FETTIPLACE, John (1583-1658), of Swinbrook, Oxon. and Childrey, Berks.

The Fettiplaces of Childrey, a cadet branch of a family which had been established in the county for over three centuries, were by the seventeenth century one of the wealthier gentry families in Berkshire. John, the eldest of 12 sons and the heir to that fortune, had already served twice as a knight of the shire.23Dunlop, ‘Fettiplace’, 205-6, 287; PROB11/123/89. However, his recorded activity in both the 1626 and 1628 Parliament was slight.24HP Commons 1604-1629. In 1630 he was slow in paying his knighthood fine, so his appointment as sheriff of Berkshire later that year might have been intended as a punishment for such tardiness.25SP16/180/24, ff. 91v-94; List of Sheriffs, 6; Coventry Docquets, 363; CSP Dom. 1631-3, pp. 45, 53, 91, 113. If so, it made him no more willing to contribute towards further demands for money later in that decade. In 1636 he objected to paying his Ship Money assessment and in 1639 he refused to give any money towards the king’s war against the Scottish Covenanters.26SP16/336/5/i; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 912. Such reluctance stands in striking contrast to his role only a few years later.

Reporting on the prospects for the Berkshire election in December 1639, Sir Edmund Sawyer† could not rule out the possibility that Fettiplace might stand.27CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 162. Fettiplace not only stood but won one of the two county seats in the Short Parliament. Given his previous reluctance to assist the king, he appeared someone who would continue that stance once elected. He then played no known part in this Parliament’s brief proceedings. Yet a early hint that he was actually not entirely unsympathetic to the king’s policies came that summer when, as a justice of the peace, he took action against a local man reported to have made seditious remarks about Charles I and the archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud. According to his source, the remark in question was that the king was ruled by Laud and that the archbishop had converted to Catholicism. Fettiplace passed on what he uncovered about the incident to the secretary of state, Sir Francis Windebanke*.28CSP Dom. 1640, p. 528. This does not seem to have harmed his re-election as knight of the shire several months later.

As one of the wealthier Members, Fettiplace was among MPs who on 21 November 1640 offered security of £2,000 to underwrite the loan Parliament was seeking from the City of London.29Procs. LP i. 229, 232, 236, 238. The following month he was included on the committee set up to investigate the complaints against John Gorges*.30CJ ii. 51b. Before long, however, his doubts about the general stance being taken by Parliament became apparent. It did so in the most obvious fashion, for he was one of the minority of MPs who, on 21 April 1641, voted against the bill to attaint the 1st earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†).31Procs. LP iv. 42, 51. From this point onwards, many of his colleagues would have viewed Fettiplace with suspicion. It was doubtless to reassure them that he took the Protestation two weeks later.32CJ ii. 133b. But his apparent inactivity at Westminster over the next year as the political crisis deepened can be interpreted as being consistent with growing unease on his part at the direction his colleagues were insisting on taking. Apart from sitting on the committee concerning the minor matter of Viscount Castleton’s estates (28 Feb. 1642), his only committee appointment in this period was to consider complaints about seditious pamphlets, an issue about which all MPs, however unradical, could have concerns (5 Apr.).33CJ ii. 461b, 512b. As civil war became a real possibility, others picked up on his lack of enthusiasm for what Parliament was doing. On 11 August 1642 MPs were asked individually whether they would venture their lives and fortunes in support of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, as Parliament’s new lord general. Fettiplace was one of those who were assumed by Sir Simonds D’Ewes* to have done so only against their better judgements after seeing the rough treatment given to William Jesson* when he refused.34PJ iii. 295. Yet, for the time being, Fettiplace remained at Westminster. In September 1642 he even promised to provide four horses to the parliamentarian army, although he may subsequently have asked to be allowed to provide money instead.35CJ ii. 772b, 801b, What is rather more revealing is that he seems otherwise to have continued to play no part in parliamentary proceedings. Moreover, unlike most MPs, he did not rush to take the oath introduced in early June 1643 in the wake of Edmund Waller’s* plot. On the contrary, he asked for time to consider whether he should swear it and only did so after delaying for two days.36CJ iii. 118b, 120a.

