Thomas Fleetwood

“ Fleetwood, however, engaged him for the ensuing season, and as Poins he reappeared on 24 Sept. 1734 at Drury Lane, where, with a solitary migration to the Haymarket in 1744, he remained until 1748. But his uncontrollable temper led him to frequent difficulties there. In 1735 he caused the death of Thomas Hallam, a brother-actor, in the green-room of Drury Lane, in a pitiful quarrel concerning a wig which Macklin had worn in a farce called ' Trick for Trick,' and which Hallam had taken. ”

“ Fleetwood's case is that "whatever the complainant or his ancestors have enjoyed of the said tithes has been obtained at and by the special licence and consent of the said Fleetwood and his predecessors, parsons of Wigan, for a certain yearly rent, and that the late Earl of Derby did often acknowledge that he was tenant of the said tithes unto Fleetwood, without claiming any right of inheritance; that the complainant and his ancestors have paid a yearly rent £12 13s. ”

“ From that marriage there sprang one son, William Fleetwood, who subsequently espoused Ellyn, the daughter of Robert Standish, and had issue John, Thomas, and Robert Fleetwood. Of these three sons, Thomas, the second, resided at Vach in the county of Buckingham, and at the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII., about 1536, purchased from that monarch the reversion of the lease of Rossall Grange, then held by the Allens from the Abbot and convent of Deulacres, in Staffordshire. ”

“ Ashurst of Ashurst, among the parishioners of Wigan are described as being "soundly affected in religion." While it is said that all the ladies, widows and gentlewomen whose names are given, among whom are Annie Langton, wife of Thomas Langton, baron of Newton, and Johane Lethwet of Pemberton in Wigan parish, are recusants.
Fleetwood's intolerance of the religious views of others will have doubtless made him many enemies. ”

“ Fleetwood's papers, or sent by him to the authorities in London.
The town of Wigan at this period was progressing in civilization and its attendant luxuries; and Holinshed, in his Itinerary from Cockermouth to London, enumerates, amongst other places, Kendal, Burton, Lancaster, Preston, Wigan, and Warrington, where the inns were well furnished with "napierie, bedding, and tapisserie. Each commer," says he, "is sure to lie in cleane sheets wherein no man hath been lodged since they came from the landresse. ”

“ It was deemed essential by those in authority, at this critical period, that the county magistracy should be sound and well affected towards the government; and although the Earl of Derby did not conceive any material change to be necessary, the lord treasurer, on the suggestion of Edward Fleetwood, rector of Wigan, and others, caused a new commission to be issued, in which the names of several fresh magistrates were introduced, and a considerable number of those who were thought to be favourable to the recusants omitted. ”

“ Fleetwood replies that the said burgesses "have no right by charter to keep the courts leet nor any other court claimed by him in his bill of complaint, —nor any right to the customs and liberties or other things by them alleged ”

“ If the traveller haue an horse, his bed dooth cost him nothing, but if he go on foot he is sure to paie a penie for the same: but whether he be horsman or foote, if his chamber be once appointed, he may carie the kaie with him, as of his owne house, so long as he lodgeth there." [53]
In 1590 there were 3,000 communicants at Wigan parish church, the parson, Edward Fleetwood, was "a preacher," as also was another minister whose name is not given. At the two chapels of Holland and Billinge there were no preachers. ”

“ As to Holland chapel in the parish of Wigan, the charge against the parish (or chapelry) itself is that there is no curate there, "though by Mr. Fleetwood's means they have never wanted service on the Sabbaoth daie." Against the wardens there it is charged that there are "no books but the Booke of Comon praier, and the Byble wch is ould and torne." There is "a table, but an yll favored one, no comunion cup of silver; no blacke coveringe for the Comunion Table; no cheste, nor Boxe for the Poore. The surples [is] verie olde. One Mr. ”

