FITZJAMES, John (1619-70), of Leweston, Dorset.

The Fitzjames family originated in Somerset, and became involved in Dorset affairs only after John’s grandfather, Sir John†, inherited estates at Leweston, Long Burton and Holnest, in the north of the county. Leweston, which became the family’s principal seat, was rebuilt by Sir John, who was said to have ‘much beautified it with buildings and other ornaments’ before his death in 1625.27Coker, Survey of Dorsetshire, 1622 (1732), 121. Sir John was succeeded by his son, Leweston Fitzjames†, who sat as MP for Bridport in 1597, was sheriff for the county in 1627-8, and was active as a JP until his death in 1638.28Dorset RO, D/BOC/22, f. 45; Whiteway’s Diary, 92; Dorset RO, MIC/R/721 (quarter sessions minutes), passim. His heir, John Fitzjames, was educated at Oxford and went on to marry the daughter of the Gloucestershire landowner, Nathaniel Stephens*. At the outbreak of the civil war, Fitzjames seems to have been an enthusiastic parliamentarian. He lent £1,300 to the parliamentary forces in Dorset on 10 August 1642, on the bond of Sir Thomas Trenchard*, Sir Walter Erle*, John Browne I* and Denis Bond*;29Bayley, Dorset, 98. and was one of the gentlemen proposed as deputy lieutenants by the House of Commons on 15 September.30LJ v. 354b. Yet Fitzjames’s commitment to the cause had only shallow roots. The royalist successes in the south west during the spring of 1643 caused him to join Sir Thomas Trenchard and John Browne I in their advocacy of a local truce.31Bodl. Nalson II, ff. 342-4. Fitzjames apparently suffered no long-term loss of face because of his dalliance with neutralism. In May 1643 he was appointed assessment commissioner for Dorset, and he was one of the original members of the county committee formed in July 1644.32Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, pp. x-xii; LJ vi. 29a. In the same month, Fitzjames was proposed by the House of Commons as high sheriff of Dorset, and he was serving in this capacity by early August.33LJ vi. 611b-612a; CJ iii. 589a; Bayley, Dorset, 209.

Parliamentary colonel, 1644-6

In another sign of his rehabilitation, in May 1644 Fitzjames had been given a commission as colonel of a regiment of horse and captain of his own troop under Sir William Waller*.34SP28/266/3, f. 71. As a consequence, he became involved in the nascent military group within the Dorset county committee, which included William Sydenham*, John Bingham* and the turncoat, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper*. On 3 August 1644 Fitzjames was a signatory of a letter appointing Ashley Cooper field marshal of the Dorset forces nominally under his own control as high sheriff, and a week later he joined Sydenham and Bingham in requesting that Ashley Cooper be appointed to the county committee.35PRO30/24/2, f. 43; HMC Portland i. 103. Fitzjames was also involved with Bingham in negotiating the surrender of Wareham by Col. Henry O’Brien in August 1644, and he lent the Dorset committee £70 to pay off the Irish Protestant troops garrisoned there.36Bayley, Dorset, 209; CJ iii. 589a; Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, f. 1.

Despite his wider military connections, Fitzjames’s principal loyalty was to Waller. This led to tensions, as Fitzjames nearly became a casualty of opposition to Waller’s command. Local troops under Fitzjames and William Strode II* departed for the reinforcement of the crucial garrison at Plymouth in early September 1644.37CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 483, 487. Waller complained of hostility in Wiltshire, and added ‘I have reason to expect the like opposition in Dorsetshire, where the committee has vacated my commissions to Col. Sydenham and Col. Fitzjames, and are going about to cashier 13 or 14 troops, which are now actually raised’.38CSP Dom. 1644, p. 478. Local resistance to Waller was possibly due to the unpopularity of the expedition to Plymouth, which took soldiers out of Dorset even though the troops of Prince Maurice, based at Bristol, still occupied most of the county. Fitzjames must have shared such anxieties: as he marched west with Waller, his house at Leweston was occupied by enemy forces.39Bayley, Dorset, 219.

Fitzjames was based at Plymouth for much of the following six months, and had to cope with the increasing frustration of his poorly paid contingent. In November 1644 he was ordered to march to the relief of Taunton, and was praised by Waller as being, with Captain George Starre*, the only reliable commander from Dorset.40CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 113-14, 124. In December 1644, the Committee of Both Kingdoms was concerned that the Plymouth forces would disperse, and wrote repeatedly to prevent this, but Fitzjames continued to support Waller, and in April 1645 carried messages to the Commons to request money and supplies.41CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 192, 194, 201, 204; Add. 31116, p. 410. This petition went unheeded, however. On 5 May 1645, Fitzjames rejoined Sydenham, Bingham and others, and marched to Taunton,42CSP Dom., 1644-5, p. 459. and on the following day, Waller’s army was disbanded and Fitzjames’s regiment was re-organised as part of Edward Massie’s* brigade.43SP28/266/3, ff. 69, 71.

After being recommissioned on 6 May 1645, Fitzjames was immediately thrust into the midst of the fighting in the south west. On 10 May he was ordered to join the party sent against George Goring* under Col. Weldon,44CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 474, 476. and ten days later was present at the defeat of Goring near Crookhorn, where he was rumoured to have been killed.45Som. and Dorset N. and Q. xvi. 247. After the victory at Naseby in June 1645, the presence of an idle brigade in the south west caused considerable ill-feeling, and a spate of clubman protests. Fitzjames’s reputation remained intact, however. Martin Pyndar* and others wrote to Lenthall from Somerset, complaining of the affect the unpaid troops were having locally, but specifically excepted Fitzjames and his colleagues Edward Cooke* and Edward Popham*, ‘whose service we cannot but recommend, and whose payment we earnestly solicit’.46HMC Portland i. 237. Pyndar’s request for disbandment was pre-empted by the Committee of the West, which, on 1 August ordered that Massie’s brigade be reduced.47CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 38. The delay in effecting this order was in part due to lack of money, but also reflected the continuing fears of royalist resurgence. In February 1646, Fitzjames’s regiment was ordered to remain in Dorset to secure Wareham, which had recently been attacked by royalist cavalry, and while stationed there he joined Bingham and others in the siege of Corfe Castle, which fell before the end of the month.48CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 340-1; Bodl. Tanner 60, ff. 487-8, 510-1; Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, ff. 19-21v. Fitzjames’s regiment was not finally disbanded until October 1646.49SP28/266/3, f. 69.

