FLEETWOOD, Sir William (1603-74), of Aldwincle All Saints, Northants. and High Lodge, Woodstock, Oxon.

Fleetwood’s entry to the Commons followed well-established family tradition, and indeed he sat with both his father, Sir Miles Fleetwood*, and his uncle, Sir Gerard Fleetwood*. However, his contribution to proceedings in this period was confined to an inconspicuous role in the Short Parliament. Such political profile as he enjoyed in these two decades arose from his involvement in the other longstanding family business – officeholding. His full-blown parliamentary career began only in 1661.

After education at Emmanuel, the archetypal puritan college, Fleetwood was launched at the age of about 20 into the very different world of the court, perhaps through the patronage of George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham, of whom his father was a client.22Al. Cant. By July 1624, when he was favoured with a knighthood, he had become cupbearer to James I. He was to hold this position under two subsequent monarchs and over half a century.23Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 185; CTB iv. 471-2. It was 13 years before he obtained a second office, that of keeper of the royal forest of Woodstock in succession to his uncle Gerard, and 14 before he secured the reversion of a third, that of receiver general of the court of wards in succession to his father (and his grandfather Sir William Fleetwood†).24Woodstock Chamberlains’ Accts. 165. None the less, it is likely that the opportunities for profit afforded by moving in these circles reached him sooner. With relatives in the Fleetwood and Luke families he engaged in a variety of land transactions in the 1630s, including the acquisition, allegedly at a profit of £3,000, of a mortgage on lands in Ireland belonging to Lord Lambert, newly out of wardship.25CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 95; Coventry Docquets, 646, 722. Fleetwood’s second wife Elizabeth, whom he married in November 1638 (and who was promptly awarded a £250 pension from the crown in the event of his death), was a minor and an heiress.26Kettering par. reg.; CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 182. In 1640 he acquired from St John kin the manor of Bolnhurst in Bedfordshire.27VCH Beds. iii. 125.

Fleetwood joined the Northamptonshire commission of the peace in December 1631, but Oxfordshire, where he achieved parallel office in June 1638, assumed a greater importance in his life.28Coventry Docquets, 66; C231/5, p. 300. From the first, his duties at Woodstock Park appear to have entailed regular contact with the borough.29Woodstock Chamberlains’ Accts. 178-80, 188, 197, 201. His uncle (1625 and 1626) and his father (1628) had successively represented Woodstock in Parliament, so when in spring 1640 Sir Miles opted for Hindon instead, Sir William’s election may have seemed a matter of course. The return with him of the recorder William Lenthall*, who had sat in 1624 but been squeezed out thereafter by a combination of the Fleetwoods and the interest of the borough’s and manor’s high steward, Philip Herbert*, later 4th earl of Pembroke, may have testified to local resistance to the policies of the personal rule. Sir William’s position is unclear, however. It may be that he shared his father’s combination of concern for godly religion with personal loyalty to the regime which he had served. It may also be that at this juncture Pembroke supported him as an anti-Laudian moderate.30Aylmer, King’s Servants, 38; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘New Woodstock’; VCH Oxon. xii. 440.

Whatever the truth of this, unlike his father Fleetwood did not, once the Parliament met, reveal himself as a critic of royal policies after all. His sole appointment was on 16 April to the committee for privileges.31CJ ii. 4a. There is no surviving evidence that he spoke.

Perhaps this record counted against him in elections to the Long Parliament. By the autumn Pembroke wanted a seat for his second son, William Herbert II*, and despite the fact that the latter was initially absent abroad, it was he who was returned with Lenthall for Woodstock. An initiative to nominate Fleetwood and a townsman, Benjamin Merrick, collected about 45 signatures of freemen, but made no headway.32VCH Oxon. xii. 401. When Herbert, who was also elected for Downton and Monmouthshire, chose to sit for the county, a second writ was issued (24 Nov.), but almost certainly through Pembroke’s influence again, his substitute was Sir Robert Pye I*.33C231/5, p. 414. Any alternatives were definitively rejected by the Commons on 5 January 1641, by which time Lenthall was thoroughly established as Speaker.34CJ ii. 63a.