Ever since late 1642 when the king had decided to base himself at Oxford, there must have been a recurring temptation for Fettiplace to abandon Parliament. His estates in both Berkshire and Oxfordshire were in the areas controlled by the king. By the autumn of 1643 he had gone over. So on 28 September he was one of the MPs summoned to appear by 10 October to explain their absences.37CJ iii. 256b. He did not do so. On 22 January 1644 the Commons at Westminster therefore expelled him.38CJ iii. 374a; Harl. 165, f. 280. But he had not just abandoned Parliament. Given his local landownership, joining the king and his shadow Parliament at Oxford was easy enough. Fettiplace did more than that. On 27 January 1644 he was the first Member of the royalist Commons to sign the letter from the Oxford Parliament to the earl of Essex.39Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 573. More significantly, he and John Ashburnham* were among the four treasurers appointed to receive the voluntary loan of £100,000 approved by that Parliament.40CSP Dom. 1644, p. 13; Harl. 166, f. 32. The assumption must be that Fettiplace had been particularly generous in the amount he ‘lent’ to the king. He also served as a royalist excise commissioner and a commissioner for administrating oaths.41Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 259, 263, 268. The Committee for Advance of Money in London responded by fining him £1,000, although they were never able to collect this.42CCAM 435, 1308.

Fettiplace was still in Oxford when the city surrendered in July 1646. He was taken prisoner and, at some point, was transferred to Parliament’s London prison for captured royalists, Petre House.43CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 302. As was his right under the articles of surrender, he applied to compound in October 1646. On 1 December the Committee for Compounding fixed his fine at £1,943.44CCC 1542; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 486. This was calculated as being one-tenth of the value of estates which brought him a gross annual income (before deductions) of £886 17s 1d.45CJ v. 412a. Parliament finally approved this as the figure for his composition on 7 February 1648.46CJ v. 412a, 451b; LJ x. 27a. Eight months after that the Derby House Committee agreed that he could be released from custody.47CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 302.

The cause to which, after some hesitation, he had committed himself five years earlier had ended in ignominious defeat. Resuming a political career was not an option. He instead took refuge in charitable work. As he had never married and had become ‘an old bachelor’, he had no children of his own to provide for. It may not be too much of a stretch to assume that, in now using some of his wealth to endow a grammar school at Dorchester, he was seeking a substitute for the family he had never had. The remains of Dorchester Abbey and some of the former monastic lands had been acquired by his family in the late sixteenth century.48VCH Oxon. vii. 43. Fettiplace now converted one of the abbey buildings into a schoolroom and in 1652 handed over his estates to trustees to provide a stipend of £20 for the schoolmaster.49Parochial Colls. ed. Davis, 114-15; PROB11/278/316; Oxon. RO, ARCH/6/E/2, ff. 265-276; VCH Oxon. i. 468-9.

Fettiplace died in 1658, probably on 20 March, although some sources say 21 March.50Parochial Collns. ed. Davis, 298; Dunlop, ‘Fettiplace’, 206. He left instructions that he was to be buried in the family’s aisle in the church at Swinbrook ‘according to the custom of burial in Queen Elizabeth’s time’, which was probably a hint that he wanted the Book of Common Prayer to be used. Without any dependants to provide for, he was able to make a series of substantial bequests to his many relatives.51PROB11/278/316. Most of his lands, which were still held by his trustees, passed to his younger brother Edward.52VCH Berks. iv. 276. The chancel in the church at Swinbrook already contained a triple monument commemorating Fettiplace’s father, grandfather and great-grandfather. In 1686 his nephew Sir Edmund Fettiplace bt. erected a similar monument to commemorate Fettiplace and two other members of the family.53Parochial Collns. ed. Davis, 294-5; Pevsner, Oxon. 800, pl. 68. Sir Edmund had reason to be grateful, for the baronetcy he had been granted by Charles II in 1661 may well have been intended, in part, to reward his late uncle’s service to Charles I in Oxford between 1643 and 1646.