FLEETWOOD, Miles (?1630-88), of Aldwincle All Saints, Northants.

Apparently too young to participate directly in the civil wars, Fleetwood also escaped the consequences of his father’s royalism (limited though they were) and was able to benefit from the high standing in the 1650s of his uncle, Charles Fleetwood*, who in 1652 became a son-in-law of Oliver Cromwell*. Both in religion and in office-holding he followed family tradition. While godliness probably assisted his public career until 1662, government service proved no more of a source of lasting wealth than it had to his father, Sir William Fleetwood*, or his grandfather, Sir Miles Fleetwood*. His relatively unobtrusive public persona obscures the extent of his usefulness to his uncle during the interregnum, but may provide one explanation for his ability to maintain a role in Northamptonshire local government after the Restoration.

Fleetwood was educated at Queens’, Cambridge, the old college of the rector of his home parish at Aldwincle All Saints, Nathaniel Whiting, who was an assistant to the Northamptonshire triers and ejectors in 1657 and who was ejected in 1662.18Al. Cant.; Calamy Revised, 527. Given his father’s modest income, Fleetwood’s admission to Gray’s Inn in June 1648 may have been intended to result in his becoming a practising lawyer.19G. Inn Admiss. 248. If so, his studies lasted only a few years. By early 1651 he married Elizabeth, a daughter and coheir of Jane Whitmore, from a London aldermanic family, and Nathaniel Still, who had in turn inherited part of the remarkable fortune made by his father, John Still (d. 1608), one time bishop of Bath and Wells. Although Still wealth was probably depleted in division, on the strength of his share Fleetwood and his bride (possibly more than a decade his senior) seem to have taken up residence partly at Aldwincle and partly with Sir William and his second wife at the ranger’s lodge in Woodstock park; the first four of Miles and Elizabeth’s five sons were baptized at the lodge (two on the same day as their aunts) between November 1651 and February 1656.20Northants. N and Q n.s. i. 113-16; ‘John Still’, Oxford DNB; Vis. Som. 1623 (Harl. Sic. xi), 104; Wootton par. reg.

Added to the Northamptonshire commission of the peace in July 1653, during the protectorate Fleetwood was to become an active magistrate and to act as an assessment and militia commissioner there.21C231/6, p. 264; A. and O.; Northants. QS Recs. 209, 218-20. However, that spring he had been seeking a lease of gold and silver mines in Ireland in association with James Whitelocke*, son of Woodstock’s former recorder, Bulstrode Whitelocke*; Miles and James were again in contact in the town in August 1654.22CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 267, 330, 447; Whitelocke Diary, 394. While the mines project appears to have come to nothing, for the rest of the decade Fleetwood’s primary provincial sphere of operation appears to have been Oxfordshire. In November 1655, with William Lenthall* (who sat for Woodstock in the Long Parliament), John Cary of Ditchley and others, he was consulted by treasury commissioners on the state of Wychwood forest; with Cary and Robert Jenkinson* he reported the following May.23CSP Dom. 1655-6, pp. 306-7. His advice may have been trusted as coming from the nephew of the county’s absent major-general, Charles Fleetwood, but it also drew on family experience of managing woodland at Woodstock. He may even have been acting as an informal deputy for his uncle, who in 1655 had been given the high stewardship of Woodstock.24VCH Oxon. xii. 374.

Probably thanks to the major-general, on 30 June 1656 Miles Fleetwood was granted a clerkship of the privy seal at a salary (no doubt welcome) of £150 a year.25E403/2523, pp. 114-5. Three months earlier he had become a justice of the peace for Woodstock.26C181/6, p. 157. In the parliamentary elections that year when Charles, who had sat for Oxfordshire in 1654, opted for Norfolk, Miles was probably an obvious substitute; he was duly elected with Lenthall, Robert Jenkinson and Sir Francis Norreys*. Appropriately, his first committee appointment to the Parliament which assembled on 17 September was to consider an act for the increase and preservation of timber (27 Sept.); he was added to its successor on 23 October.27CJ vii. 429b, 444b. A flurry of nominations in October saw him delegated to consider bills for the securing of sequestered livings to the new incumbents (3 Oct.), against customary oaths (4 Oct.), improving revenue from papists’ estates (22 Oct.), and establishing probate of wills (27 Oct.).28CJ vii. 434a, 435b, 444a, 446a. But he took no recorded part in the contentious debates on James Naylor and excluded MPs, and he next appeared in the Journal on 22 December, when for the second time (also 3 Oct.) he was named to investigate a petition.29 CJ vii. 433a, 472a. At a call of the House on 31 December his absence was excused.30Burton’s Diary, i. 285.