Although in March 1641 Fleetwood inherited both his father’s Northamptonshire estate (probably encumbered by debt to the crown) and his receivership, he remained active in Woodstock.35Bell, Ct. of Wards and Liveries, 25; CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 509. On the eve of civil war he obtained a warrant for felling trees to effect repairs to the park.36CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 317. While his brother Charles Fleetwood* and others in his family adhered to Parliament, Sir William, like Sir Gerard, stayed with the king and was named as a commissioner of array in Northamptonshire in July 1642.37Northants. RO, FH133. At some point during the year he stood bail for Robert Wright, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, who had been released from the Tower pending impeachment with other bishops for treason, but on 1 October Charles I unilaterally released both the bishop and his guarantors from their obligation.38Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 341. In December the king adjourned the court of wards to Oxford and then, if not before, Fleetwood joined him. He appears to have been based there for the period that the city was the royalist headquarters, and, notwithstanding the formidable difficulties of running the court in such circumstances and its inevitably reduced revenues, to have raised useful sums for the cause.39LJ v. 561b-562b; Bell, Ct. of Wards and Liveries, 150-3; CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 294-5; Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 409; CAM 1319. In May 1643 his children were given a pass by the Commons to go to Woodstock, presumably to take up residence at his lodge in the park, and he managed to maintain cordial relations with the corporation (supplying them with venison pasties in return for cake).40CJ iii. 100b; Woodstock Chamberlains’ Accts. 199, 200.

Fleetwood also kept contact with his parliamentarian kin. When in 1643 he was chased for unpaid assessment, the Committee for Advance of Money discovered that his uncle Sir Oliver Luke* was living in his house and thus that they would need to separate Luke’s goods from Fleetwood’s before taking further action.41CAM 21. That December Parliament took the somewhat theoretical decision to sequester Fleetwood from his wards office, only to award it to his brother Charles in February 1644.42CJ iii. 336a, 391b. Given Charles’ military responsibilities and the uncertain status of the court in parliamentary eyes, it is unlikely he gave the acquisition much attention, and the consequence for fraternal relations is difficult to gauge. In other matters a measure of protection worked both ways. In May 1645 the Presbyterian parliamentarian commander Sir Samuel Luke* warned his aunt, Fleetwood’s mother, to expect royalist forces imminently at Aldwincle. ‘Nonetheless’, he added, ‘I pity you the less because I know your son will secure you’.43Luke Letter Bks. 286. It must have been Sir William, rather than Charles, by this time also in command of a regiment, whom he had in mind on this occasion.

Once Colonels Thomas Rainborowe* and Charles Fleetwood had captured Woodstock on 26 April 1646 and the king had accepted the inevitability of the imminent fall of Oxford, Sir William was a natural choice for the delegation sent the few miles north from the city to negotiate with the New Model army. With a handful of other royal servants headed by James Stuart, 1st duke of Richmond, and Montague Bertie, 2nd earl of Lindsey, Fleetwood submitted to the army at Woodstock before 1 May and shortly afterwards helped arrive at preliminary terms for surrender.44Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 260; CCC 1403; Lincs. RO, 8-ANC8/52. With others of the party, on 18 June he was admitted to compound on the Oxford Articles.45CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 220-1. His petition as a servant in ordinary, certified as suffering from dropsy, was heard by the Committee for Compounding on 1 December. In view of his past activity, the fine, fixed at £720 on 14 January 1647, appears based on a rather modest valuation of his estates. Conceivably lingering encumbrances from his father’s debts were taken into account; certainly there was an immediate proviso that the fine would be reduced to £585 if it could be proved that £90 were committed in annuities for Colonel Fleetwood and his sister.46CCC 1403. The king’s request to General Sir Thomas Fairfax* on 17 June 1647 that Sir William be allowed to attend him at Newmarket seems not to have been granted or obeyed; at any rate it did not apparently prejudice the course of Fleetwood’s composition.47Clarke Pprs. i. 137. The process, still unfolding in 1649 and 1650, was helped along by Woodstock’s recorder, Bulstrode Whitelocke*, and at least half of the fine, probably further reduced, was paid by Charles Fleetwood.48Whitelocke Diary, 240; CCC 1403.

