FENWICKE, William (c.1617-76), of Wallington, Hartburn, Northumb.

Although Fenwicke’s half brother John was an ardent royalist and his father was disabled from the Commons in 1644 for adhering to the king’s party, William himself seems to have sided with Parliament during the civil war or remained neutral. His aversion to popery – suggested by his appointment as a commissioner for disarming recusants in Northumberland in 1641 – may have influenced his allegiance, and it is perhaps significant that in October 1643 he was recommended to Parliament for appointment to the county commission of the peace.1SP16/498/103, f. 192. However, there is no evidence that he left Northumberland when it was under royalist control in 1642-4 – even though as a younger son he would have been freer to express his true political sympathies than his father, who had estates and interests to protect in the north. It was probably his father’s standing in the county and the likely backing of Sir John’s friend, and the north’s foremost parliamentarian politician, Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland, that secured William a seat at Westminster, not his own record in the parliamentarian cause.2Supra, ‘Sir John Fenwick’. He was returned for Northumberland as a ‘recruiter’ on 6 November 1645 – his father, Robert Fenwicke* and Henry Ogle* being among the named parties to the electoral indenture.3C219/43/2/88.

Apart from taking the Covenant on 24 June 1646, Fenwicke seems to have contributed very little to the proceedings of the Long Parliament.4CJ iv. 586a. It is likely that the ‘Mr Fenwick’ named to a series of committees from 1646 was William’s fellow Northumberland recruiter George Fenwick.5Supra, ‘George Fenwick’. William can be assigned only one appointment with any certainty – that of 6 April 1647 to a committee for considering a petition concerning the recruiter election at Newcastle.6CJ v. 134a. But he evidently spent most of the period 1646-8 away from the Commons, being granted leave on 9 July 1646 and 21 May and 14 December 1647 and declared absent at the call of the House on 9 October 1647 and 24 April and 26 September 1648.7CJ iv. 610a; v. 181a, 330a, 383b, 543b; vi. 34a. In May 1648, he signed a letter to the Commons from a group of leading northern parliamentarians, requesting money and troops to defend the region against the Scottish Engagers and their royalist allies.8Bodl. Tanner 57, f. 29.

Fenwicke was not among those excluded at Pride’s Purge; and although he abstained from taking his seat in the Rump, he continued to receive appointment to local commissions after 1648. Indeed, he was an active member of the 1650 commission for propagating the gospel in the northern counties – further evidence that he was a man of trenchantly Protestant convictions.9LPL, COMM VIII/I, passim. He was also part of the syndicate headed by Sir Arthur Hesilrige* – governor of the four northern counties under the Rump – that purchased the castle and adjoining property in Newcastle from the trustees for the sale of crown lands in 1651.10C54/3571/14; C54/3820/43.

Fenwicke seems to have had little difficulty negotiating the transition from commonwealth to protectorate, and in July 1654 he was returned for Northumberland to the first protectoral Parliament.11Supra, ‘Northumberland’. He was named to the committee for Scottish affairs on 29 September 1654, but apparently took no further part in the House’s proceedings after being granted leave of absence on 13 October.12CJ vii. 371b, 376b. His local appointments during the mid-1650s suggest that he was trusted by the protectoral council, which allowed him to take his seat following his return for Northumberland in the elections to the second Cromwellian Parliament in the summer of 1656.13C231/6, p. 294; CSP Dom. 1654, p. 100; 1655, p. 117. But he was no more active in this than in previous Parliaments, making no recorded contribution to debate and receiving a maximum of just seven committee appointments – the exact number being obscured by the clerk of the House’s failure to distinguish between William and Robert Fenwicke.14CJ vii. 427a, 429b, 439b, 456a, 457b, 459a, 532a. His unauthorised absence from the House over the Christmas of 1656 was excused by Sir Thomas Widdrington (the Speaker) and Robert Fenwicke on the grounds that there was a marriage in the family.15Burton’s Diary, i. 285. But though Robert Fenwicke assured the House that William would ‘return speedily’, there is little to indicate that he returned at all. Fenwicke was re-elected for the county to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, and on this occasion there is no evidence that he even bothered to take his seat.16Supra, ‘Northumberland’.

Fenwicke’s failure to take his seat in the restored Rump, his omission from the July 1659 militia commission, and his appointment by General George Monck* as commander-in-chief for Northumberland in January 1660, all point to a man who welcomed the return to ‘known ways’ in 1660.17CCSP iv. 526. He was returned for his county for a fifth time in the elections to the 1660 Convention, and, true to form, he took no known part in its proceedings – frustrating the hope of Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton that he might support a Presbyterian church settlement.18G.F.T. Jones, ‘The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention’, EHR lxxix. 339. Fenwicke responded to his return for Northumberland to the Cavalier Parliament in familiar fashion by entirely neglecting the service of the House.

Fenwicke’s son, Sir John Fenwick†, 3rd bt., claimed that his father had died on or about 6 March in the 31st year of Charles II’s reign – that is, 1679 – but he had evidently confused his regnal years, for Sir William was dead by July 1676, when canvassing had begun on Sir John’s behalf for his father’s parliamentary seat.19C5/480/60; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Sir William Fenwick’. Fenwick’s place of burial is not known. Sir John Fenwick sat for Northumberland as a court supporter on five occasions between 1677 and 1685 and was executed in 1697 for complicity in a Jacobite plot to assassinate William III.20HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Sir John Fenwick’.