he was in complete, sometimes most active, sympathy. Shortly
before the outbreak of the second Civil War, Fairfax succeeded
his father in the barony and in the office of governor of Hull;
In the field against the English Royalists in 1648 he displayed
his former energy and skill, and his operations culminated in the
successful siege of Colchester, after the surrender of which place
he approved the execution of the Royalist leaders Sir Charles
Lucas and Sir George Lisle, holding that these officers had broken
their parole. At the same time Cromwell’s great victory of
Preston crushed the Scots, and the Independents became
practically all-powerful.
Milton, in a sonnet written during the siege of Colchester, called upon the lord general to settle the kingdom, but the crisis was now at hand. Fairfax was in agreement with Cromwell and the army leaders in demanding the punishment of Charles, and he was still the effective head of the army. He approved, if he did not take an active part in, Pride’s Purge (December 6th, 1648), but on the last and gravest of the questions at issue he set himself in deliberate and open opposition to the policy of the officers. He was placed at the head of the judges who were to try the king, and attended the preliminary sitting of the court. Then, convinced at last that the king’s death was intended, he refused to act. In calling over the court, when the crier pronounced the name of Fairfax, a lady in the gallery called out “that the Lord Fairfax was not there in person, that he would never sit among them, and that they did him wrong to name him as a commissioner.” This was Lady Fairfax, who could not forbear, as Whitelocke says, to exclaim aloud against the proceedings of the High Court of Justice. His last service as commander-in-chief was the suppression of the Leveller mutiny at Burford in May 1649. He had given his adhesion to the new order of things, and had been reappointed lord general. But he merely administered the affairs of the army, and when in 1650 the Scots had declared for Charles II., and the council of state resolved to send an army to Scotland in order to prevent an invasion of England, Fairfax resigned his commission. Cromwell was appointed his successor, “captain-general and commander-in-chief of all the forces raised or to be raised by authority of parliament within the commonwealth of England.” Fairfax received a pension of £5000 a year, and lived in retirement at his Yorkshire home of Nunappleton till after the death of the Protector. The troubles of the later Commonwealth recalled Lord Fairfax to political activity, and for the last time his appearance in arms helped to shape the future of the country, when Monk invited him to assist in the operations about to be undertaken against Lambert’s army. In December 1659 he appeared at the head of a body of Yorkshire gentlemen, and such was the influence of Fairfax’s name and reputation that 1200 horse quitted Lambert’s colours and joined him. This was speedily followed by the breaking up of all Lambert’s forces, and that day secured the restoration of the monarchy. A “free” parliament was called; Fairfax was elected member for Yorkshire, and was put at the head of the commission appointed by the House of Commons to wait upon Charles II. at the Hague and urge his speedy return. Of course the “merry monarch, scandalous and poor,” was glad to obey the summons, and Fairfax provided the horse on which Charles rode at his coronation. The remaining eleven years of the life of Lord Fairfax were spent in retirement at his seat in Yorkshire. He must, like Milton, have been sorely grieved and shocked by the scenes that followed—the brutal indignities offered to the remains of his companions in arms, Cromwell and Ireton, the sacrifice of Sir Harry Vane, the neglect or desecration of all that was great, noble or graceful in England, and the flood of immorality which, flowing from Whitehall, sapped the foundations of the national strength and honour. Lord Fairfax died at Nunappleton on the 12th of November 1671, and was buried at Bilborough, near York. As a soldier he was exact and methodical in planning, in the heat of battle “so highly transported that scarce any one durst speak a word to him” (Whitelocke), chivalrous and punctilious in his dealings with his own men and the enemy. Honour and conscientiousness were equally the characteristics of his private and public character. But his modesty and distrust of his powers made him less effectual as a statesman than as a soldier, and above all he is placed at a disadvantage by being both in war and peace overshadowed by his associate Cromwell.
Lord Fairfax had a taste for literature. He translated some of the Psalms, and wrote poems on solitude, the Christian warfare, the shortness of life, &c. During the last year or two of his life he wrote two Memorials which have been published—one on the northern actions in which he was engaged in 1642–1644, and the other on some events in his tenure of the chief command. At York and at Oxford he endeavoured to save the libraries from pillage, and he enriched the Bodleian with some valuable MSS. His only daughter, Mary Fairfax, was married to George Villiers, the profligate duke of Buckingham of Charles II.’s court.
His correspondence, edited by G. W. Johnson, was published in 1848–1849 in four volumes (see note thereon in Dict. Nat. Biogr., s.v.), and a life of him by Clements R. Markham in 1870. See also S. R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War (1893).
His descendant Thomas, 6th baron (1692–1782), inherited from his mother, the heiress of Thomas, 2nd Baron Culpepper, large estates in Virginia, U.S.A., and having sold Denton Hall and his Yorkshire estates he retired there about 1746, dying a bachelor. He was a friend of George Washington. Thomas found his cousin William Fairfax settled in Virginia, and made him his agent, and Bryan (1737–1802), the son of William Fairfax, eventually inherited the title, becoming 8th baron in 1793. His claim was admitted by the House of Lords in 1800. But it was practically dropped by the American family, until, shortly before the coronation of Edward VII., the successor in title was discovered in Albert Kirby Fairfax (b. 1870), a descendant of the 8th baron, who was an American citizen. In November 1908 Albert’s claim to the title as 12th baron was allowed by the House of Lords.
FAIRFIELD, a township in Fairfield county, Connecticut,
U.S.A., near Long Island Sound, adjoining Bridgeport on the E.
and Westport on the W. Pop. (1890) 3868; (1900) 4489 (1041
being foreign-born); (1910) 6134. It is served by the New York,
New Haven & Hartford railway. The principal villages of the
township are Fairfield, Southport, Greenfield Hill and Stratfield.
The beautiful scenery and fine sea air attract to the township a
considerable number of summer visitors. The township has the
well-equipped Pequot and Fairfield memorial libraries (the
former in the village of Southport, the latter in the village of
Fairfield), the Fairfield fresh air home (which cares for between
one and two hundred poor children of New York during each
summer season), and the Gould home for self-supporting women.
The Fairfield Historical Society has a museum of antiquities
and a collection of genealogical and historical works. Among
Fairfield’s manufactures are chemicals, wire and rubber goods.
Truck-gardening is an important industry of the township. In
the Pequot Swamp within the present Fairfield a force of Pequot
Indians was badly defeated in 1637 by some whites, among whom
was Roger Ludlow, who, attracted by the country, founded the
settlement in 1639 and gave it its present name in 1645. Within
its original limits were included what are now the townships of
Redding (separated, 1767), Weston (1787) and Easton (formed
from part of Weston in 1845), and parts of the present Westport
and Bridgeport. During the colonial period Fairfield was a
place of considerable importance, but subsequently it was greatly
outstripped by Bridgeport, to which, in 1870, a portion of it
was annexed. On the 8th of July 1779 Fairfield was burned by
the British and Hessians under Governor William Tryon. Among
the prominent men who have lived in Fairfield are Roger Sherman,
the first President Dwight of Yale (who described Fairfield
in his Travels and in his poem Greenfield Hill), Chancellor James
Kent, and Joseph Earle Sheffield.
See Frank S. Child, An Old New England Town, Sketches of Life, Scenery and Character (New York, 1895); and Mrs E. H. Schenck, History of Fairfield (2 vols., New York, 1889–1905).
FAIRFIELD, a city and the county-seat of Jefferson county, Iowa, U.S.A., about 51 m. W. by N. of Burlington. Pop. (1890) 3391; (1900) 4689, of whom 206 were foreign-born and 54 were
