the strength of ‘malignant humours’ among the common people – and specifically their rejection of local initiatives to suppress idolatry and establish a preaching ministry. He feared that this kind of ‘insolent and tumultuous behaviour’ would bring about ‘a speed[y] ruin, without the wholesome discipline of an established government of the church, which God grant may be by that best and most probable way of a national synod’.120Belvoir, PZ.1, f. 10; W. Riding Sessions Recs. ed. J. Lister (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. liv), 372-3. The king’s arrival in Yorkshire in March seems to have heightened Fairfax’s fears about the outbreak of ‘malignant humours’ in the county. As he informed his father in mid-March

I believe here are many that would soon forget their Protestation [the parliamentary Protestation of 1641] if they met things pleasing to their own sense; and what vigour the influence of a nearer sun [i.e. the king] may put into the spirits of these who by their lukewarmness got crowded in amongst the well-affected people to the king and state, cannot yet be judged.121Belvoir, PZ.1, f. 11.

With the king raising troops in Yorkshire by the spring of 1642, Fairfax and many of the county’s future parliamentarians addressed a letter to Charles on 12 May asking him to put his trust in the two Houses and to forbear raising any ‘extraordinary’ guard.122A Letter from the...Committees of the Commons...at Yorke (1642), 7-9 (E.148.8). Fairfax signed another petition to the king from this same group early in June, complaining about Charles’s abandoning Parliament and drawing together the county’s trained bands – ‘illegally’ as the petitioners conceived it.123PA, Main Pprs. 6 June 1642, ff. 84-5. It was Fairfax who attempted to thrust this petition into Charles’s hand at the great gathering of the Yorkshire freeholders on Heworth moor, near York, on 3 June – and was very nearly trampled by the king’s horse for his troubles.124Sprigge, Anglia Rediviva, 8; Hopper, Fairfax, 1-2. Charles was not amused, and Fairfax and his father were among the 20 or so Yorkshire magistrates who were reportedly removed by royal command from the commission of peace later that month.125Some Speciall Passages from Westminster, no. 6, sig. F3; News from Yorke (1642, 669 f.6.44); A. Hopper, ‘The Extent of Support for Parliament in Yorks. during the Early Stages of the First Civil War (York Univ. PhD thesis, 1999), 25-6. On 29 August, Lord Fairfax and Sir Thomas led the nascent Yorkshire parliamentarian faction in a ‘protestation and declaration’ to the Commons against the issuing of the commission of array at the county’s summer assizes.126Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 649; J. T. Cliffe, Puritans in Conflict (1988), 34.

The war in the north, 1642-5

Although the Fairfaxes were instrumental in organising the Yorkshire ‘treaty of neutrality’ late in September 1642, their motives in seeking to maintain the county’s – or at least the West Riding’s – fragile peace should not be interpreted as lukewarmness in the parliamentarian cause.127A. Woolrych, ‘Yorkshire’s treaty of neutrality’, HT, vi. 696-704. Like most of their contemporaries, they probably expected the quarrel between the king and Parliament to be settled by one decisive battle, in which case it made sense to negotiate a local ceasefire until the issue had been decided by the main field armies. In the event, the treaty was quickly condemned by Parliament and was undermined at county level by the aggressive tactics of Sir John Hotham* and his son – Fairfax’s old comrade-in-arms – Captain John Hotham.128Infra, ‘John Hotham II’; CJ ii. 794; Hopper, Fairfax, 27-8. Pressured by Parliament, menaced by local cavaliers and importuned by the ‘well-affected’ interest in the West Riding clothing towns, the Fairfaxes overcame their apparent reservations about harnessing (and necessarily inciting) popular parliamentarian feeling and stepped up the military preparations they had begun in mid-September. By 21 October – two days before the battle of Edgehill – their hastily raised forces were fighting desperately to defend Bradford from a full-scale royalist assault.129Fairfax, Short Mems. 96; Hopper, Fairfax, 33-5, ch. 7. In the Short Memorials, his self-exculpatory account of his public career, written during the 1660s, Fairfax justified his war-time allegiance in the very blandest of terms: ‘I must needs say my judgment was for the Parliament, as the king and kingdom’s great and safest council’.130Fairfax, Short Mems. 94. He articulated similar sentiments in September 1645, when, as commander of the New Model army, he summoned Prince Rupert to surrender Bristol:

the king in supreme acts concerning the whole state is not to be advised by men of whom the law takes no notice, but by his Parliament, the great council of the kingdom, in whom ... he hears all his people, as it were, at once, advising him; and in which multitude of counsellors lies his safety and his people’s interest.131Sprigge, Anglia Rediviva, 98.

In 1642, however, he was probably exercised less by questions of Parliament’s role in the ancient constitution than by fear of popish plotting, the Irish Catholic threat and the working of ‘malignant humours’ among the common people.132W. Sheils, ‘Provincial preaching on the eve of the civil war’, in Religion, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain ed. A. Fletcher, P. Roberts (Cambridge, 1994), 294-5, 296, 299, 303-5; Hopper, Fairfax, 135-6, 155. It is also worth noting he was accustomed to seeing politics in terms of a fundamental division between the ‘well-affected’ and the lukewarm-malignant by March 1642 – well before Yorkshire had divided into armed camps.

The Fairfaxes’ vital contribution to Parliament’s victory in the north has been the subject of extensive research over the last few decades and need not detain us here.133P. R. Newman, ‘The defeat of John Belasyse: civil war in Yorks. Jan.-Apr. 1644’, Yorks. Arch. Jnl. lii. 123-33; Jones, ‘War in north’; Hopper, Fairfax, 34-48; ‘Support for Parliament in Yorks.’. What does deserve greater emphasis is the fact that from the very start of the war the Fairfaxes were exposed to, and shaped their course by, factional alignments at Westminster. The recent claim that Sir Thomas (and by implication his father) was ‘a stranger to political manoeuvre’ during the early years of the war, with few enemies in Parliament, is unconvincing.134‘Thomas Fairfax, 3rd Lord Fairfax, Oxford DNB’. The Fairfaxes’ quarrel with the Hothams over military command in Yorkshire in 1642-3 would have left them in no doubt as to who their friends and enemies were at Westminster.135A. Hopper, ‘‘Fitted for desperation’: honour and treachery in Parliament’s Yorks. command, 1642-3’, History, lxxxvi. 138-54. By soliciting the support of Parliament’s lord general, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, in their efforts to undermine Lord Fairfax’s authority, the Hothams effectively aligned the Fairfaxes with those at Westminster who were critical of Essex’s dilatory generalship and who favoured an alliance with the Scots to defeat the king.136Supra, ‘John Hotham II; ‘Sir Hugh Cholmeley’; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 37-40. Many of the MPs who dominated the northern committees set up in 1642-4 to supply Parliament’s northern army were friends or allies of the Fairfaxes and were closely associated with measures for the vigorous prosecution of the war, including bringing in the Scots.137Supra, ‘Northern Committee’; ‘John Hotham II’; D. Scott, ‘The ‘northern gentlemen’’, HJ xlii. 350, 352, 353. Similarly, once it became clear, after Marston Moor (July 1644), that the Scottish alliance was not the most effective means of defeating the king, the Fairfaxes aligned themselves with those at Westminster – soon to be dubbed the Independents – who were determined to push for outright victory through exclusively English force of arms. Thus on 7 November 1644, Lord Fairfax, Sir Thomas, Francis Pierrepont*, Boynton, Constable and other leading northern parliamentarians sent a letter to the Committee of Both Kingdoms*, denouncing the Scots as a military liability.138CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 104-5; Hopper, Fairfax, 62. They accused the Scots of failing to engage against the ‘common enemy’ and of imposing an ‘intolerable burden’ upon Yorkshire, ‘which tends to the destruction of this our army [Lord Fairfax’s northern army], in the increase whereof consists the liveliest hopes of our future advantages’. With Essex and his allies in the process of patching up their differences with the Scots in common defiance of the Independents, this letter again put the Fairfaxes and the Essexians (or Presbyterians, as they would soon be labelled) on opposite sides of the political fence. It was the Fairfaxes’ close links with the Westminster Independents that encouraged the Derbyshire parliamentarian officers Thomas Sanders* and Nathaniel Barton* to solicit their help in challenging the authority of Colonel John Gell (brother of Thomas Gell*), who looked to Essex for backing in this struggle.139Infra, ‘Thomas Sanders’.

It is likely that trial of the Hothams late in 1644, in which many of Lord Fairfax’s officers acted as witnesses for the prosecution, merely served to strengthen existing political ties between the Fairfaxes and the Independent grandees.140CJ iii. 724a; Hopper, Fairfax, 60-1. The Independents were apparently determined to use the trial to send out a clear political message that overweening ambition and refusal to fight for outright victory – failings they associated with Essex as well as the Hothams – would not be tolerated. Consequently, the fate of the Hothams became bound up with the lord general’s attempt to preserve his military authority and political influence in the face of growing momentum for remodelling Parliament’s armies to his and his allies’ detriment. December saw Essex’s right-hand man Sir Philip Stapilton* ‘and others of the Presbyterian party’ battling with ‘divers of the Independents’, including Oliver Cromwell*, in a last ditch, and ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to win Sir John Hotham a reprieve.141Clarendon SP ii. 184; CJ iii. 734b; iv. 4b.