The Massie connection was not purely military in nature. Before the war, Fitzjames’s wife was the daughter of the prominent Gloucestershire Presbyterian, Nathaniel Stephens*, who was on intimate terms with the Massie family; and it is significant that the Stephens family, along with Massie and other brigade officers, such as Edward Cooke, became Fitzjames’s most important advisers during the 1640s.50Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547-8, passim. Although he served under him for little more than a year, Fitzjames’s personal relationship with the controversial Massie was to have important consequences for his career in the mid-1640s. The Massie connection compromised Fitzjames’s long-term association with the pro-Independent 2nd earl of Salisbury over Cranborne Chase. Although he had been the earl’s agent in Cranborne Chase since before the civil war, Fitzjames’s relations with Salisbury seem to have cooled soon after he joined Massie’s brigade.51Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, ff. 1v, 3-5. This can be seen in the earl’s refusal to appoint recommended candidates for Chase positions, a situation which led to acute embarrassment for Fitzjames, who had to explain to John Bingham why a promised office had been refused in November 1645.52Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, ff. 5-5v, 8v-9v. There was no improvement in the new year of 1646, when, despite his assurances, Fitzjames was unable to prevent Sir Gerard Naper* from losing his keepership.53Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, ff. 28v-9.

More seriously, withdrawal of Salisbury’s support was to contribute to Fitzjames’s defeat in the recruiter election for the borough of Shaftesbury late in 1646. Fitzjames had originally sought election for one of the Cornish boroughs in September 1646, relying on the support of Stephens, Cooke and other Massie associates such as Anthony Buller* and Edward Herle*, but the death of William Whitaker* at the beginning of October created a vacancy at Shaftesbury, and Fitzjames, whose two-year stint as sheriff had just come to an end, switched his attentions to the Dorset borough.54Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, ff. 44, 45-6; SP28/144/10, pp. 2-3. He evidently hoped to benefit from the influence of his friends on the county committee, and from the electoral patronage of Salisbury’s ally, the 4th earl of Pembroke. Instead the Shaftesbury election was a three-way affair, with the local resident and committeeman, William Hussey, and another Massie colonel from Dorset, George Starre*, standing against Fitzjames. Each claimed to have important patrons. Starre told Fitzjames that he had been promised the support of the burgesses, while Hussey, who had been a leader of the local moves to disband Massie’s brigade, was rumoured to have secured Pembroke’s support through the intercession of Salisbury.55Bayley, Dorset, 314; Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, ff. 48-9. Fitzjames had already sought the assistance of Thomas Grove*, who had considerable influence amongst the Shaftesbury electorate, and claimed to be acting under the guidance of Pembroke and Thomas Erle*, while awaiting the advice of Salisbury and the Stephens family.56Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, ff. 46v-7, 50v-2. Fitzjames also hoped to delay the writ of election for his better advantage: ‘to cool others’ irons whilst I heat my own’.57Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, ff. 49v-50.

It soon became apparent to Fitzjames that Pembroke was reluctant to give him the support he needed. In desperation he asked Stephens to continue the search for a Cornish borough, ‘for I must needs doubt the efficacy of the lord’s letters in my behalf, in respect you write he had obliged himself before by others for Mr Hussey’.58Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, f. 52. Fitzjames saw Pembroke’s attitude as crucial, and calculated that his only hope of election lay with persuading Hussey to stand down. He again approached Thomas Erle, canvassing his support: ‘nothing crosses or prejudices me more than my lord of Pembroke’s letters (of an ancienter date than mine) in Mr Hussey’s behalf: if through your means or the rest of my friends, my lord’s letter could be procured, to take him off, I should begin to presume’.59Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, ff. 53v-4. On 31 October, Fitzjames was confident that such a ploy would work,60Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, ff. 57v-8, 58v-9v. and turned his attentions to undermining his fellow soldier, George Starre.

The competition between Fitzjames and Starre was even more complicated, as both had similar contacts within the county committee, and many local gentlemen were reluctant to support either openly. As Fitzjames told Stephens, ‘the party that are for Starre will not say they are against me, and have voluntarily promised all the respects that may be, and yet till I that business be over, I'll trust to none’.61Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, f. 58v. Within the county, Fitzjames counted on the support of Erle and Ashley Cooper, but doubted that his more radical cousin, Denis Bond*, would side with him.62Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, ff. 58v-9v. He also hoped that Starre could be persuaded to stand down, with pressure from Sir Thomas Trenchard, his brother John Trenchard*, and Colonels Sydenham and Bingham.63Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, ff. 61v-2v, 64v-5v. By the end of the first week of November, Fitzjames was losing heart: he claimed that his letters had been tampered with, that Hussey was showing no sign of standing aside, and that ‘Starre’s party are more crafty than the other, and will not declare’.64Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, ff. 65, 66-v.

The resolution of the dispute came in the middle of November, and although the precise details are unclear, it seems that Pembroke ceased his attempts to stage-manage the election, and the burgesses sided with the county men who supported George Starre. Hussey wrote announcing his withdrawal, and in his reply Fitzjames seems to have agreed to stand down as well: he was to deliver the writ immediately, and acknowledged his debt to Pembroke, with the hope that ‘the manner and modesty of my hitherto agitating in this particular will justly preserve me (I’ll appeal to all) above any abuse’.65Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, f. 67. On the following day, Fitzjames replied to a letter from a prominent burgess, Mr Chaldecott, agreeing to stand down in Starre’s favour: ‘I shall not fail to express my as earnest desire of compliance as Mr Hussey, and for my own part shall subscribe to reason in all’.66Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, f. 68. George Starre was elected shortly afterwards.

Political Presbyterian, 1646-8

Fitzjames did not suffer any material damage as a result of the Shaftesbury election, and he continued to act as Salisbury’s agent at Cranborne in 1647 and afterwards.67Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, f. 80v. Nevertheless, his failure to gain the seat indicated the weakness of his political support locally. Fitzjames recognised that his position was difficult, telling Nathaniel Stephens in October 1646 that his main reason for seeking election had been ‘not so much to be in authority as to keep myself from being trampled upon’.68Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, f. 51v. This animosity was partly the result of factional tensions at Westminster but was compounded by the growing resentment felt by the inhabitants of the south west at the quartering of Massie’s often ill-disciplined brigade in the region. Fitzjames, as an important Massie officer, found the county committee less co-operative, and his wide circle of relatives and acquaintances (the Trenchards, Cooper, Sydenham and Bingham) notably reluctant to rally behind him in the Shaftesbury election.