Fleetwood was similarly inconspicuous in discussions of the militia bill in the new year, resuming visible activity only on 17 February 1657, when he was named to a committee addressing a petition from John Jones*.31CJ vii. 493a. Yet he was clearly capable of being engaged by the important business of a Parliament in which his uncle was a major player. On 25 February he was a teller with John Trevor I* for the majority against referring to a grand committee the Humble Remonstrance offering Oliver Cromwell* the crown, introduced to the House two days earlier and firmly opposed by Charles Fleetwood.32CJ vii. 496b; Burton’s Diary, i. 379. With Jenkinson, Miles was placed on the committee drafting a clause in the settlement to deal with delinquents and papists (20 Mar.), and he was among MPs delegated to attend Cromwell to represent the views of the House (27 Mar.) and receive his scruples on the Humble Petition and Advice (7 Apr.).33CJ vii. 508b, 514b, 521b. He was listed as having, in the meantime, voted for the kingship (25 Mar.).34The Narrative of the Late Parliament (1658), 22 (E.935.5). In the latter half of March a clutch of nominations to investigate petitions came his way, some readily explicable (relating to rights in the Forest of Dean, 14 Mar., and to settlement of lands in Ireland, where his uncle was still titular deputy, 17 Mar.), some with Oxfordshire ramifications (settlement of land among the heirs of Sir Peter Vanlore, 17 Mar.), and some of less obvious interest (16 Mar., 31 Mar.).35CJ vii. 503b, 505a, 505b, 515b. Then as Lord Fleetwood was implicated in attempts to quash the offer of the crown in early May, on the 5th Miles was a teller for a majority desiring a vote on a brief adjournment of the Commons in anticipation of the presentation of a petition from the army.36CJ vii. 530b. Once the crisis had passed, and the protector had not only declined the crown but also been reconciled with Fleetwood senior, apart from a nomination with Norreys to the committee dealing with the dispute between the Levant Company and the former ambassador to Constantinople, Sir Sackville Crowe (21 May), Miles faded into the background.37CJ vii. 536a. For the last five weeks of the session he was absent from the record. The only extant evidence of his presence in the second session of the Parliament is a diary entry for 30 January 1658 in which he is noted as offering ambiguous congratulations to Thomas Scot I*, a longstanding defender of the rights of the Commons against encroachment by the executive power, for his long speech the previous day.38Burton’s Diary, i. 379.

In 1657 Fleetwood had been named as an assessment commissioner for both Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire.39A. and O. In March 1658 he, Jenkinson and John Cary were once again appointed to enquire into disputes relating to Wychwood forest.40CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 347. That November he participated in Cromwell’s funeral procession in his capacity as clerk of the privy seal, but he resigned the office three weeks later, when he was granted the more lucrative place of a teller in receipt of the exchequer; this carried a salary of £400 and a house.41Burton’s Diary, ii. 524; E403/2523, pp. 184-7. By 1659 he had almost certainly become a freeman of Woodstock. On 12 January he was returned to Parliament for the borough with Charles Fleetwood’s client Jerome Sankey*, who gradually emerged in the House as a staunch critic of the protectorate of Richard Cromwell*.42C219/47. Although a member of the committee of elections and privileges, Miles Fleetwood received no other nominations during the session.43CJ vii. 594b. However, with Sir Thomas Barnardiston*, a lukewarm supporter of the protectorate, he was a teller on 5 April for the majority who endorsed the observation of a fast day on 18 May.44CJ vii. 626a. It is conceivable that he was not party to his uncle’s political manoeuvrings, but simply had a preference for individual piety and due parliamentary process.

By the end of 1659 Fleetwood might plausibly have been backing his father’s efforts to encourage Bulstrode Whitelocke and Charles Fleetwood to devise a compromise settlement.45Whitelocke Diary, 551-2. As pressure for a restoration of the monarchy gathered pace, on 8 March 1660 Miles was individually added as a militia commissioner for Oxfordshire.46CJ vii. 867a. When Sir William regained his place as a cupbearer to the king on 1 June, Miles was named as a gentleman of the privy chamber extraordinary.47LC3/2, f. 9. For two years he remained prominent on the common council of Woodstock.48Oxon. RO, Woodstock archives BOR4/5/A1/1. He headed what appears to be a list of supporters of Sir William Fleetwood’s successful candidature for a borough seat the 1661 parliamentary election in a contest with Peregrine Bertie†, who was promoted by the new lord lieutenant, Henry Cary*, 4th viscount Falkland, and the new high steward, Sir Thomas Spencer†.49Oxon. RO, BOR4/11/A4/1v. But with others on the list he was formally expelled from the corporation on 10 July 1662.50Oxon. RO, BOR4/5/A1/1, f. 4v. This may have been the signal for Fleetwood to make his home definitively at Aldwincle, yet, with his father still a prominent local figure, he was listed in August as a ‘foreign freeman’.51Oxon. RO, BOR4/5/A1/1, f. 8v.

The abolition of the court of wards and the non-appearance of compensation for Sir William closed off one potential source of income to his son, and in time the grant of the rangership in Woodstock park to a third party deprived him of another. Fleetwood’s second marriage in 1667 to the widow of Sir Oliver St John improved his fortunes slightly, but he remained in straitened circumstances. However, he continued to benefit from better-placed friends and, having inherited Aldwincle in 1674, re-surfaced as a whig Member for Northamptonshire in the Exclusion Parliaments.52HP Commons 1660-1690. His will of 16 August 1686, which expressed his confidence that by the merits of his Saviour he would be ‘received into the mansions of eternal joy and happiness’, made provision for his three surviving sons.53PROB11/397/53. Although well-established at the Middle Temple and with the Levant and East India Companies, none of these entered Parliament.54Northants. N and Q n.s. i. 116.