Commanding the New Model army, 1645-7

By the time the Hothams went to trial the Independent grandees had been engaged for several months in the planning stages of new-modelling Parliament’s armies and, necessarily, contemplating the selection of a new commander-in-chief in the looked-for event of Essex’s removal.142J. Adamson, ‘The triumph of oligarchy’, in Parliament at Work ed. C. Kyle, J. Peacey (Woodbridge, 2002), 116-22. In a letter to Lord Fairfax of mid-December 1644, the northern peer and Independent, Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, dropped a none too subtle hint that Sir Thomas was in the frame for replacing the lord general should the Self-Denying Ordinance come into effect.143Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 142. From the Independents’ perspective, Fairfax was in many ways the logical choice as commander of the projected new army. He was the highest-ranking of Parliament’s eligible officers under the terms of the Ordinance; he was a soldier of proven ability who had led large bodies of troops to victory at (among other battles) Nantwich and Selby; he was committed to winning the war by absolute victory rather than – as the Presbyterians advocated – a negotiated settlement; and he and his father headed a powerful interest in northern England and had a large political network at Westminster. In addition, the Fairfaxes were on friendly terms with several of the Independent grandees – and in particular, with the earl of Northumberland, one of the main architects of new-modelling.144Supra, ‘Committee of Both Kingdoms’; Scott, ‘Northern gentlemen’, 357; Hopper, Fairfax, 56, 57, 59.

On 14 January 1645, Lord Fairfax’s nephew by marriage James Chaloner* informed him that Sir Thomas was being considered for high command in the projected new army and guessed that he would be nominated as general of horse.145Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 155. In fact, Fairfax was nominated in the Commons on 21 January as commander in chief of ‘all the forces, of horse and foot, to be raised by the new establishment, according to the new model’.146CJ iv. 26a. This resolution was put to a vote in which the tellers for the yeas, the Independents Sir Henry Vane II and Cromwell, defeated the Presbyterians Denzil Holles and Stapilton. This vote did not mark Fairfax’s formal appointment, however (as is sometimes assumed), for that also required the assent of the House of Lords, where the Essexians put up a stiff rear-guard action against the ordinance for new modelling.147Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 157; Hopper, Fairfax, 57. It was not until 17 February that both the Lords and Commons passed the ordinance and that Fairfax was commissioned as commander-in-chief.148LJ iv. 201a. His appointment was ‘as little pleasing to some here [at Westminster]’, observed Chaloner, ‘as to them at Oxford’. Among royalists there was speculation as to how Fairfax had come to be accounted ‘a babe of grace’, i.e. a religious radical: ‘certainly it is not in his personal but ... in his politique capacity’.149Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 162; [J. Cleveland], The Character of a London Diurnall (1645), 6 (E.268.6).

Fairfax arrived in London on 18 February 1645, accompanied by a small group of officers that included Constable and another probable religious Independent, John Alured*.150Supra, ‘John Alured’; Perfect Diurnall no. 82 (17-24 Feb. 1645), 649 (E.258.27). The Fairfaxes’ own position on religious Independency probably corresponded very closely to that of their ‘intimate friend’, the moderate, non-‘Scottified’ Presbyterian divine Edward Bowles.151Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 168-9; Markham, Fairfax, 198; ‘Edward Bowles’, Oxford DNB. Although Bowles supported the establishment of a national, parochially-based Presbyterian church, he also favoured limited toleration for those among the godly who preferred ‘an union of hearts rather than a neighbourhood of houses to make up a congregation’.152E. Bowles, Manifest Truths, or an Inversion of Truths Manifest (1646), 71 (E.343.1). His household chaplain during the 1660s, Richard Stretton, maintained that Fairfax

was never so bigotted to any party or faction as to place religion in being of such a way or such a party. And though his acquaintance and converse [sic] did afford him most circumstances of serious piety in one set of men [i.e. religious Presbyterians like Stretton] (whom he loved and honoured for it) yet he never did it with excluding of others that in some things were of different persuasions and practices.153Bodl. Fairfax 33, f. 26; Hopper, Fairfax, 156.

Fairfax’s willingness to trust men of more radical puritan stamp than his own is evident from the officer list for the New Model that he submitted for parliamentary approval in February 1645. As well as a few Scottish officers, the list included a significant proportion of Congregationalists, Baptists and favourers of sectaries. More specifically, he seems to have consulted Cromwell and another leading opponent of Scottish Presbyterianism, Sir Arthur Hesilrige*, when compiling his list, and he favoured their friends and protégés with positions in his officer corps.154R.K.G. Temple, ‘The original officer list of the New Model army’, BIHR lix. 50-77; I. Gentles, ‘The choosing of officers for the New Model army’, HR lxvii. 264-85; M. Wanklyn, ‘Choosing officers for the New Model army’, Jnl. of the Soc. for Army Historical Research, xcii. 118-20; Hopper, Fairfax, 64, 155-6. Cromwell’s appointment as lieutenant-general of horse was urged by Fairfax in part because of the ‘constant presence and blessing of God that have accompanied him’.155Hopper, Fairfax, 212. Fairfax’s tolerance of, indeed admiration for, less orthodox puritans than himself is also evident in his appointment of the ‘notorious’ Independent divines William Dell, Hugh Peters and John Saltmarsh ‘as his chief chaplains for the army’.156[J. Gauden], Hinc Illae Lachrymae, or the Impietie of Impunitie (1647), 20 (E.421.6); Wood, Hist. Univ. Oxford (1786), ii. 489, 657. Although he all but severed ties with the Saints after 1650, during the 1640s he seems to have extended more patronage to Independent divines than to their Presbyterian colleagues.157Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 168; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 190; I. Gentles, New Model Army, 91; D. Hirst, ‘The fracturing of the Cromwellian alliance’, EHR cviii. 873, 881; Hopper, Fairfax, 154; ‘William Dell’, ‘Hugh Peter’, ‘John Saltmarsh’, ‘Anne Venn’, Oxford DNB.

It was, of course, Fairfax – and not, as is sometimes assumed, Cromwell – who was principally responsible for preparing the New Model for action in the months preceding its victory against the king’s army at Naseby in June 1645.158Sprigge, Anglia Rediviva, 9; Markham, Fairfax, 194-5. The New Model owed much of its success here and throughout the English civil wars to Fairfax’s inspirational leadership in battle and to the political and financial backing his army received courtesy of the Westminster Independents. The Fairfaxes were not shy about trying to exploit the New Model’s victories or its intimidatory presence to secure parliamentary seats for their political clients. Having failed to obtain James Chaloner’s return as a ‘recruiter’ for Scarborough in October 1645, they switched their attention to the west country, where the New Model army was then quartered.159Supra, ‘Scarborough’. On 14 November 1645, Fairfax, writing from Ottery St Mary, near Exeter, informed his father that he had ‘some hopes of procuring a place in these parts for Mr Chaloner to be burgess of’. Two weeks later (29 Nov.), he assured his father that he would try his best to secure a seat thereabouts for his brother-in-law Sir William Selby. By late December, Fairfax and his secretary cum man-of-business John Rushworth* were hopeful that the presence of the army and the assistance of the west-county Independent grandee Edmund Prideaux* would work in Selby’s favour at Tiverton.160Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 257, 258, 267, 268, 273-4, However, the nearest Selby came to winning a seat was in a double return for the Somerset borough of Ilchester in which his opponents emerged the victors.161Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 283-4; D. Underdown, ‘Party management in the recruiter elections, 1645-8’, EHR lxxxiii. 245-6. The Fairfaxes had more success in the recruiter elections for the Yorkshire boroughs; but there it was the strength of their local interest rather than military influence that proved decisive.162Supra, ‘Aldborough’, ‘Beverley’,‘Pontefract’, ‘Ripon’, ‘Thirsk’.

As a result of Fairfax’s appointment as commander of the New Model, the political fortunes of the Fairfaxes became inextricably tied to the army and its backers in Parliament, the Independents. Should the New Model be defeated (and the only force capable of inflicting such a defeat after the army’s victory at Langport in July 1645 was the Scots) or disbanded as the Presbyterians and Scots desired, it would have seriously damaged the Fairfax interest both regionally and at Westminster. The anti-Scottish bias of the Independents, and necessarily of the Fairfaxes, was shared by many of Sir Thomas’s officers and men. ‘How things stand between us and the Scots, I know not’, wrote one officer in November 1645, ‘but the late jealousies of them had such an influence on this army [the New Model] that I believe it hath ever since looked asquint, casting one eye westward [towards the king’s remaining armies] and another eastward [towards the Scottish army]’.163Add. 72437, f. 119. The well-informed Londoner and army-supporter Thomas Juxon* believed that the New Model allowed Oxford to surrender on easy terms in June 1646 because it was eager to try conclusions with the Scots.164Juxon Jnl. 128. By 1646, it was generally perceived ‘that the major part of Westminster and Fairfax are against the whole City and the Scots’.165Bodl. Clarendon 27, f. 70; Clarendon 28, f. 5. ‘Fairfax’s Independent army’ – as one royalist dubbed the New Model in 1645 – was radical from the outset in the sense that it was anti-Scots.166Baillie Lttrs. And Jnls. ii. 491.