The political reverses suffered by Fitzjames in the mid-1640s also had a detrimental effect on his financial position, as the end of the first civil war brought a deluge of claims for army pay arrears. The unpopularity of Massie’s brigade had been reflected in the reluctance of the county committee to grant more than token payments to Fitzjames in 1645 and 1646.69Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, ff. 25, 25v, 27v. The disbandment of the brigade led to an examination of the accounts by the Committee for Petitions, and Fitzjames sent his papers to Westminster for examination, in the hope of recouping over £1500 owed for his service from May 1644.70SP28/266/3, ff. 45, 68-71, 80-1; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 488. There was no quick resolution of the problem, however, and he spent much of the late 1640s petitioning for repayment in Dorset and London. Once again, Fitzjames relied on Nathaniel Stephens and Thomas Erle as his advocates in the Commons in the new year of 1647, but they proved unable (or unwilling) to help.71Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, ff. 74-6. Fitzjames was also working in conjunction with Quarter-master-general Wood, Colonel Edward Cooke, and others of his former colleagues, and was greatly encouraged by the early success of another Massie officer, James Heane, in securing reimbursement in January 1647.72Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, f. 77v; SP28/266/3, ff. 80-1; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 488. But the arrears remained unpaid, and Fitzjames, increasingly insolvent, started to threaten his tenants with legal action for non-payment of even small amounts of rent.73Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, f. 78v.

Fitzjames’s political situation worsened as his financial position deteriorated. In April 1647 he was confident of the Presbyterian victory at Westminster, and hopeful of financial reward. He told Edward Cooke of his hopes ‘if I should live, to see such gallant men as our Massie and yourself valued, and made use of according to their merits’,74Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, f. 91. and enthused to Wood of Massie’s nomination as general in Ireland.75Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, f. 91v. The intervention of the army, and the expulsion of the Eleven Members in the summer of 1647, ruined Fitzjames’s expectations of redress through party influence in Parliament. During 1648 he kept a low profile. He actively avoided any part in the second civil war, telling Captain Lewis at Sherborne that he would not become involved in military affairs, and instead busied himself with the humdrum affairs of the county committee and conducted a general survey of Cranborne Chase.76Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, passim; Alnwick, Northumberland MS 548, f. 12-v. In June 1648 he apologised to one female relative for his long silence, ‘which have been only occasioned through multiplicity of tumblings and tossings up and down at London’.77Alnwick, Northumberland MS 548, f. 15. As this last comment suggests, Fitzjames had too much at stake, both politically and financially, to remain completely aloof from affairs in Westminster. Indeed, he was always anxious to receive the latest news from London, in August asking his agent there, Christopher Levitt, to send him word of Philip Skippon’s* attempts to secure the London militia and to confirm a rumour that the Eleven Members had been restored to Parliament.78Alnwick, Northumberland MS 548, ff. 19v-20. He also asked Wood to present his respects to Massie and Sir William Waller.79Alnwick, Northumberland MS 548, f. 20. In September he asked Levitt to send a selection of newsbooks, for ‘tis a passion to me, to read what can be said on both sides’.80Alnwick, Northumberland MS 548, f. 27.

Fitzjames’s actions after Pride’s Purge of Parliament in December 1648 show a preoccupation with financial matters, but also suggest a continuing reluctance to take political risks. Fitzjames was careful to avoid political statements in this period, but in March 1649 he made an unguarded comment to Levitt, which reveals his abhorrence of the recent revolution: ‘We hear the Lords [Holland and Hamilton] are condemned, I pray send me ye particulars of each catastrophe’.81Alnwick, Northumberland MS 548, f. 51v. Fitzjames distanced himself from the new regime locally, missing all meetings of the committee between December 1648 and September 1649. Despite this, he continued to chase his arrears. He tried to secure repayment of some local debts from the disposal of the 1st earl of Bristol’s estate, and also spent much time chasing £77 owed to him by the county treasurer – a sum which was repaid, and then only in part, on 18 September 1649.82Alnwick, Northumberland MS 548, ff. 44, 47-v, 61; Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 546. His attempts at securing repayment of army arrears from central sources were even less successful, although by the autumn of 1649 Fitzjames was hopeful of an intervention by Denis Bond or John Trenchard, and of the possibility of doubling.83Alnwick, Northumberland MS 548, ff. 64v, 70v, 71, 75. Fitzjames’s anxieties concerning such repayments was compounded by the implementation of the government’s confiscation of first the bishops’ lands and then the estates of the cathedral chapters.84Alnwick, Northumberland MS 548, f. 82v. By November 1649 he had become thoroughly disillusioned with the new commonwealth: ‘Here's nothing but piling and paling, and skinning very flints for money. God help us, certainly we must put off this covetousness, or Christ will never come down and personally reign amongst such saints’.85Alnwick, Northumberland MS 548, f. 87v.

Dorset Moderate, 1649-53

During the commonwealth period, Fitzjames remained in retirement in Dorset, where he busied himself with family affairs and in a further round of negotiations concerning his pay arrears. The letter-books from this period demonstrate the extent of Fitzjames’s network of contacts within the county, which provide the undercurrent to his political career in later years. On the parliamentarian side, Fitzjames’s most important associates were his relatives, Denis Bond and John Trenchard, who supported his efforts to gain financial redress.86Alnwick, Northumberland MS 548, ff. 86, 87v; 549, ff. 1, 2, 96v. He also kept in touch with Sir Thomas Trenchard and his family at Wolveton, and Sir Gerard Naper at Critchell.87Alnwick, Northumberland MS 549, ff. 73, 82, 89v, 93. During 1650 and 1651 he continued to act as Salisbury’s agent in Cranborne Chase, despite the animosities of some of the locals, and rumours of his replacement.88Alnwick, Northumberland MS 549, ff. 28v, 29v, 30, 80v, 99v; HMC Salisbury xxii. 417-8. Through this business he was again brought into contact with Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper.89Alnwick, Northumberland MS 549, f. 34. Fitzjames continued to be an active j.p., though he agonised over taking the Engagement and was (perhaps as a result) infrequent in his attendance at the quarter sessions.90Alnwick, Northumberland MS 549, ff. 7v, 22. He remained interested in national affairs, largely through reading newsbooks sent to him from London, and in January 1650 complained of ‘those phlegmatical pamphlets which are grown so dull of late, and so timorously to intermeddle with the public concernments of this infant commonwealth, that they hardly deserve the expense of so much time as to read them’.91Alnwick, Northumberland MS 549, f. 22v. In August 1651 Fitzjames travelled to take the waters at Tunbridge Wells, and asked Edward Cooke and John Trenchard to procure him a buck from one of the royal parks, in the hope that ‘it would hugely advance a design of mine, on some powerful friends here’.92Alnwick, Northumberland MS 549, ff. 113v, 115. Fitzjames’s medical treatments at Tunbridge had the added benefit of absenting him from Dorset during the Worcester campaign, which, he said, had ‘alarmed many of our water-drinkers’.93Alnwick, Northumberland MS 549, f. 118v.