“ Myles Gerrard of Ince gent and . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . suffer your said orator and his undertenants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . thereof to take the rents," [18] &c.
The remainder of the membrane is so utterly disconnected and vague that it would be useless to attempt to transcribe it.
It is probable that a commission was issued to enquire into the matter; and the pretensions of the Mayor and burgesses may be guessed by the replication of Fleetwood to the answers of Francis Sherington and others. ”

“ A rich man’s easy smile over losses at play, merely taught his emulous troop to feel themselves poor devils in the pocket. But Fleetwood’s contempt of Sleep was a marvel, superhuman, and accused them of an inferior vigour, hard for young men to admit by the example. He never went to bed. Issuing from Fortune’s hall-doors in the bright, lively, summer morning, he mounted horse and was away to the hills. Or he took the arm of a Roman Catholic nobleman, Lord Feltre, and walked with him from the green tables and the establishment’s renowned dry still Sillery to a Papist chapel. ”

“ These are nights that weaken us to below the level of women. A shuttle worked in Fleetwood’s head. He defended the men of the world. Lord Feltre oiled them, damned them, kindled them to a terrific expiatory blaze, and extinguishingly salved and wafted aloft the released essence of them. Maniacal for argument, Fleetwood rejected the forgiveness of sins, if sins they be. Prove them sins, and the suffering is of necessity everlasting, his insomnia logic insisted. Whichever side he took, his wife was against him; not in speech, but in her look. ”

“ Then the door was opened by a very old man wearing the black “swallow-tail” clothes and choker of an old-time butler, spotless, quite immaculate, but cut after a fashion no young man remembers.
“Good evening,” said Fleetwood, entering, followed on tiptoe by Plank.
“Good evening, sir.”... A pause; and in the unsteady voice of age: “Mr. Fleetwood, sir.... Mr.—.” A bow, and the dim eyes peering up at Plank, who stood fumbling for his card-case.
Fleetwood dropped both cards on the salver unsteadily extended. The butler ushered them into a dim room on the right.
“How is Mr. Siward?” ”

“ His excellency, my master, has got cousins in London who have known him from his birth; and, do what you will, you cannot make him out anything but what he is. So, as this blackguard is going himself, you say, to Lady Fleetwood, the day after to-morrow, you can let him go. He'll only get himself into a scrape, and nobody else. ”

“ I shall try to drive to the office to-morrow.”
“Why the devil did you resign from all your clubs? How can I see you if I don't come here?” began Fleetwood impatiently. “I know, of course, that you're not going anywhere, but a man always goes to his club. You don't look well, Stephen. You are too much alone.”
Siward did not answer. His face and body had certainly grown thinner since Fleetwood had last seen him. Plank, too, had been shocked at the change in him—the dark, hard lines under the eyes ”

“ Any one who has been engaged in an undertaking, on which not only their own life and safety depends, but also that of others, and among them of one dearer than life itself, will understand the feelings which animated Fleetwood’s bosom, as the most difficult and dangerous part of the work was about to be accomplished. ”

“ The substance is the same, but the colour and the form are always varying. In the substance lie the permanence and the identity: all else is moulded and painted by circumstance.
Now, substantially there never was a kinder or a better heart in the world than that of Lady Fleetwood. She was ever anxious for the happiness of those around her. ”

“ There was hardly any lapse between the sound of the buzzer inside the apartment and the echo of rapidly approaching footsteps. The footsteps, however, for all their orderly progression, stopped abruptly just short of the inner side of the door. In the pause that followed, Fleetwood reflected with understanding sympathy that he was not alone in the need to brace himself against the impending interview, and he found courage in this fact. Then the door opened and zero hour had arrived. ”

“ Having placed him in authority in Ireland he supported him steadily, but in a tentative way and without doing anything to estrange others. He was civil to Hewson and others who were inclined to give trouble, and refused to believe that Fleetwood was in any way disloyal. ‘Take care,’ he wrote to his son, ‘of making it a business to be too hard for the men who contest with you. Being over-concerned may train you into a snare. ”