Fairfax’s identification with the cause of ending Scottish intervention in English affairs was particularly strong in northern England – the Fairfaxes’ powerbase – much of which was effectively under Scottish military occupation from early 1644. In October 1645 and again in April 1646, the Fairfaxes’ man-of-business Sir Thomas Widdrington* and their other friends at Westminster attempted to have the commander of the Northern Association army Sednham Poynts – a pro-Scots Presbyterian – made subordinate to the Fairfaxes and his troops deployed to prevent the Scots from further plundering in the region.167Supra, ‘Northern Committee’; Scott, ‘Northern gentlemen’, 361, 371-2. Furthermore, Edward Bowles, who served as one of Fairfax’s chaplains for much of 1645, was closely involved in the Independents’ propaganda offensive against the Scots.168‘Edward Bowles’, Oxford DNB; Scott, ‘Northern gentlemen’, 364.

Fairfax and the crisis of 1647

Although the last of the major royalist strongholds fell during the summer of 1646, Fairfax delayed his return to London until well into the autumn. In typically unassuming fashion, he made his entry on 12 November 1646 with just two or three troops of horse and his lifeguard, but no colours.169The Scotish Dove no. 160 (11-18 Nov. 1646), 110 (E.362.14). He had given little warning of his arrival and hence Parliament and the City did not have time to stage the kind of triumphal welcome that a more vainglorious general, like the recently deceased earl of Essex, would have demanded.170The Moderate Intelligencer no. 89 (12-19 Nov. 1646), 747, 749 (E.362.19); Gentles, New Model Army, 85-6. Moreover, by late December he was back with his troops, having resolved to remain at the head of his command until the Scots army had marched out of the kingdom, which was not until early in 1647.171Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 326-7.

At about this time he decided – or, more likely, was persuaded – to stand as a candidate in the recruiter election for the Gloucestershire borough of Cirencester. With the withdrawal of the Scots’ ill-disciplined army from England the Independents lost their main propaganda weapon against the Presbyterians, and they needed all the seats in the Commons they could get. Fairfax’s electoral partner was one of his own officers, the prominent Independent Colonel Nathaniel Rich*. On election day, 2 January 1647, it seems that Fairfax and Rich, although not present themselves, had the greater number of voices, but the borough’s returning officer was determined to declare in favour of their opponents – two Gloucestershire gentlemen of little note and probable Presbyterian sympathies – and the result was a double return.172Supra, ‘Cirencester’. True to the ‘indifferency’ he had shown in the Knaresborough by-election of 1641, Fairfax quickly made it clear that a parliamentary seat was actually ‘an honour he little desired’ – which must have exasperated Rich and his friends.173Perfect Diurnall no. 181 (11-18 Jan. 1647), 1448 (E.513.34). Their opponents in Cirencester – not their supporters as one newsbook stated – petitioned the Commons, claiming that some of Fairfax’s officers and troops had obstructed proceedings and resorted to violence in order to secure their commander’s and Rich’s election – and certainly in the absence of both men it is very likely that some army men had been present to manage their interest.174Harl. 484, f. 145; Add. 31116, p. 593; CJ v. 52b; The Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer no. 183 (12-19 Jan. 1647), 394 (E.374.2). When the election was debated in the Commons, on 14 January, Lord Fairfax informed the House that his son had made known to him ‘that he desired not to be chosen’.175Add. 31116, p. 593. Nevertheless, the case was referred to the committee of privileges, where the Independents did their best (though unsuccessfully) to have Fairfax and Rich pronounced the rightfully elected candidates.176Harl. 484, ff. 149-54.

Fairfax’s role in the army’s clash with Parliament during the spring and summer of 1647 is perhaps the hardest part of his public career to reconcile with his own recollection of the 1640s. In his Short Memorials he insisted that he had been unequivocally opposed to the army radicals, done his best to hinder their proceedings and, unable to do so, had on several occasions come near to resigning his command, only to conclude that it was impractical or an abrogation of his duty.177Fairfax, Short Mems. 104-9. In a letter to the Speaker in May, written in his own hand, he certainly complained that he was forced to put up with what he considered insubordination – if not necessarily to him then to Parliament – in order ‘to keep the army from disorders or worse inconveniences’.178Bodl. Tanner 58, f. 118; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 499. Nevertheless, much of the evidence from these months suggests that he was rather less sure of where his sympathies and loyalties lay than he would later claim.179Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 332, 333-4, 344; Gentles, New Model Army, 171; Hopper, Fairfax, 76, 77. As a veteran soldier, his first instinct was to preserve order in the ranks and to obey his superiors – in this case, Parliament.180LJ ix. 120a. Yet at the same time he acknowledged and apparently endorsed the justness of his soldiers’ demands for pay and indemnity and, in time, of their political desires for a well-grounded settlement.181Worc. Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLVI, ff. 68v-9; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 445; L. Daxon, ‘The politics of Sir Thomas Fairfax reassessed’, History, xc. 491; Hopper, Fairfax, 78. Several commentators noted in May that Fairfax was not regarded as a force for moderation by the army’s enemies at Westminster – quite the contrary, ‘their malice is great ... against our most honoured general, as that in the Lords House they did more then whisper he was a delinquent’.182Worc. Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLVI, f. 132; The Apologie of the Common Souldiers (1647), 7 (E.385.18).

Fairfax’s conflicted loyalties in 1647 – to both Parliament and the army – were reflected in the divided counsels of his friends and advisers. The Fairfaxes’ Yorkshire client William White – who had been an officer under Lord Fairfax, but did not serve in the New Model – urged Fairfax in May to comply with the votes of the Presbyterian-dominated Commons for disbanding the army.183Infra, ‘William White’. He acknowledged that this would endanger the kingdom’s ‘liberty’, but argued that the consequences of disobeying Parliament would result either in a Scottish invasion or the return of the king upon his own terms. He advised Fairfax that if he encountered any opposition from the army he should come to Parliament ‘to preserve them with your advice’ for ‘quieting’ the soldiers.184Clarke Pprs. i. 103-4. On the other hand, there was Rushworth, who had remained at Fairfax’s side since early 1645 and was convinced of the army’s ‘honest intentions’ and the very real threat of another Scottish invasion should the Presbyterians prevail. He imputed Fairfax’s desire to resign his command not to the insolence of the army radicals but to that of the Scots’ allies at Westminster.185Infra, ‘John Rushworth’; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 343-4, 353; Hopper, Fairfax, 168.

Fairfax’s relationship to Cornet George Joyce and the design to secure the king at Holdenby is particularly hard to reconstruct. In the earliest known draft of the Short Memorials, Fairfax claimed that at some point that spring he

had notice that Cornet Joyce, an arch-agitator that quartered about Oxford, had a design to surprise the king at Holdenby, which so soon as I got knowledge of it I used means that prevented it at that time. But a while after, with more secrecy, he went on with the design, so as I had no notice of it till I heard he had seized on the king’s person.186William Andrews Clark Memorial Lib. Los Angeles, Ms 95041, f. 15; I am grateful to John Adamson for providing a copy of this source.

Fairfax had this reference to Joyce’s initial design against the king struck out of the draft, and it does not appear in subsequent manuscript copies or in the printed Memorials.187Harl. 2315; Bodl. Fairfax 36; Beinecke Lib. Osborn b168. Fairfax’s tone implies that he had barely known Joyce – whereas, in fact, Joyce had served in Fairfax’s own lifeguard before becoming a cornet in his regiment of horse and had been trusted by Fairfax to act as one of his receivers at the Army Committee*.188E121/2/7/83; SP28/41, ff. 609-10, 641, 643-5, 649-50; Hopper, Fairfax, 79. Indeed, it is likely that Fairfax had come to learn of Joyce’s intentions because Joyce himself – either on his own initiative or at the behest of more senior officers – had sounded him out or otherwise informed him about the design. If this surmise is correct, it further suggests that Fairfax was seen as much more sympathetic to the army’s political agenda than he would subsequently admit. Some observers clearly believed that Fairfax shared his soldiers’ anxiety that the Presbyterians would gain custody of the king, and that he had been complicit in Joyce’s proceedings.189Bodl. Clarendon 29, f. 229v; [Gauden], Hinc Illae Lachrymae, 12; W. Waller*, The Vindication of the Character and Conduct of Sir William Waller (1793), 128-9. He certainly feared that the Presbyterians were plotting to bring in troops from Scotland, Ireland and France.190Bodl. Clarendon 30, f. 7; Tanner 58, f. 255; D.P. Massarella, ‘The Politics of the Army 1647-60’ (York Univ. DPhil. thesis, 1977), 44. In the aftermath of Joyce’s expedition, it is worth noting that Fairfax joined Cromwell in denying that he had sanctioned Charles’s removal from Holdenby, while skirting round the issue of his complicity in, or foreknowledge of, the design to secure the king at Holdenby.191LJ ix. 248b; Gentles, New Model Army, 169-71; Hopper, Fairfax, 79. On 4 June, he informed the Lords that he had been ignorant of the number or quality of Joyce’s troops, or by whose orders they had been sent to Holdenby.192LJ ix. 243b. But this falls well short of stating his complete ignorance of plans to seize the king. Indeed, we know from the excised section of the Memorials that Fairfax did know of such plans – which being the case, it is revealing that he had failed to inform Parliament or to take effective steps to restrain Joyce. Overall, his actions, or inaction, and utterances in relation to the king’s seizure have very much the look of an exercise in plausible deniability. Although he later claimed that he had subsequently tried to have Joyce disciplined for his lèse majesté – and the evidence certainly suggests that he blocked the promotion of Joyce and several other radical officers that summer – nonetheless he readily exploited custody of the king to strengthen the army’s hand with Parliament.193Fairfax, Short Mems. 116-17; Gentles, New Model Army, 198, 497.