Although he had aligned himself with the Presbyterians during the 1640s, Fitzjames’s religious views are hard to pin down, and he also seems to have been comfortable with the broadly Calvinist theology of the pre-Laudian Church of England. Much of the confusion is caused by Fitzjames’s delight in irony, especially in letters to his family and friends. Thus, his comment in May 1651, that without the presence of at least one of his brothers at his sister’s wedding ‘I should not think it well done though it be by Harry Hartwell most precisely performed by the Book of Common Prayer’ is probably an in-joke rather than an endorsement of Anglican formularies.94Alnwick, Northumberland MS 549, f. 101v. The same might be said of his habit of dating letters, apparently in defiance of puritan convention, ‘May Day’, ‘All Saints’ Day’, ‘St Stephen’s Day’ and ‘St George’s Day’.95Alnwick, Northumberland MS 549, ff. 15v, 47v, 63, 101; 550, f. 61. Fitzjames’s approach to the banned feast of Christmas is even more difficult to discern. His invitation to his brother to spend Christmas with him in 1645 had clearly not been meant as a joke; nor was his letter sending ‘my wishes of a good Christmas’ to his London friends in December 1650.96Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, f. 8v; 549, f. 74v. By contrast, in two letters (to a relative and a friend) of January 1651 he used a mid-winter visit to his house by his old colleague, Colonel James Heane, the previous month to poke fun at ‘the great governor of Weymouth [who] kept five days of his Christmas here’.97Alnwick, Northumberland MS 549, ff. 78v, 80v. When it came to the clergy, Fitzjames was a close friend of the Presbyterian minister of Dorchester, Stanley Gower; but he also intervened to prevent the ejection of the minister of Burton and Holnest, James Munden, who had been in post since 1641.98Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, ff. 22, 28v, 33, 35.

Fitzjames’s lenient attitude towards the established church was matched by his tolerance of former royalists, as he maintained good relations with a wide variety of the king’s supporters in the south west. An example of this network of contacts can be seen in his dealings with the Goddards of Ogbourne, Wiltshire. Before the civil war, Joan Fitzjames, John’s sister, had been persuaded to lend her marriage portion of £1,000 to Vincent Goddard, who was associated with the Seymours at Marlborough, and had defected to the king in late 1642.99Add. 18980, f. 6; HMC 5th Rep. 159. On Goddard’s death in 1644, his executor refused to repay the loan, and Joan took the case to chancery in May 1647.100C2/CHASI/F14/20. Fitzjames intervened on his sister’s behalf, begging his cousin, John Trenchard and Nathaniel Stephens to use their influence in Parliament, and he also wrote to the notorious royalist, George Lord Digby*, Goddard’s surety, to gain his co-operation.101Alnwick, Northumberland MS 548, ff. 7, 9. The money was finally reclaimed in August 1649, when the Dorset county committee gave Joan rents from the sequestrated Digby estate.102Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 534, 546-7. The Goddards remained on good terms with the Fitzjames family, however, and in 1653 a marriage was contracted between Joan and Richard Goddard, brokered by Fitzjames and Lord Seymour (Sir Francis Seymour*).103Add. 32324, f. 26. This match resulted in another legal suit over the marriage portion in 1654.104C7/127/63.

A by-product of Fitzjames’s involvement in the Goddard business was a closer association with the Digbys at Sherborne, which was near Leweston. He made sure Lady Digby was informed of the Goddard proceedings at the end of 1649; in December of that year visited her at Sherborne; and continued to be in touch with the family concerning Joan Fitzjames’s portion during 1650.105Alnwick, Northumberland MS 549, ff. 11, 13-v, 31. Fitzjames would remain on friendly terms with the Digbys throughout the 1650s.106Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, f. 10. The Digby family was related to Sir John Strangways* and his family, who had been penalised for their support of the king in the 1640s, and also became associates of Fitzjames in the 1650s.107Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, f. 6. Despite his good relations with the royalist community locally, there is no evidence that Fitzjames shared their political views. The man of the same name, summoned to attend the council of state to defend himself against an unspecified charge in January 1652 was his kinsman, the royalist spy.108CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 547; Oxford DNB. There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of Fitzjames’s later assertion that ‘the cavaliers are none to me, as I disclaim them so it is best for them to be disclaiming and disowning too’.109Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, f. 50.

Reluctant Cromwellian, 1653-6

With the demise of the Rump Parliament, Fitjames’s period of inactivity came to an end. In May 1653 Fitzjames was in London, and at around this time he seems to have become reconciled with the commonwealth government. He acted as negotiator between Major-general John Disbrowe* and John Whiteway* of Dorchester in the same month, and explained to his sister the cause of his inattention to his Presbyterian acquaintances: ‘this town do so hurry me up and down, that it makes me uncivil with most of my friends’.110Alnwick, Northumberland MS 550, ff. 2, 6. Fitzjames’s fortunes continued to improve in the early months of the protectorate. In June 1654 he was appointed to the western circuit oyer and terminer commission.111C181/6, pp. 49-50. A month later he was elected knight of the shire for Dorset, at a meeting in which his county friends were much in evidence: the indenture was signed by such Fitzjames associates as Thomas Trenchard*, Robert Coker*, John Whiteway and Edward Penney.112C219/44, unfol. During the session that followed, Fitzjames remained a political conservative, but one prepared to do business with the protectorate. After the confusion of the Rump and the unsatisfactory Nominated Assembly, the new regime promised a permanent settlement. He told his father-in-law, Nathaniel Stephens, on 20 September: ‘Yesterday the legislative power was lodged in a single person and a Parliament, and this day resolved that his Highness should be protector for life; next for triennial Parliaments, and lastly... that the laws of this common[wealth] shall not be altered, nor any new made, nor any tax laid but by common consent in Parliament’. He added that those who opposed the new arrangements were wrong-headed: ‘many of our dissenting members... still grope in the dark in the noon-day’.113Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, f. 3v.