Meanwhile, by November 1647 Sir William had taken up residence in Woodstock Park, where a succession of his children and grandchildren (from his eldest son Miles Fleetwood*) were baptized between then and February 1656.49Wootton, Oxon. par. reg. Despite legislation against delinquents holding office, a survey of October 1649 undertaken by commissioners appointed to value the former royal manor revealed that, thanks to their patents from the earl of Pembroke, Sir William and his uncle Sir Gerard were still in possession, respectively, of a ranger’s and a keeper’s place. Sir William claimed that, owing to the demolition of his own house during wider destruction in the time the town was garrisoned, he had had to spend £50 or £60 on construction of new accommodation in the house of the deputy steward.50Bodl. Top. Oxon. c.85. The same local sentiment which accorded a hostile reception to the government commissioners, headed by the deputy recorder, Richard Croke*, and his brother Unton Croke II*, may have assisted Fleetwood in the quiet retention of his position over the next decade.51The Woodstock Scuffle (1650, E.587.5); The Just Devil of Woodstock (1661, E.1055.10). As ever, friends and family doubtless also helped: the replacement of Pembroke by Charles Fleetwood in 1655 signalled continuity rather than change.52VCH Oxon. xii. 374.

A degree of continuity was apparent elsewhere. From 1656 Sir William’s son Miles Fleetwood* was on the Woodstock commission of the peace. That year he was elected to Parliament for Oxfordshire, with Charles Fleetwood’s deputy, Major-general William Packer* sitting for New Woodstock, but Miles was returned for the borough in 1659. That there was perceived solidarity among the Fleetwoods is attested by a dedication at this date to the three brothers, Sir William, General George (created a Swedish baron after service to Gustavus Adolphus) and Lord Charles. It likewise gives a rare indication that Sir William shared his siblings’ piety. Nathaniel Whiting, rector of Aldwincle All Saints from some time after 1645 until his ejection in 1662 and eventually licensed as a Congregational minister, paid tribute to the ‘three brethren’ who, by the grace of God, could ‘give forth narratives of such notable and numerous escapes’ from the vagaries of the world. He was ‘not ashamed to tell the world how ancient and affectionate a Maecenas’ Sir William had been to him from university days, ‘how freely and speedily’ his patron had placed him at Aldwincle, and how much of a friend he had found him at a time when many other ministers had been less fortunate. He boldly reminded Sir William of deliverance from some mishap in the Thames, of frequent reversals of ‘the sentence of death, when you have been under painful and languishing distempers’, of providential loosening from ‘the noise and vanity of a court’, and of safety in the late war.53N. Whiting, Old Jacobs Altar Newly Repaired (1659), [ff. 3, 4v].

According to Whitelocke, in the political uncertainty of late 1659 Sir William encouraged him to discuss some kind of resolution with Charles Fleetwood.54Whitelocke Diary, 551-2. At the Restoration Sir William, contrasted with his brothers in royalist hagiography as ‘a very loyal and honest gentleman’, resumed his place as cupbearer.55W. Winstanley, The Loyall Martyrology (1665), 141; Officials of the Royal Household, ix. 106. In theory, but not in practice, he was compensated to the tune of £4,000 for the loss of his office in the abolished court of wards.56Bell, Ct. of Wards, 165-6; CTB iv. 471-2. In company with other ex-royalists, he repaid Whitelocke with a testimony to his helpfulness during the late troubles.57Whitelocke Diary, 599. Restored in August 1660 to its commission of the peace and frequently engaged on the business of his rangership of Woodstock park, where he still had his chief residence, Fleetwood was again elected to Parliament for the borough in 1661.58C181/7, f. 30; CSP Dom. 1661-2, pp. 195, 284, 302, 315, 503, 606; 1663-4, pp. 224, 475, 485; CTB i. 384, 417, 589, 610; VCH Oxon. xii. 440; HP Commons 1660-1690. Fragmentary evidence suggests that, in a contest with Peregrine Bertie†, son of the earl of Lindsey, his supporters included all the leading members of the common council ejected in 1662, among them Miles. In contrast, Bertie counted among his backers representatives of the new regime like Henry Cary*, 4th Viscount Falkland, and Sir Thomas Spencer, newly installed as high steward. 59Oxon. RO, BOR4/11/A4/1v. Yet once in Parliament Fleetwood was regarded as a court dependent.60HP Commons 1660-1690. A friend of secretary of state Joseph Williamson, in 1668 he collaborated with Edward Hyde*, 1st earl of Clarendon, in an attack on Woodstock’s new charter, only to be defeated by Spencer, his fellow MP.61CSP Dom. 1664-5, pp. 140, 494; VCH Oxon. xii. 374. His ‘long and faithful service’ to successive monarchs and the financial hardship he had suffered through lack of appropriate reward was recognised in February 1674, the month of his death.62CTB iv. 471-2; Northants. N and Q n.s. i. 113. His modest estates were inherited by his son Miles, who had retired to Alwinkle and who sat for Northamptonshire in three Exclusion Parliaments.