From early June 1647, Fairfax lent his name and authority to the army’s defiance of what he termed a ‘wicked design’ by the ‘Covenant-engaged’ faction in Parliament and the City, while insisting that his troops were ‘most clear from any purpose or inclination to oppose the settling of Presbytery, or to have the Independent government set up, to uphold a licentiousness in religion, or to meddle with any such thing to the advancement of any particular party or interest whatsoever’. He endorsed the Heads of Proposals – the terms for settlement drawn up by Henry Ireton* and Fairfax’s close ally John Lambert* in consultation with the Independent grandees. He also demonstrated a willingness to work with the army radicals to neutralise the Presbyterian military threat, even to the extent of conniving at the northern army’s mutiny against their commander, Sednham Poynts.194Beinecke Lib. Osborn fb67, f. 41; Worc. Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLVI, f. 72; Belvoir, QZ.27, f. 25; S. Poynts, The Vindication of Collonell Generall Points (1648), 14 (E.469.23); Clarke Pprs. i. p. xxv; LJ ix. 249a; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 354, 362, 371-2; Daxon, ‘Fairfax’, 492-7; Hopper, Fairfax, 80-1, 84. The perception of some observers that Fairfax had ‘little power’ over the army arose partly perhaps because it was moving in a direction that he wished it to go.195J. Berkeley, Mems. (1699), 24; Massarella, ‘Politics of the Army’, 61, 132. Although ill health, and probably diffidence, prevented him from taking any notable part in the Putney debates, he was generally well enough during the autumn of 1647 to join with Cromwell in suppressing Leveller agitation in the army. Again, however, he was solicitous of what he regarded as his soldiers’ legitimate professional and political grievances.196Daxon, ‘Fairfax’, 497-8; Hopper, Fairfax, 84-5. Like Cromwell and Ireton, his keenness to negotiate with Charles was blunted after the king’s flight to the Isle of Wight in November.197Add. 78198, f. 30; Berkeley, Mems. 70. Even so he never seems to have lost his ‘high esteem and reverence’ for Charles and (according to Stretton anyway) ‘always thought him the mirror of the princes of his age’.198Bodl. Clarendon 30, f. 77; Fairfax 33, f. 19v; Hopper, Fairfax, 224.

The second civil war and the regicide

On his father’s death in mid-March 1648, Sir Thomas succeeded as 3rd Lord Fairfax of Cameron and was granted many of his father’s offices by the Commons, including those of custos rotulorum for the three Yorkshire ridings.199E. Bowles, A Perfect Narrative of the Late Proceedings of the Parliament of Scotland (1648), 2-4 (E.433.13); CJ v. 500a. On 30 March, the two Houses passed an ordinance granting him an ex gratia payment of £10,000 in lieu of various proposals for settling an estate of £5,000 a year on him that been under consideration since December 1645.200LJ x. 164a; CJ iv. 360a, 679b; v. 167a. This £10,000 had still not been paid by October, when the Commons ordered the Army Committee to bring in an ordinance for settling lands worth £4,000 a year on him – again, to no effect.201CJ vi. 43a.

The return to active soldiering during the second civil war probably came as a relief to Fairfax, and he duly conducted a brilliant campaign against the rebels in Kent and Essex that was every bit as vital in winning the war for Parliament as Cromwell’s defeat of the Scots at Preston in August 1648. Fairfax’s victory at Colchester ended controversially, however, with his execution of two royalist officers – or ‘mere soldiers of fortune’ as he preferred to see them – Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle. This was one radical act that Fairfax did not later disavow, insisting that he had acted in accordance with his commission, ‘military justice and in part of [sic] avenge for the innocent blood they have caused to be spilt’.202Worc. Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS CXIV, ff. 99r-v; Fairfax, Short Mems. 123; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1243; Hopper, Fairfax, 85-9.

Although the second civil war may have hardened Fairfax’s heart towards the king’s party, it did not do so sufficiently for him to break with the Independent grandees and to back army agitation against the treaty of Newport and for bringing Charles to trial. Despite assuring Parliament that the army’s Remonstrance of November 1648 had been unanimously approved by his officers, Fairfax had tried hard to have it laid aside. Nevertheless, when the army moved from deliberation to political action late in 1648, he publicly supported its proceedings, just as he had in mid-1647 – writing several times to the Commons urging it to consider the Remonstrance.203Add. 78221, f. 26; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 118; Hopper, Fairfax, 94-6; Massarella, ‘Politics of the Army’, 138, 145. Given that the army’s move into London early in December was premised on the idea of intimidating pro-treaty MPs, his later claim that he ‘had not the least intimation’ of Pride’s Purge until it had happened is very hard to credit and is directly contradicted by Edmund Ludlowe II*.204Fairfax, Short Mems. 119-20; Ludlow, Mems. i. 210; Hopper, Fairfax, 96-7; Daxon, ‘Fairfax’, 500-1. And assuming that he had been so comprehensively hoodwinked, it is then difficult to explain why he did not resign his commission. Yet not only did he remain in command but he also attended meetings of the council of officers – where he supported Ireton against the pro-Leveller interest – and continued to sign letters and orders on the army’s behalf. Indeed, he seems to have relished bullying the City into paying its share of his troops’ arrears. At the same time, he worked closely with Cromwell to broker some kind of settlement that would spare Charles’s life while neutralising the growing threat from the king’s supporters in Ireland.205E. Stephens, A Letter of Advice from a Secluded Member (1649) 4 (E.536.38); Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 135, 154, 155, 156; S. Kelsey, ‘Politics and procedure in the trial of Charles I’, Law and Hist. Rev. xxii. 10; Hopper, Fairfax, 97-100; ‘Thomas Fairfax, 3rd Lord Fairfax’, Oxford DNB; J. Adamson, ‘The frighted junto’, in The Regicides and the Execution of Charles I ed. J. Peacey (2001), 45, 46, 52-3.

Fairfax’s actions in December 1648 are easier to account for if it is assumed that he and other senior officers, notably Cromwell, were engaged in a policy of ‘bargaining with menaces’ – making overtures to Charles while condoning hard-line measures in order to frighten him into compromising. The appointment of several key members of Fairfax’s circle – including James Chaloner, Constable and Widdrington – to the commission set up early in January 1649 to try Charles may have been intended to re-assure him as the stakes in this game of brinkmanship were raised higher.206Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 192-3; D. Scott, ‘Motives for king-killing’ in The Regicides ed. Peacey, 148. Although he attended only the first meeting of the trial commission, on 8 January, he seems to have remained hopeful that the whole process would stop short of the king’s execution. It was apparently only during the trial itself – which began on 20 January and to which his wife, shouting from behind her mask in one of the galleries, repeatedly voiced her, and his, dissent – that he lost faith that either Charles or his prosecutors were bluffing. By that point, only force could have halted proceedings; and while Fairfax was reportedly ready to venture his own life to save the king, he was not willing to risk the lives of others or to divide the army and thereby leave England at the mercy of the royalists.207George Villiers Second Duke of Buckingham ed. R.D. Hume, H. Love (Oxford, 2007), ii. 292; S. Kelsey, ‘The death of Charles I’, HJ xlv. 736; Daxon, ‘Fairfax’, 502; Hopper, Fairfax, 101-4; ‘Thomas Fairfax, 3rd Lord Fairfax’, Oxford DNB. Stories that he was preparing to call out the army to stop the trial – or in some versions, the execution itself – but was cunningly detained by Cromwell in a lengthy prayer session until the court had passed sentence – or the axe had fallen – are intriguing, but probably groundless.208To Xeiphos Ton, or a Brief Narration of the Mysteries of State (1651), 82-3; Markham, Fairfax, 351; Hopper, Fairfax, 214. Rather more credible is a report that at a council of war with his ‘great officers’ on 29 January ‘he propounded ... to put off the execution of the king’.209The Moderate Intelligencer no. 202 (25 Jan.-1 Feb. 1649), sig. Sssssssss5v (E.541.4). As ever, there were those who thought he could have done more to turn back the revolutionary tide – and he himself seems to have reached the same conclusion by 1660.210Add. 70006, f. 64; [C. Walker*], Anarchia Anglicana (1649), 64 (E.570.4); Ludlow, Voyce, 125; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 193. Talking with Stretton years later, however, he was adamant that he had ‘used all the means that possibly he could for the preventing of it [the regicide] ... considering the circumstances he was under he was not deficient in anything that lay in his power for the hindering of it’.211Bodl. Fairfax 33, ff. 20v-21; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, i. p. cxviii.