On his arrival in the House, Fitzjames was named to the committee on an ordinance for ejecting schoolmasters and ministers (25 Sept.), the committees for Scottish and Irish affairs (29 Sept.) and a further committee for the conduct of elections in Ireland (5 Oct.).114CJ vii. 370a, 371b, 373b, 370a. He was also appointed to committees for regulating the court of chancery (5 Oct.) and to encourage trade (6 Oct.).115CJ vii. 374a, 374b. Religious affairs were of paramount importance to Fitzjames. He told Andrew Bromhall at the beginning of October, ‘I am confident religion will be seriously debated, and the matters of it, with all due considerations, resolved and settled’.116Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, f. 4. When the debate began, later in the month, Fitzjames was hopeful that an Assembly of Divines would be called, as in the Long Parliament, ‘though I cannot find six Members to agree yet in the manner of their call’.117Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, f. 5. On 23 October he remained hopeful that ‘it may please God to bring light out of darkness, and centre all disputes and animosities in a peaceful and happy conclusion’, as the serious consideration of religious articles had now begun; although a few days later he told Stanley Gower of his fear that, without an Assembly, ‘those whose religion is more in their heads than their hearts should be too busy therewith’.118Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, ff. 6v, 7v. He remained staunchly conservative in his views, calling for an ordained ministry with settled maintenance, ‘to the particular encouragement only of such as are orthodox’.119Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, f. 7v.

Fitzjames went back to Dorset at the end of October, and seems to have remained there until the beginning of December. He kept in touch with events in Westminster through his correspondence with godly MPs such as Robert Beake and Robert Shapcote.120Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, ff. 7v, 8-v. To Beake he complained, on 4 November, of ‘a specious pretext of tenderness and liberty’ shown by some MPs under

coverture of piety … and thus, I fear, will every fantasy be obtruded on the world, as I may say, as a Catholic verity, and so shall all be razed out of the communion of the saints that are not of this or that or I know not what congregation: so many old sins are threatening symptoms, without miracles, of our crumbling and approaching ruin.121Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, f. 8.

His letter to Shapcote, of 8 November, was no less strident: ‘whether a religion that pleases all interests can please one God, there’s the question, and I could wish a solution’.122Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, f. 8v.

On his return to Westminster, Fitzjames was named to a committee to review the duties of sheriffs (4 Dec.).123CJ vii. 394b. On 5 December, he was teller with Herbert Morley against the expansion of the protectoral council from nine to eleven members, but the motion was carried, with John Birch and the protectoral councillor, Francis Rous, telling against.124CJ vii. 395b. Fitzjames was also willing to oppose the government over religion. On 11 December he joined the Presbyterian Sir Richard Onslow in opposing the motion that a list of specific heresies be incorporated into the settlement of the government. The motion was carried by one vote, with the support of two councillors, Philip Jones and Edward Montagu I.125CJ vii. 399b. A week later Fitzjames wrote to William Mew at Eastington with news of the arrest of the Socinian, John Biddle, ‘in order to an examination touching his books, whereof that denies the Deity … was burned on Thursday last’.126Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, f. 13v. Fitzjames was broadly supportive of Presbyterian efforts to revise the Instrument of Government. He noted the urgency of this revision process, as ‘the whole endeavours of the Parliament are to provide it ready, and so timely, that his highness may have 20 days’ leisure to advise and consider’ before the five-month session came to an end.127Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, f. 13. The pace was, however, slow, and although ‘the several wheels of the Government, like a watch taken abroad, are almost ready to be put together again’, there was serious opposition, and ‘nothing hesitates with us more than the debates of religion’.128Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, ff. 13-v. As before, Fitzjames’s drolling style sometimes makes it difficult to disentangle his true meaning. On 24 December he told John Whiteway that after the second reading of the Government Bill, ‘for recreation sake twas moved and seconded to have the title of king inserted… and the weighty reasons urged, viz. that the wisest understood not the office, and that little children could not pronounce the word… this debate made us a little merry, you may suppose’.129Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, f. 14. In the new year of 1655, Fitzjames was teller on votes on the new bill, this time siding with the protectoral party in the House. On 1 January 1655 Fitzjames supported John Disbrowe as teller in favour of copyholders joining freeholders as electors, presumably in the hope that a wider franchise would lead to more moderate MPs being chosen, but this was opposed by his Dorset colleague Denis Bond, and also passed in the negative.130CJ vii. 411a. On the following day he was at last successful in a vote when he joined Philip Jones as teller in favour of allowing the protector to suspend, as well as alter and repeal, the articles of the constitution.131CJ vii. 415a.

On the closure of the first protectorate Parliament, Fitzjames returned to Dorset, and became embroiled in a dispute about the county rate for maimed soldiers, on behalf of the borough of Lyme.132Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, ff. 16v, 17v. He was unable to sway the assessors, however, because of lack of co-operation by Denis Bond and William Sydenham, who had become the most influential men in the county, and this can perhaps be seen as a precursor of the divisions in Dorset politics which became apparent later in the decade.133Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, f. 19. Despite local frostiness, by the spring of 1655 Fitzjames had secured the favour of two men close to Cromwell himself: he wrote to Richard Cromwell* in May 1655 ‘to renew my duty and continue my thanks’,134Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, f. 21v. and was also on good terms with one of Cromwell’s chaplains, Hugh Peter.135Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, f. 22. A further contact was the Westminster MP, Colonel Edmund Harvey I*, who had purchased the fee farm rents of Burton and Holnest which had been leased to Fitzjames by the bishop of Salisbury.136Alnwick, Northumberland MS 548, ff. 59v, 60; 549, f. 18; f. 551, f. 39v.