“ Here it was, from the roof of the mansion, then occupied by the Earl of Peterborough, that Archbishop Ussher had swooned at the sight of Charles' execution; and here Fleetwood, who from his connection with the Cromwells on the one side, and with the Army on the other, now possessed more power than any other person, gathered together his brother officers for conference. Fleetwood was a pious and respectable Independent, [22] a sincere patriot, a Republican only in a qualified sense, willing to concede to a [26] Protector large administrative authority. ”

“ Fleetwood had spoken candidly enough, he had a frank, open way of looking the world in the face, but these little things do not always spell honesty, and the purser had seen enough of men and things not to take everything absolutely for granted.
"I think you had better see the captain, sir," he said.
"That's precisely what I want," Fleetwood replied.
Half an hour later he found himself closeted in the cabin of the Sheffield with the captain. And Captain Butcher made no secret of the fact that he did not like it at all.
"You must see for yourself that it is very unusual," he said. ”

“ He had to learn something of changes that had come to others as well as to himself. Ah, and then would he dare hint, as base men will? He may blow foul smoke on her, she will shine out of it. He has to learn what she is, that is his lesson; and let him pray all night and work hard all day for it not to be too late. Let him try to be a little like Mr. Woodseer, who worships the countess, and is hearty with the gentleman she treats as her best of friends. There is the real nobleman.
Fleetwood chatted on airily. ”

“ So that when Fleetwood takes occasion in 1584 to recall that originally interludes were merely the by-work of 'men for their lyvings using other honest and lawfull artes, or reteyned in honest services', his argument has already become anachronistic, not wholly justified even as an antiquarian quibble, and still less as a serious appreciation of the administrative facts with which the writer had to deal. The player of the seventeenth century is in fact as necessary a member of the polity as the minstrel of the twelfth or the fourteenth ”

“ Fleetwood said firmly. "There's more and it gets more interesting as it goes along. I've just come from being deceived by a woman named Evelyn who has class, alternately pronounced with a hard and soft 'a', slugged behind the ear by a putty-faced gunman named Mario and pitched headfirst into a black abyss. But I decided the whole sequence was too corny, so I got up off the floor, dusted myself off and called you up just to say hello. Does any of that ring a bell with you, Dermitt?" ”

“ The girls at the magazine racks had tuned up conversationally. Chit-chat was their medium, of the sort that, for all its lack of substance, takes on a certain penetration after a time. In the end, Fleetwood found himself slipping, no matter how unwillingly, into the role of the eavesdropper. As it was, though, he couldn't have selected a more illuminating moment in which to fall from grace.
"I've been following him for years," one of the girls said as Fleetwood dialed in full strength. "I watch for him every time he comes out." ”

“ In civil life, however, the friend’s laugh at us is the loudest of the danger signals to stop our course: and the very wealthy nobleman, who is known for not a fool, is kept from hearing it. Unless he does hear it, he can have no suspicion of its being about him: he cannot imagine such ‘lese-majeste’ in the subservient courtiers too prudent to betray a sign. So Fleetwood was unwarned; and his child-like unconsciousness of the boiling sentiments around, seasoned, pricked, and maddened his parasites under compression to invent, for a faint relief. ”

“ Fleetwood said. He turned away from Mario and stared at Evelyn, a dumb move, the kind of thing a guy does when he finds out that the angel in his life got her halo from the local tinsmith. "You're wasting yourself, Ev," he said softly. "You didn't have to team up with a rotten slob like that, not a gal like you. It's like pitting platinum buttons on a suit of flannel drawers—" ”

“ However, as I have said, Lady Fleetwood felt perfectly confident of success. She was convinced herself, and she thought the same arguments which had produced that effect on her must be convincing with others. She did not remember, indeed, that she was not unlikely to forget one-half of them. Nevertheless she thought, "I will not say a word about it to Maria. It will be a pleasant surprise to her to find that her uncle offers no opposition. I will just wait till she has gone out, and then drive to the city at once."
CHAPTER XXV.
At the door of a hotel in St. ”