Serving the Rump

For all his abhorrence of the regicide, Fairfax still did not resign his command; and by agreeing to serve the fledgling commonwealth he became a rallying point for moderate elements within the new regime. It was probably those Rumpers eager to slow the revolutionary bandwagon who were primarily responsible for his election on 14 February 1649 to the first council of state.212CJ vi. 141a; S. Kelsey, ‘Constructing the council of state’, PH xxii. 225-9; Hopper, Fairfax, 109-10. The prospect of his appointment to the council was probably the catalyst for a review of his and Rich’s election at Cirencester two years earlier. On 9 February, after a report from the committee of privileges, the Rump had voted to agree with the committee ‘that the return of the bailiff [of Cirencester] to the sheriff, wherein Sir Thomas Fairfax and Colonel Rich are named, is a good return’.213CJ vi. 136a. The day after Fairfax’s election to the council (15 Feb.), a committee was set up to consider measures for admitting him and Rich into the House.214CJ vi. 142a. After receiving a report from this committee on 17 February, the Rump ordered that the indenture returning Fairfax and Rich was valid and that consequently they were ‘required to attend the service of this House, according to their duties and the votes of this House touching the rights of their elections’.215CJ vi. 144b. All this effort to bring Fairfax into the House was to no avail, however, for he evidently never took his seat. On the other hand, he did attend his place as a councillor of state and was named to half a dozen or so conciliar committees.216CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. lxxiv-lxxv, 25, 221, 316, 428, 474, 486, 507; 1650, pp. x-xli, 18.

Fairfax’s most notable service to the Rump was as commander of the forces that crushed the Leveller mutinies in the army in the spring of 1649.217Hopper, Fairfax, 110-11. On 12 May, Fairfax and his council of war published a declaration, urging the mutineers to reconsider their actions. Although this declaration was probably the work of Cromwell, it was evidently endorsed by Fairfax and reveals a remarkable level of commitment on his part to the commonwealth. Addressing the mutineers in the first person, the declaration admonishes them for disowning providence ‘in denying obedience to those who by His [God’s] clear call are set over you’, thereby threatening to plunge the nation into another war and to retard the reconquest of Ireland. The Rump, the declaration states, ‘hath done greater things for the good and welfare of the people then any of their predecessors have done in a thousand years before’. The regicide is applauded as a ‘great act of justice’ and ‘so necessary a duty to take off the pollution of innocent blood, wherewith the land was defiled’; the abolition of the Lords is justified as the removal of an obstacle to the ‘public good’; and the army’s parliamentary opponents of 1648 are attacked as those who would conclude ‘an unworthy and unsafe peace with the king and thereby cause our misery, the subversion of our liberties, and tyranny to fall irresistibly upon us’. Fairfax, or his ventriloquist, asks the mutineers to have faith that the Rump and the army will implement the Agreement of the People and the ‘settling a future equal Representative’. Even though Fairfax may well have had issues with certain sections of this clever piece of propaganda, the mere fact that he was prepared to have it published under his name is telling.218A Declaration from His Excellencie (1649, E.555.6); Gardiner, Commonwealth and Protectorate, i. 52; Gentles, New Model Army, 336-7; Massarella, ‘Politics of the Army’, 218-19. Moreover, in a letter to the Rump after his victory over the mutineers at Burford in mid-May, he expressed the hope that

you and we may make a good use of it [this victory]. It will be your glory and your honour to settle this poor nation upon foundations of justice and righteousness, and I hope this mercy will the more encourage you to do so. For the poor people, how ever deluded by some cunning and turbulent spirits, yet they may see you will improve your power for their good, and then your enemies shall be found liars.219A Full Narative of All the Proceedings (1649), 2 (E.555.27); Daxon, ‘Fairfax’, 503.

This concern for England’s ‘poor people’ is consistent with his sympathetic treatment of the Diggers.220Hopper, Fairfax, 111-12.

Shortly after his return to London early in June 1649, Fairfax was feasted by the City, and a committee was set up at Westminster, chaired by James Chaloner, to bring in an ordinance for settling lands on him worth £3,000 a year.221CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 174; CJ vi. 225b; Hopper, Fairfax, 112. By 24 August, when Chaloner made his first report, this figure had risen to £4,000 a year, made up largely of the sequestered estate of the royalist exile George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham, including the duke’s London residence of York House, on the Strand.222CJ vi. 285b. The ordinance passed the House on 21 September.223CJ vi. 299a. A month later, however, and serious tension had emerged in Fairfax’s relationship with the commonwealth. When he had been appointed to the council back in February, he had declared his willingness to serve the Rump faithfully, ‘there being now no power but that of the House of Commons’, but had refused (like most of the councillors) to take an ‘engagement’ of loyalty that expressed approval of the trial and execution of the king. He had also refused to take its revised and officially-endorsed successor, the Engagement, which bound its subscribers to concur in settling the government ‘for the future in the way of a republic, without king or House of Peers’, but leaving out all reference to the circumstances of the republic’s establishment. In fact, there is no evidence that he took any form of loyalty oath to the commonwealth at this time.224CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 9; Gardiner, Commonwealth and Protectorate, i. 6-7; S. Barber, ‘The engagement for the council of state’, HR lxiii. 45, 49. This meant that when the Rump decided in October 1649 to extend subscription of the Engagement to MPs, army officers and government officials, Fairfax was again faced with a difficult decision. By 23 October, it was being put about by ‘a principal person’ at Westminster that he ‘scrupled the signing of the Engagement which the Members of the House did lately subscribe to’.225Add. 18738, f. 82v. In November, however, it seems that he overcame his scruples and took the Engagement and issued orders that it be tendered to all army officers. Nevertheless, rumours persisted that he had not taken it, lending encouragement to the regime’s enemies and prompting a request from the council of state in January 1650 that he publish his subscription.226Barber, ‘The engagement’, 54. Several weeks later, however, and he had still not committed himself in print. It was perhaps his foot-dragging on this matter that explains why he was re-elected to the council of state on 12 February 1650 only after a series of divisions.227CJ vi. 361a. On 16 February, it was reported from Westminster that he was ‘melancholy mad, troubled in mind three or four times a week, yet hath not taken the Engagement’.228HMC 5th Rep. 180. At this point the council’s patience snapped, and he was summoned to appear at Whitehall.229CSP Dom. 1650, p. 4. Recalcitrant even in submission, Fairfax instead wrote the council or the Rump a letter on 19 February, stating that he had taken the Engagement in the revised form tendered to the councillors in February 1649. The Rump rested satisfied with this, but ordered that his letter be published.230CJ vi. 369a-b; Barber, ‘The engagement’, 54-5.

As is well known, Fairfax’s break with the army and the Rump came over the issue of the ‘northern expedition’ against Scotland. With Charles II and his Scottish supporters clearly intent on invading England, the Rump voted on 12 June 1650 to launch a pre-emptive strike to be led by Fairfax and Cromwell.231CJ vi. 423a. The council of state informed the two officers of the Rump’s decision, and, on 14 June, the council reported to the House ‘that they have both of them expressed their readiness to observe their calling of them to this employment and that things are put into such a course whereby the march of the army will be hastened’. Anticipating Fairfax’s full cooperation, the Rump confirmed him as commander-in-chief and gave him additional powers to grant new commissions.232CJ vi. 424a; Eg. 1048, ff. 113v-114. Bulstrode Whitelocke* claimed that Fairfax ‘seemed at first to like well’ of the projected campaign, ‘but afterwards, being hourly persuaded to the contrary by the Presbyterians and his own lady, who was a great patroness of them, he declared himself unsatisfied with the design’.233Whitelocke, Diary, 260; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 477; Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 195; Ludlow, Mems. i. 242-3. Equally, there were those in the army – and probably, too, at Westminster – who were not dismayed at the prospect of Fairfax making way for Cromwell. Shortly after Fairfax’s resignation as lord general, Sir William Constable would rail at ‘the underhand, unreasonable and indefatigable workings and designings’ upon Fairfax ‘to put a stumbling block in his way and then breaking a bruised reed’.234Belvoir, QZ.30, f. 112.

The Rump, which did not want to lose its talismanic general at this critical juncture, appointed a committee that included Cromwell, Lambert and Whitelocke to confer with him and ‘to satisfy him of the justness and lawfulness of this undertaking’.235CJ vi. 431b. Fairfax protested his continuing loyalty to Parliament and declared his willingness to fight a defensive war. But he could not find ‘sufficient grounds to make war upon a neighbour nation, especially our brethren of Scotland, to whom we are engaged in a Solemn League and Covenant’.236Whitelocke, Mems. iii. 207-11. It is possible that he was using the northern expedition merely as an excuse to dissociate himself finally from the Rump. After all, as a some-time military and political enemy of the Covenanters, and having experienced at first-hand the suffering their military occupation of northern England had inflicted, he had little reason to love the Scots.237Hopper, Fairfax, 114. On the other hand, the traumatic events of January 1649 seem to have brought him closer to the clerical Presbyterian establishment and to leading Covenanters in their common efforts to save the king’s life.238HMC Portland, i. 588; Kelsey, ‘Constructing the council of state’, 227. Perhaps, too, the Rump’s increasingly conspicuous failure to settle the kingdom ‘upon foundations of justice and righteousness’ (in Fairfax’s own words) put an intolerable strain upon his conscience about serving a state that was guilty of murdering the king. On 26 June 1650, Rushworth delivered up Fairfax’s commission to the House, and Cromwell was duly appointed as the new commander-in-chief of the New Model.239CJ vi. 432a.