Although he had influential contacts in the centre, Fitzjames’s local position was made more uncomfortable by his implication in the royalist risings of 1655. On 23 January 1655 John Bingham told John Thurloe* of cavalier activity in Dorset, and implicated John Fitzjames directly.137TSP, iii. 122. In fact, it was not John, but his cousin, Thomas Fitzjames of Exeter, who was eventually accused of involvement in the royalist plots.138Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, f. 51v; CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 45; 1656-7, p. 319; 1656-7, p. 211. During the summer Fitzjames went to great lengths to defend the conduct of other members of his extended family, including his brother-in-law, Peregrine Palmer.139Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, ff. 22v, 24, 24v, 25. As late as December 1655, Fitzjames was still having to deny any connection with the plot or the king’s supporters.140Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, f. 50. Suspicions had receded by the following year, and Fitzjames was again able to correspond with a range of people of differing political allegiances, including Sir John Strangways, William Sydenham, John Bingham and the arch-Presbyterian, Denzil Holles*.141Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, ff. 52, 53, 55v, 62, 65v, 82. His comment to the latter, in March 1656, perhaps reveals his true feelings about the situation locally: ‘when knaves fall out… honest men may that way come by their goods’.142Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, f. 65v. Fitzjames certainly had not time for the enforcers appointed by Disbrowe in his capacity as major-general. When in February 1656 his fellow justices granted a licence to an alehouse-keeper who had recently been ‘suppressed’ by the fanatical James Dewy I, he reported this minor victory with glee; the next month he advised Dewy not to go looking for trouble; and in June he intervened with Sydenham on behalf of a ‘decimated’ neighbour.143Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, ff. 54, 64v, 82.

Reforming the protectorate, 1656-8

In June 1656, Fitzjames was expectant of a new parliamentary election, and requested news from his brother: ‘I shall be glad to hear more of the franchise ... and in the meantime, what you may know of the major-general’s [John Disbrowe’s] sitting, and whether the news holds of a Parliament’.144Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, f. 80v. Once the Parliament was called, Fitzjames immediately involved himself in political scheming. On 5 August he wrote to his old friend, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, to discuss a secret conference: ‘tis of necessity, I acknowledge, that our meeting be speedy, and of no less consequence that it be private’.145Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, f. 89v. From the venues discussed it is apparent that Ashley Cooper and Fitzjames were in alliance with Thomas Trenchard, Sir Gerard Naper, and one ‘Mr Hooper’, and four days later, Fitzjames also approached James Baker* of Shaftesbury, with ‘an intention of discoursing with you concerning the election on the 20th of August’.146Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, f. 91. A common concern was the spread of pamphlets in the county, ‘no way pleasing to rational men, who bite their lips, and hang down their heads, either with anger, or fear that their voices, as formerly, shall not be free’.147Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, f. 91. Others outside the county were also canvassed by Fitzjames, including George Berkeley* and Richard Newman, and he also desired to meet John Bingham, Robert Coker* and Sir Walter Erle* in the days before the election.148Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, ff. 92v-94v. Such meetings bore fruit, as Fitzjames informed Walter Foy on 14 August: ‘we have concluded these six shall appear upon the place, viz. Col. Sydenham, Sir Walter Erle, Mr Thomas Trenchard, Col. Coker, Mr Thomas Moore*, the sixth you may guess at yourself ... I could wish Col. [Henry] Henley* in also with all my heart, and shall resign to him willingly rather than break or disunite our voices’.149Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, f. 94v. If Fitzjames’s account is truthful, the 1656 elections saw an extraordinary level of co-operation within Dorset, to try to overcome the restricted franchise regulations, and to apportion seats before a single vote was cast. Perhaps the mixed-bag of MPs, with a variety of political and religious views, which resulted, was part of a broader scheme, which seems to have been pursued in other counties, such as Yorkshire, in 1654 and 1656.150‘Yorkshire’, infra. Fitzjames certainly saw this election-rigging as a noble cause: ‘this is a work of greater consequence both to us, and our posterities; that God would direct the choosers, and enable the chosen, is the hearty prayers of him that loves his country’.151Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, f. 95.

Unfortunately, the election indentures for Dorset in 1656 do not survive, and a large gap in the narrative of Fitzjames’s letter-books obscures the results of this electoral collaboration during the Parliament itself. Fitzjames was elected as one of the six Members for Dorset, and his activity in the House suggests that he remained a moderate supporter of the regime. He remained concerned about religious affairs. On 18 September he was sent to ask Thomas Goodwin to preach at the fast day at the end of October; on 22 September he was appointed to attend the protector with a declaration against the profanation of the sabbath; and in later months he was named to two committees for the maintenance of ministers (25 Dec. and 31 Mar.).152CJ vii. 424a, 426b, 475b, 515b. Fitzjames was involved in the debates on the fate of the notorious Quaker, James Naylor, in December 1656. According to Thomas Burton*, Fitzjames was teller with John Reynolds against deciding a punishment for Naylor on 13 December, and on 17 December he and Baynham Throckmorton told against a motion that Naylor should be allowed to give a public defence to the charges against him, and in March 1657 was teller against outward conformity alone.153CJ vii. 469b; Burton’s Diary, i. 135, 166. Fitzjames’s harsh line against Quakers in the House was consistent with his role as a justice of the peace in Dorset, where he was considered ‘a great persecutor of Friends’.154SP18/130, f. 46.

Fitzjames was named to a number of committees on public affairs in the early months of the Parliament, including those on Irish affairs (23 Sept.), the fate of prisoners (26 Sept.), the wages of labourers (7 Oct.), the pricing of wine (9 Oct.), and legal matters such as the quality of solicitors (13 Oct.) and the location of the Wiltshire sheriff’s court (25 Dec.).155CJ vii. 427a, 429a, 435a, 436a, 438a, 475a. Most of his appointments in this Parliament were to committees considering private petitions, including those of nobles such as the earl of Derby, duchess of Hamilton, countesses of Worcester and Stirling, Lord Mohun and the heir of the marquess of Winchester.156CJ vii. 473b, 485b, 504a, 505a, 505b, 515b; Burton’s Diary, i. 215. Fitzjames appears to have had had an interest in the case of the duchess of Hamilton in particular, being named to a committee to consider her petition on 2 February, and twice acting as teller in her favour of her petition, working with two leading Presbyterians, Sir Richard Onslow and Griffith Bodurda.157CJ vii. 485a-b, 491b. Fitzjames was also involved in moves to gain redress for old soldiers – a matter of personal interest to him. He was added to the committee for stating the public faith on 1 January, on 21 February he was added to the committee to consider a petition of reduced officers, and on 16 March he was named to a committee to consider the petition of his old comrade, Edward Cooke*.158CJ vii. 477b, 495b, 505a.

Fitzjames played no part in the contentious debates that surrounded the militia bill that decided the fate of the major-generals in the new year of 1657, perhaps owing to the illness that had led him to be absent at the call of the House on 31 December; but there was little doubt of his opinion on the subject. On 7 January, according to Burton, ‘Colonel Fitzjames and others were talking about the decimations, and said it was the distinguishing character of those that were against this bill that they were for hereditary rank’. Typically, Fitzjames found humour in the situation, persuading the prim councillor, Francis Rous, that Richard Hampden, Baynham Throckmorton ‘and himself, being at dinner at Whitehall, were sent for by his highness and knighted’.159Burton’s Diary, i. 284, 321. Fitzjames’s practical-joking had a serious side: for there were moves afoot to change the basis of the protectorate, and to broaden its base of support. Fitzjames’s approval of these changes can be seen most clearly on 23 February, when a new, civilian, constitution, initially styed the Remonstrance, was presented to the Commons. In the division on the question whether the Remonstrance should be read, Fitzjames and Sir Charles Wolseley stood as tellers for the yeas, defeating the noes led by William Sydenham and Luke Robinson.160CJ vii. 496a; Burton’s Diary, i. 378. On 20 March Fitzjames joined Henry Markham as teller against including in the Remonstrance a clause allowing the employment of dissenting ministers.161CJ vii. 509a. On 25 March Fitzjames was among four Dorset MPs, including Bond and Bingham, who voted in favour of retaining the offer of the crown in the new constitution, and on 27 March he was appointed to a committee sent to ask Cromwell to choose a time to receive the amended document, re-named the Humble Petition and Advice.162Narrative of the Late Parliament (1657), 22 (E.935.5); CJ vii. 514a. The closeness of Fitzjames’s personal association with kingship is also hinted at by an odd coincidence. On the day the Petition and Advice was presented, 31 March 1657, the House of Commons ordered that Fitzjames be paid his long-awaited pay arrears, by bond of the trustees of royal lands, although he was not strictly eligible for this favour.163CJ vii. 515b. Cromwell’s unwillingness to accept the crown may have depressed Fitzjames. During April and most of May he was unusually inactive in the House, although he did join Sir Richard Onslow as teller against continuing an ordinance concerning university visitations on 28 April; and when he re-emerged, briefly, at the end of May he concentrated on local affairs, being named to the committee and reporting its findings on the bill for satisfying the arrears owed to Captain John Arthur of Weymouth (26 and 30 May).164CJ vii. 539a, 542b.

Fitzjames returned to Westminster for the second sitting, taking his seat on 26 January 1658, but even then he took little part in parliamentary affairs, being named to two minor committees on bills for uniting parishes in Huntingdon and repairing highways on 26 January, and on 3 February acting as teller against transferring the debate on the name of the upper chamber to a committee of the whole House.165CJ vii. 588a-b, 591b. He told Throckmorton of the libel circulating against the new upper chamber, the Other House: ‘Surely his Highness was inspired, when made that House which no man desired’, and of the debates concerning the name of the Parliament itself, which ended ‘when the clocks of our stomachs and the House struck one’.166Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, ff. 1v-3. At the end of the brief sitting Fitzjames was thoroughly disillusioned: ‘everyone thinks his own thoughts, and too many belch out their own words ... so that we are yet certain only in uncertainty’.167Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, f. 3v. On his return to Dorset, he told his new acquaintance, the government newsbook editor Marchamont Nedham, of the local effect of the divisions at Westminster: ‘the Quakers here, from numerous grow numberless, and are only sort that publicly rejoice at the late dissolution’.168Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, f. 4.

In the spring of 1658, Fitzjames continued to hope for financial redress. Despite the order of Parliament, his arrears had still not been paid, and in May he asked Richard Newman to use his influence to hasten the grant: ‘if you would but act in it as for yourself, and but a little heartily pursue it to one of those friends you mention ... I shall then be at quiet’.169Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, ff. 12v-13. The absence of Parliament greatly reduced the chances of progress. As he told Nedham, with bitter irony: ‘as for a Parliament, if his Highness can be without it, for my own particular I could be contented to see none these three or four days’.170Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, f.14. Fitzjames was not idle, however. In May he asked Nedham to present his service to Richard Cromwell, and in June planned to wait on the protector’s son at Bath.171Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, ff. 14, 19v. In the meantime, there were local threats to deal with. During the summer of 1658, Fitzjames fought a rearguard action against James Dewy I and the over-zealous commissioners for ejecting ministers in Dorset.172Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, ff. 20, 26. Fitzjames was also concerned for the safety of his brother-in-law, Peregrine Palmer, who had been under arrest since the royalist rising of 1655, and he tried to use his influence with Bingham, who was involved in the high court of justice.173Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, ff. 14, 14v, 15v, 16.

Loyalty and disappointment, 1658-9

In the late summer of 1658, there was renewed speculation in Dorset about the creation of a new Parliament. Fitzjames was curious to know whether the franchise really would return to the old system (as implied by the Humble Petition), although he told Nedham, ‘I am for what way be best, according to the present constitution’.174Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, ff. 28, 30v. He greeted the illness and death of Cromwell in early September was apparent dismay, telling Nedham on 4 September, when news of the protector’s rapid decline had reached Dorset: ‘the country are hushed, and quiet, amongst all the various reports, when such a star or sun is looked upon as either declining or setting, how can it be otherwise?’.175Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, f. 34. In the weeks that followed, Fitzjames was anxious to ensure the local community united behind Richard Cromwell as head of state. He wrote for details of the ‘address’ to Richard, and set about encouraging Dorset gentlemen to sign, even extending the invitation to former royalists such as Strangways and estranged Presbyterians such as Holles; he also helped to arrange a parallel petition from the local clergy, taken to Westminster by Stanley Gower.176Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, ff. 37v, 38, 40v-41v, 46, 47. Fitzjames’s hopes for unity did not last long. When the decision to call the new Parliament became public in mid-October, a local power struggle ensued: as Fitzjames said later: ‘everybody does act as if there were no king in Israel’.177Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, f. 44. The main focus for factionalism was the county election for the knights of the shire, reduced to two under the traditional electoral arrangements re-introduced under the Humble Petition. It soon became apparent that the principal antagonists were Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper (supported by Fitzjames) and the army interest led by John Bingham; but even by early December, the precise identity of the candidates was unclear. As Fitzjames told James Baker: ‘I am assured, that Sir A. A. Cooper will not stand, and by others that the contest will be (if any) betwixt Col. Coker, Col. Bingham and myself’.178Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, f. 50v. Fitzjames spent much of November and December 1658 trying to secure the attendance, and support, of a variety of county freeholders, including Sir John Strangways, Denzil Holles, Thomas Freke*, William Caldecott, Henry Whitaker*, John Browne I, George Fulford and John Tregonwell*.179Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, passim. One reason for this frenzy of activity was that the date of the county election, set for 3 January 1659, was not disclosed until the end of December, and Fitzjames grew increasingly anxious that his supporters would not have time to reach Dorchester to register for the vote. He wrote to the sheriff on 20 December, requesting a copy of the writ: ‘to the intent that I may give my neighbours hereabouts, and my friends about Shaftesbury side, the most timely notice I can’.180Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, f. 55.