Fairfax walked away from the army a much wealthier man than he had been on joining it. Unlike many of his officers he was paid almost in full, and in cash, for his £10 a day salary as commander-in-chief, receiving in all nearly £19,000.240Bodl. Fairfax 32, f. 173; Hopper, Fairfax, 115. He also came away with a greatly augmented landed estate that included the duke of Buckingham’s Yorkshire manors of Helmsley and Kirkbymoorside and his mansions of York House – which Fairfax let to Whitelocke in 1652 – and the Upper Lodge at Hampton Court. Fairfax had enough money in the kitty by February 1651 to consider splashing out £2,000 on a new residence in York. Spending more than that sum might well produce a ‘stately house’, he told Chaloner, but he would be quite satisfied with something ‘convenient and handsome’.241Add. 71448, ff. 5, 15, 17, 21, 27, 31; Belvoir, PZ.1, f. 12; George Villiers ed. Hume, Love, ii. 289, 290.

Away from national politics, 1650-9

Fairfax spent much of his ‘retirement’ during the 1650s indulging his various recreational, literary and devotional interests. He translated Vegetius from the Latin and Mercurius Trismegistus from the French; he produced a metrical version of the Psalms; he made extensive notes from the Bible; he bred horses and wrote a treatise on the subject; he built up his coin collection; and he compiled a history of the pre-Reformation church.242Add. 70011, f. 300; W. Yorks. Archives Service (Bradford), SpSt/9/34; Markham, Fairfax, 368-70; Hopper, Fairfax, 204; ‘Thomas Fairfax, 3rd Lord Fairfax’, Oxford DNB. His studies and musings during the period 1650-2 were enlivened by the company of Andrew Marvell*, who had publicly wished for Fairfax’s death not two years earlier, but having forsaken his royalist past was now deemed suitable to tutor Fairfax’s daughter.243Infra, ‘Andrew Marvell’; D. Hirst, S. Zwicker, ‘High summer at Nun Appleton, 1651’, HJ xxxvi. 248, 257-8, 266; B. Worden, Literature and Politics in Cromwellian England (Oxford, 2007), 11, 58, 216. Fairfax’s four or more volumes of sermon notes, which cover the 1650s and 1660s, point to another of his preoccupations as well as highlighting his piety.244Add. 4929, passim; ‘Thomas Fairfax, 3rd Lord Fairfax’, Oxford DNB. Yet he did not withdraw from public life in the years 1650-9, as is sometimes stated, but simply from the centre of the military and political stage.245Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 4. In the summer of 1651, with a Scottish invasion looming, he was persuaded by the council of state to assume charge of the defences of Hull.246CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 323-4; Hirst, Zwicker, ‘High summer at Nun Appleton’, 255. Perhaps by way of reward for his cooperation, or to keep him sweet for the future, the Rump granted him the lordship of the Isle of Man in October 1651 – a duty that he took seriously enough to send commissioners to the island for the management and reform of its government and church life.247Supra, ‘James Chaloner’; Hopper, Fairfax, 116, 156-7. He was particularly keen to end what he saw as the abuses in the island’s ministry, as he informed the man he made deputy-governor there, James Chaloner:

it seems a very strange custom to me that any should challenge a right of inheritance of succession in church offices so as even women are capable of clerkships there [on Man], contrary to St Paul’s rule that women should be silent in the church. This has need of reformation. Therefore I wish in this case, seeing there is no bishop or ordinary, that one or two of the next adjacent ministers, joining with the minister of the parish, may approve the abilities and fittingness of such as are nominated for their clerk. … [I] could wish that some of the ministers would join with you and other of the public officers in reforming such abuses as are in the church and [the] scandals of it.248Add. 71448, f. 38.

After reportedly giving serious consideration to Cromwell’s offer of a seat in the Nominated Parliament in 1653, Fairfax decided to remain in political retirement.249Add. 78190, f. 102; Bodl. Clarendon 45, f. 486v; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 138, 139. He seems to have warmed to the protectorate a little more, for in 1654 he agreed to stand as a candidate for the newly-created constituency of the West Riding in the elections to the first protectoral Parliament. At least one of the men who stood for the West Riding in 1654, Henry Tempest*, was closely connected with Fairfax’s circle.250Infra, ‘Henry Tempest’. And two others, Edward Gill* and another West Riding Presbyterian, Sir Edward Rodes*, probably accounted themselves his political allies.251Infra, ‘Edward Gill’, Sir Edward Rodes’. His main electoral rival was his former subordinate in the northern army, now Cromwell’s right-hand man, Major-general John Lambert. On election day, 12 June, Fairfax, Lambert, Tempest, John Bright and Gill were elected without dispute and in that order. The final place went, on a poll, to the Lambertonian, Martin Lister.252Supra, ‘Yorkshire’. Fairfax received no committee appointments in the 1654-5 Parliament, and it seems likely that he failed to take his seat – perhaps by way of protest at the constitutional illegitimacy of the protectoral regime.

The governments of the 1650s regularly received intelligence that Fairfax and members of his household and circle were involved in royalist-Presbyterian conspiracies. But there was little substance to any of these allegations. Fairfax certainly received overtures from Charles II and royalist intriguers in 1654, and these may have elicited a cautious, non-committal response from him or his associates, but nothing more.253HMC Portland, i. 580, 586-8; TSP i. 749-50, 688; iii. 302, 312, 355, 723; iv. 169; CCSP ii. 383-4; iii. 43, 59; Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 39, 118-22, 224-5; Hopper, Fairfax, 117, 158-9. The protectorate trusted Fairfax sufficiently to appoint him to the militia commissions for all three Yorkshire ridings in the wake of Penruddock’s rising of early 1655. There is much more substance to the conjectures and reports of Lambert’s supporters in the West Riding by late 1656 that Fairfax was encouraging their Presbyterian opponents behind the scenes. Several of the gentry associated with the anti-army, ‘high-kirk gang’ in and around Leeds – notably, Tempest, Henry Arthington* and John Stanhope* – were associated with Fairfax either directly or through his uncle Henry Fairfax.254Supra, ‘Henry Arthington’; infra, ‘John Stanhope’; ‘Henry Tempest’; Add. 21424, ff. 168, 169, 186, 208; Hirst, ‘Leeds and Adam Baynes’, 887, 889. Lambert’s and Fairfax’s political networks (if not necessarily the men themselves) had been jarring against each other since 1654-5, but their mutual hostility grew more overt as a result of the acrimonious events surrounding the West Riding elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656.255Supra, ‘Leeds’; ‘Adam Baynes’.

Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of this election is why Fairfax failed to stand again. Had he done so he would undoubtedly have secured a seat and probably challenged Lambert for the senior place. The strength of Fairfax’s electoral interest is underlined by the return, after a poll for five of the six places, of Tempest, Stanhope and Arthington and the defeat of several of Lambert’s allies, notably Adam Baynes*.256Supra, ‘Yorkshire’; Carroll, ‘Yorks.’, 354. The popularity of Fairfax’s friends with the electorate probably owed a great deal to their well known opposition to the rule of the major-generals – which Fairfax himself almost certainly shared. The ill-feeling generated by the West Riding election was compounded soon afterwards when the pro-army element on the council of state excluded Arthington, Stanhope and Tempest.257Infra, ‘Henry Tempest’. Government suspicions that members of Fairfax’s interest had been approached by the cavaliers over the 1655 rebellions, or were themselves crypto-royalists, may have contributed to their exclusion.258Add. 21424, f. 65; Carroll, ‘Yorks.’, 362; C. S. Egloff, ‘The search for a Cromwellian settlement: exclusions from the second protectorate Parliament’, PH, xvii. 315. But the principal reason was almost certainly their alignment with the Presbyterian and anti-army opponents of Lambert’s interest.259Supra, ‘Yorkshire’; Egloff, ‘Exclusions from the second protectorate Parliament’, 315.

Fairfax offered a more direct affront to the protectoral regime in September 1657 with the marriage of his only surviving child, Mary, to one of Charles Stuart’s courtiers, the duke of Buckingham. Rumours that the duke would marry Fairfax’s daughter had been circulating since 1653, but until relatively late in the day it seemed that Philip Stanhope, 2nd earl of Chesterfield, was the frontrunner.260TSP i. 306; ‘Philip Stanhope, 2nd earl of Chesterfield’, Oxford DNB. The match made a great deal of sense from the duke’s perspective inasmuch as Fairfax owned a large part of his forfeited estate.261George Villiers ed. Hume, H. Love, ii. 290. The advantage in Fairfax’s eyes was probably the distinction of joining his family with one of England’s greatest aristocratic houses, while acquiring, into the bargain, an insurance policy in the event of a restoration of Charles II. Some members of the protectoral council regarded the marriage as a ‘Presbyterian plot’, largely it seems on the grounds that Sir Robert Harley* and Lady Vere and her ministers had played a leading role in sealing the match.262TSP vi. 617; HMC 5th Rep. 177; George Villiers ed. Hume, H. Love, ii. 290. On 9 October, the council ordered the duke’s imprisonment on Jersey for having defied its ban on royalists entering London, prompting Fairfax to go down to Whitehall to plead for his son-in-law in person.263CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 124; Clarke Pprs. iii. 123. Secretary John Thurloe* reported late in October that Fairfax had discussed the matter with Cromwell, who had

dealt friendly with him, but yet plainly, and advised him to do that now which he should have done before – that is, consult with his old friends, that had went along with him in all the wars, what was fit for him to do and to listen no more to those who had brought him into this evil and to look upon them as those who are enemies both to his honour and interest.264TSP vi. 580.

Although Cromwell presented the council with written arguments on Buckingham’s behalf, it is unlikely that he was unduly dismayed when these were overruled and the duke’s imprisonment continued.265CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 196; Clarke Pprs. iii. 129; George Villiers ed. Hume, H. Love, ii. 290-1. Fairfax certainly seems to have held Cromwell responsible for Buckingham’s hard usage, and in December he was reported to have said that

since the dissolving of the [Long] Parliament, which was broke up [by Cromwell] wrongfully, there was nothing but shifting and a kind of confusion; and that he knew not but he might choose by his old commission as general to appear in arms on behalf of the people of these nations.266TSP vi. 706.

Fairfax was allegedly courted by the republicans that winter as part of a design to re-establish the Rump – machinations that pushed Cromwell into dissolving Parliament in February 1658.267TSP vii. 269; ‘Lttrs. concerning the dissolution of Cromwell’s last Parliament’ ed. C. H. Firth, EHR vii. 110; C. Egloff, ‘Settlement and Kingship: the Army, the Gentry and the Offer of the Crown to Cromwell’ (Yale Univ. PhD thesis, 1990), 498. And although Buckingham was released early in 1658, he was arrested and imprisoned again a few weeks later. After further intercession by Fairfax, the duke was confined to York House but then made a social call into Surrey, whereupon he was imprisoned in the Tower in August. According to his cousin Brian Fairfax, Fairfax went to Cromwell yet again to try to secure Buckingham’s release, but this time their meeting reportedly ended with Fairfax storming off in a rage.268CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 117; George Villiers ed. Hume, H. Love, ii. 291; Hopper, Fairfax, 118.

Fairfax and the collapse of the good old cause, 1659-60

Cromwell’s death in September 1658 and perhaps Buckingham’s predicament seem to have awakened Fairfax’s interest in parliamentary politics. In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, in which Yorkshire reverted to its customary two seats, Fairfax partnered Thomas Harrison II* against Lambert and Francis Thorpe* (who stood independently of each other). Only Harrison appeared in person on election day – the other three candidates were represented by their proxies. Fairfax’s proxy, his uncle Colonel Charles Fairfax, had an easy task marshalling support for his nephew, ‘against whom there was no dispute, but granted without polling’. Harrison secured the junior seat after out-polling Lambert and Thorpe. In the aftermath of the election there were complaints from several quarters that the whole affair had been rigged by Bowles and other members of the Fairfax interest; and the fact that the sheriff, Barrington Bourchier†, was a nephew of Fairfax’s political ally Sir Henry Cholmley*, lends substances to these allegations.269Supra, ‘Yorkshire’; Add. 21427, f. 262; Carroll, ‘Yorks.’, 369-72. Fairfax may well have had a hand in securing Lawrence Parsons’ return for Boroughbridge in 1659.270Supra, ‘Boroughbridge’. But there is no basis for the recent suggestion that Marvell was returned for Hull and Rushworth for Berwick on the strength of their past association with Fairfax.271Hirst, Zwicker, ‘High summer at Nun Appleton’, 265.

Not only did Fairfax stand for election to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament, he also took his seat this time, finally overcoming his ‘indifferency’ towards serving as an MP. He also overcame his natural diffidence and contributed to debate, albeit not at any great length and not usually on matters of great moment.272Burton’s Diary, iii. 45, 67, 140, 192, 197; Clarke Pprs. iii. 179. From his generally terse remarks in the House it appears that when it came to settling the protectoral government he was more closely aligned with the man he sat next to, Sir Arthur Hesilrige, and his republican friends than with the Presbyterian and court interests.273Burton’s Diary, iii. 96; iv. 253. On 14 February 1659, for example, during a debate on the Bill of Recognition (to recognise Richard Cromwell’s title as lord protector), he joined the republicans, or ‘commonwealthsmen’, in taking issue with various aspects of the bill – and specifically, its provisions for vesting control of the nation’s militia in the protector. Fairfax thought it unwise to place the militia in the hands of ‘any single person, but that it be entrusted where it may be serviceable to itself and to the people’. Objections to the bill were also raised by William White and Robert Stapylton, who were part of or close to Fairfax’s circle at Westminster.274Infra, ‘Robert Stapylton’, ‘William White’; Burton’s Diary, iii. 273. Four days later (18 Feb.), Fairfax was among the 86 Members – a group that included the commonwealthsmen – who voted in favour of the question that the House should proceed to determine the power of Cromwell’s negative voice before deciding whether to recognise the Cromwellian Other House.275Burton’s Diary, iii. 345. Similarly, he voted in favour of a motion on 22 March that implicitly questioned the right to sit of the Irish Members, who were regarded by the commonwealthsmen as Cromwellian placemen.276Burton’s Diary, iv. 233; CJ vii. 618b. Again, on 28 March, he joined with another unlikely ally of the commonwealthsmen, Lambert, as a minority teller in support of transacting with the Members of the Other House only after they had been approved by the Commons.277CJ vii. 621a.

Fairfax’s collaboration with the republican interest in this Parliament was noted by several contemporaries, but they offered no convincing explanation for his behaviour.278CCSP iv. 146, 186; TSP vii. 616. It is possible that the government’s treatment of Buckingham had embittered him against the protectorate to such an extent that, like the commonwealthsmen, he wanted to see it destroyed. On the other hand, his statement of loyalty to the Rump in February 1649 (upon refusing the conciliar engagement), his declarations of May 1649 and his words of December 1658 (denouncing the post-Rump regimes) suggest that he accepted the principle of a sovereign House of Commons – in which case, it is entirely understandable that he would object to proposals that gave power either to a single person or a reconstituted House of Lords. Whatever his reasons for questioning the terms of the protectoral settlement, it seems to have won him the good will of the commonwealthsmen. When, on 21 February, he presented a petition to the House for the release of Buckingham from the Tower, the commonwealthsmen figured prominently among the speakers on the duke’s behalf. The House duly ordered that Buckingham should be released, but still required that Fairfax should put up bail of £20,000.279Burton’s Diary, iii. 370-5; CJ vii. 606a. Not all his activity in the House was directed against the protectoral settlement. On 7 April, he presented a petition on behalf of lame soldiers and their widows, and he was subsequently named first to a committee to address this issue.280Burton’s Diary, iv. 361, 415; CJ vii. 627b. In all, he was named to seven committees in this Parliament, including those for reconciling the claims of Lambert and Buckingham to Hatfield Chase (31 Mar.) and to consider the manner of transacting with the Other House.281CJ vii. 600b, 615a, 622b, 627a, 627b, 634b, 638a.

Fairfax was reportedly ‘much of the same mind’ as Hesilrige and Vane in repudiating the army’s proccedings of 21-2 April 1659 in forcing the protector to dissolve Parliament.282Infra, ‘Sir Arthur Hesilrige’; Clarke Pprs. v. 290. In contrast to Hesilrige and Vane, however, he refused to take his seat in the restored Rump; and although he was appointed to the council of state on 13 May, he failed to attend any of its sessions.283CJ vii. 652b; Clarke Pprs. v. 300. It was only with the army’s dissolution of the Rump in October, and news that General George Monck* – who had been corresponding with Fairfax since June at the latest – was defying the committee of safety, that Fairfax finally gave serious thought to regime-change.284Clarke Pprs. v. 300. The vital role he played in rallying forces in the north against the committee of safety and thus in preparing the way for Monck’s invasion has been thoroughly investigated and requires no further elaboration here.285Supra, ‘Henry Arthington’; A.H. Woolrych, ‘Yorks. and the Restoration’, Yorks. Arch. Jnl. xxxix. 483-507; C.M. Keen, ‘Yorks. Politics, 1658-88’ (Sheffield Univ. PhD thesis, 1990), 40-54; Hopper, Fairfax, 119-20. Perhaps the salient point to emerge from Fairfax’s Yorkshire rising of late 1659-early 1660 is that he and his closest followers at this time, who included Arthington, Bowles and Cholmley, were committed not to restoring the Rump but to the re-admission of the Members secluded at Pride’s Purge and probably to new parliamentary elections – measures that would have made the restoration of the Stuart monarchy all but inevitable.286Sotheby’s sale, London 21 July 1980, Civil war pprs. Lot 50: Monck to Lord Fairfax, 18 Feb. 1660; Baker, Chronicle, 668-9; A Letter and Declaration of the Nobility and Gentry of the County of York (1660, 669 f.23.48); Markham, Fairfax, 382-3; Keen, ‘Yorks. Politics’, 47-8, 51; Hopper, Fairfax, 119, 120. The fall of the Rump in October and its aftermath had apparently convinced Fairfax that only a return to ‘known ways’, and therefore the abandonment of the principle of the sovereignty of the Commons, was politically viable. Nevertheless, there are signs that he had strong reservations about the restoration of the Stuarts.287Clarke Pprs. iv. 251; Keen, ‘Yorks. Politics’, 50, 52. Certainly, like other Presbyterians, he was anxious that Charles be restored on terms that would limit the exercise of royal power.288Hopper, Fairfax, 121; ‘Thomas Fairfax, 3rd Lord Fairfax’, Oxford DNB.