At about this time, Fitzjames began to suspect that he had been tricked. In mid-December, John Bingham had brought in Sir Walter Erle as an additional candidate, and the two were hoping to secure the two county seats for themselves.181Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, f. 55v. Fitzjames told Coker: ‘yesterday I received notice from a Dorchester friend that Sir W. Erle and B[ingham] sit close in council at Dorchester, where I am confident ... there are monstrous plots in agitation against you and myself’.182Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, f. 58. Erle’s involvement threatened to split the voters from the east of the county, and on 24 December, Fitzjames found that the principal inns at Dorchester were extremely reluctant to admit his supporters from out of town.183Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, ff. 58, 60v, 61v. By 1 January 1659 it had dawned on him that he had been effectively out-manoeuvred, and that the sheriff, Sir Richard Strode, had been instrumental in securing votes for his opponents.184Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, f. 64v. On 3 January, the day of the election, Fitzjames had to accept defeat: ‘Col. Coker and myself were buried alive this day: to say no more, Sir Walter Erle and Col. Bingham are your and our knights for the county’.185Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, f. 65.

Fitzjames could glean some consolation from the borough elections which followed the county vote. His ally, James Baker, had successfully prevented James Dewy I from taking Shaftesbury, and the moderate John Tregonwell had been elected to Corfe Castle largely through Fitzjames’s intervention with the sheriff.186Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, ff. 54, 57, 62v, 63, 64. He was also eager that his brother, Henry, would be elected for a Surrey seat, and that Robert Coker would agree to sit for Milborne Port in Somerset, where Fitzjames had electoral influence, possibly due to his friendship with the Digbys and Seymours.187Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, ff. 69v, 70, 71. Fitzjames also gained a borough seat for himself at this time. Immediately after the fiasco at Dorchester, he had started negotiations with the ‘town and county’ of Poole. Robert Cleeve, mayor of Poole, had written to Fitzjames in mid-December offering the seat, but Fitzjames delayed his acceptance until the county result was known.188Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, f. 59. On the day of his defeat, he hastened to accept the Poole burgess-place, writing that ‘I have only the expectancy of what your town and county have, or will do’.189Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, f. 65. The place at Poole had become available because Fitzjames’s ally, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, had decided to take the more prestigious seat as knight of the shire for Wiltshire. Denis Bond’s son, Samuel Bond*, who had been returned with Cooper originally, was again elected as Fitzjames’s colleague in the new poll, held on 24 January.190CJ vii. 616b. The borough was happy with their choice, the mayor’s accounts including a bill of nearly £8 for celebrations ‘when Colonel Fitzjames was chosen a Parliament man for this town’, and before and after the election the corporation kept in touch with their new MP by letter.191Poole Borough Archives, MS 29(7), unfol.

Fitzjames greeted the opening of the 1659 session with enthusiasm: ‘our eyes are all upon the Parliament now’, he told Nedham on 29 January, ‘and from them we expect ease and peace and plenty and all sorts of blessings, and what not’.192Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, f. 71v. His own troubles were not over, however, as by 3 February the validity of the election had been questioned by Fitzjames’s old adversary, Sir Walter Erle.193Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, f. 72v. As Fitzjames told Robert Lewen at Poole, ‘you may see how malice do still persecute me, but I am resolved (by God’s help) to weather it all’.194Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, f. 73. Although Samuel Bond advocated sending up the first writ, confirming his own election, Fitzjames was understandably reluctant to give way so easily to Erle’s attempts to exclude him from Westminster.195Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, f. 73v. On 22 March the committee for elections and privileges declared that the second writ was illegal, and ordered that the first election must stand, thus denying Fitzjames a place in Parliament.196CJ vii. 616b. On 30 March a new writ was issued for the election at Poole.197CJ vii. 622a. Erle had succeeded in preventing an important opponent from being active in Parliament, and Fitzjames, who had travelled to Westminster in anticipation of taking his seat, was forced to return to Dorset a few days later.198Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, f. 74.

Negotiating the Restoration, 1660-70

Nothing is known of Fitzjames’s activities during the next 12 months, but at the Restoration he had no difficulty in being accepted as a secret royalist sympathiser, no doubt on the recommendation of his cavalier friends the Seymours, Strangways and Digbys, who gained substantially from the return of the monarch. He signed the address of the nobility and gentry of Dorset to Charles II in June 1660, and was knighted on 9 July.199Somerset and Dorset N. and Q. xvi. 248. He joined Lord Digby, Sir John Strangways and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper as a deputy lieutenant for Dorset on 26 July 1660.200SP29/8, f. 67. Politically, Fitzjames seems to have followed his old ally, Ashley Cooper, who was created Lord Ashley in 1660, and probably secured his seat both as knight of the shire in 1660, and as MP for Poole in 1661. When his duties at Westminster allowed, Fitzjames spent most of his time in Dorset. In the 1662-4 Hearth Tax returns he and his brother are listed as owning property in Long Burton.201Dorset Hearth Tax, 48. He was active as a magistrate for the county from 1663 until his death in 1670, and was named to a special session in 1666 to take the oath of conformity under the Five Mile Act.202Dorset Hearth Tax, 115, 116n, 117. Fitzjames’s will, dated 3 May 1664, granted his estate to his son, John, who was only 14 at the time, with bequests to his daughters (including £1,000 apiece to those yet unmarried) and small sums to his servants and six churches including Long Burton and Holnest. The trustees and overseers of the will were drawn from his oldest friends and relatives: his brothers-in-law Richard Stephens and Sir John Stawell*, his agent Edward Penney, and his neighbour John Golsney of Holnest.203PROB11/333/568. Fitzjames was buried in Long Burton church on 23 June 1670.204Dorset RO, Long Burton par. regs. The death of his only son the year before left his six daughters as co-heirs to the estate, most of which was then sold to pay the family’s debts.205Hutchins, Dorset , iv. 129, 130; Som. and Dorset N. and Q. xvi. 249.