The Restoration period, 1660-71

Elected for Yorkshire to the 1660 Convention, Fairfax was listed by Lord Wharton among those MPs likely to support a Presbyterian church settlement.289G.F.T. Jones, ‘The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention’, EHR lxxix. 344. His most important appointment in the Convention was to head the parliamentary delegation that went to The Hague in May to invite the king’s return. Otherwise, he contributed little of note to its proceedings. He decided at the last moment to stand again for Yorkshire in the elections to the Cavalier Parliament in 1661, but was derided as a ‘black Presbyter’ by his royalist opponents and easily defeated.290HP Commons 1660-90; Hopper, Fairfax, 121. As the Restoration settlement took shape, and any hopes he may have had for the retention of a godly established ministry were dashed, he made provisions for his own religious life by employing Stretton as his household chaplain.291Bodl. Fairfax 33, f. 18.

Fairfax stood at the head of Yorkshire’s dissenting network during the 1660s, and his chapel at Nun Appleton house became a centre for nonconformist worship, as Stretton related to Edward Harley*

that liberty which the honest people in the country round about had to frequent his house and chapel was highly prized by them ... We never had any interruptions (besides big words and great threatenings) in the free use of all ordinances at Appleton and had an encouraging people straggling from many parts to attend there.292Add. 70011, f. 300v; A. Anderson, ‘From Puritanism to Nonconformity, 1660-89: a Study in the Development of Protestant Dissent, with Special Reference to Yorks.’ (Hull Univ. PhD thesis, 1980), 80, 173, 453, 455.

As well as listening to Stretton preach, Fairfax attended sermons by many of the ministers in the neighbourhood of Nun Appleton and his residence further up Wharfedale at Denton, near Otley. His sermon notebooks reveal that he had eclectic tastes when it came to hearing the scriptures expounded. The clergyman he seems to have favoured most, besides Stretton, was his former regimental chaplain, the ejected Independent minister Thomas Smallwood. However, he also made notes on sermons given by numerous Presbyterian ministers and indeed by Anglican clergymen. He evidently attended Anglican services, although in 1663 he was presented for not taking communion.293Add. 4929; Hopper, Fairfax, 122-3.

Racked by gout and the stone, Fairfax was a virtual invalid from 1664, and his health deteriorated further after the death of his wife in 1665.294Markham, Fairfax, 390-1; Hopper, Fairfax, 124. It was in his declining years after the Restoration that he drafted his Short Memorials. Though apparently never intended for publication, ‘but to remain for the satisfaction of his own relations’, the work was edited by Brian Fairfax and printed in 1699.295Fairfax, Short Mems. p. ii; Markham, Fairfax, 392-4. Fairfax died on 11 November 1671 at Nun Appleton after a short fever and was buried at nearby Bilbrough on 22 November.296Bodl. Fairfax 30, f. 25; Fairfax 33, f. 18; LPL, Ms 935, f. 37; Markham, Fairfax, 395; Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. ii. 188, 189. In his will, he confirmed an earlier deed of settlement by which he had entailed his property in Nun Appleton, Bolton Percy and Bishophill in York on his daughter Mary, her philandering husband Buckingham and their children; and in the event they died childless, which they did, it was to rejoin the remainder of his estate which he bequeathed to Mary and, on her death, to his cousin Henry Fairfax, who succeeded as 4th Lord Fairfax. He charged his estate with bequests totalling £555 and annuities of £60 a year. He left £100 to be divided among 20 poor ministers as nominated by Stretton and the ejected divines Thomas Calvert, Joshua Witton (Presbyterians) and John Gunter – an Independent in the employ of Lord Wharton. His legatees also included Rushworth and the Yorkshire biblical commentator Matthew Poole, who was left £10 towards his great work Synopsis Criticorum Aliorumque Sacrae Scripturae Interpretum, a synopsis of the critical labours of biblical commentators.297Markham, Fairfax, 404-6, 440-6; Anderson, ‘Puritanism to Nonconformity’, 455; ‘Matthew Poole’, Oxford DNB. Fairfax’s cousin and successor, Henry 4th Lord Fairfax†, represented Yorkshire in all three Exclusion Parliaments and was regarded as the leader of the county’s Presbyterian interest.298HP Commons 1660-90; Hopper, Fairfax, 230.

Assessment

It becomes easier to make sense of Fairfax’s public career once it is appreciated that the soldier and political Independent of the 1640s is not the same man as the disillusioned valetudinarian who penned the Short Memorials in the 1660s. In his anxiety to distance himself from the revolutionary events of 20 years earlier he purposely created the impression that he was the pawn of less scrupulous, more politically-astute men.299Hopper, Fairfax, 225-6. To be sure, there was no shortage of commentators at the time, even in his own political camp, who liked to portray him as the tool of his assertive wife or of Cromwell and Ireton.300Rombus the Moderator, or the King Restored (1648), 6, 7, 11-12 (E.446.26); [C. Walker], Hist. of Independency (1648), 31-2 (E.463.19); A Guerdon [pseud.], A Most Learned, Conscientious, and Devout-Exercise (1649), 7-8 (E.561.10); D. Holles, Mems. (1699), 97, 99, 169; Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 168, 195; Hopper, Fairfax, 191, 197-8, 213-15, 220; D. Farr, Henry Ireton and the English Revolution (Woodbridge, 2006), 171, 177. He himself declared in his Short Memorials that his signature was added to army documents in 1647-8 without his consent. Yet it is very hard to accept that he was telling the truth here (though one of his biographers has done so), not least because it would imply that he allowed his secretary, Rushworth, to submit falsified dispatches to Parliament in his name.301Fairfax, Short Mems. 125; Markham, Fairfax, 286-7; Hopper, Fairfax, 226; Daxon, ‘Fairfax’, 493. The ever-astute Bulstrode Whitelocke, having witnessed Fairfax’s conduct of the siege of Oxford in 1646, certainly did not see him as a mere cipher. Indeed, he was impressed by Fairfax’s steely resolve and his willingness to act ‘expressly contrary to the judgement of all his council’.302Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 20. If Fairfax appeared less sure of himself amid the political manoeuvring of 1647-9 it was not because he was overborne by stronger men, but largely, it seems, because of irreconcilable loyalties within himself – to the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, to his soldiers, to toleration for tender consciences, to the honour and integrity of England in the face of foreign intervention in its affairs, and, of course, to the king.303Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 191.

As both a committed Calvinist and a leading figure among Parliament’s ‘northern gentlemen’, Fairfax was particularly ambivalent in his attitude towards the Scottish Covenanters. Thus he took up arms against them in 1639-40, worked with them in an effort to save the king in January 1649, resigned his commission at the prospect of invading Scotland in June 1650 and yet rejoiced at news of Cromwell’s victory at Dunbar a few months later.304Ludlow, Mems. i. 254. Like Cromwell and many other army officers, he perceived events through the lens of godly providentialism, and, like them, he was sometimes pulled into unfamiliar political territory as a result – notably, in his own case, in his acceptance by February 1649 of the supremacy of the Commons, a principle to which he remained faithful until late 1659. And though he was slower to recognise ‘a clear and evident call’ than Cromwell, once he had assured himself of God’s purpose – as he seems to have done in May-June 1647, December 1648 and May 1649 – he was capable of proceeding ruthlessly to remove all obstacles in its path.305Ludlow, Mems. i. 204; Hopper, Fairfax, 220, 228. In politics, as in soldiering, he seems to have needed an identifiable enemy more than he did the encouragement of friends to galvanise him into action. And it is as a soldier rather than a politician that he should ultimately be judged. Perhaps the most inspiring and successful battlefield commander of the civil-war era, he may have been ‘a man of much meekness’ in everyday life, ‘a slow beast’, ‘yet in councils of war [he was] positive in his own judgement and in the field in action most furious and would follow his own reason before any advice whatsoever, and he prospered in it’.306‘Cromwell’s last Parliament’ ed. Firth, 110; Whitelocke, Diary, 186.