George Fleetwood

George Fleetwood was an English Major-General and one of the Regicides of King Charles I of England.

He was born about 1623, the eldest son of Charles Fleetwood of Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire. As a young boy, he inherited his family estate after his father died in 1628. On the outbreak of the First Civil War, Fleetwood raised a troop of dragoons for the Parliament of England and kept the Chiltern Hills in Buckinghamshire as a defensive barrier for London. He was appointed to the county committee for Buckinghamshire in 1644, and was elected recruiter Member of Parliament for the county in 1645. Fleetwood supported the New Model Army during its quarrel with Parliament in 1648, and in January 1649, he was appointed a commissioner on the High Court of Justice for the trial of King Charles. Fleetwood was one of the 59 signatories of the King's death warrant.

During the Commonwealth of England, Fleetwood was appointed colonel of the Buckinghamshire militia and was elected to the Council of State in 1652. He represented Buckinghamshire in the Nominated Assembly of 1653, but as one of the moderates on the Assembly he supported the establishment of the Protectorate in December 1653. He was elected to the First Protectorate Parliament as MP for Buckinghamshire, and served as an "Ejector" of Anglican clergy and as a "Visitor" to purge the University of Oxford. During the Rule of the Major-Generals, he acted as deputy to his distant kinsman Charles Fleetwood in Buckinghamshire. He was knighted by Oliver Cromwell in September 1656 and appointed to Cromwell's Upper House as Lord Fleetwood in 1657.

In 1659, Fleetwood was commissioned by Parliament to raise a troop of volunteers to resist Sir George Booth's Royalist uprising. He supported General Monck on his march to London, and in February 1660, Monck gave Fleetwood command of a regiment. Although he supported the mayor of York in proclaiming Charles II in May 1660, Fleetwood was brought to trial as a regicide. He claimed that he had been appointed to the High Court of Justice against his will and that Cromwell had intimidated him into signing the King's death warrant. With favourable testimony from Monck and others, Fleetwood's life was spared. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London until 1664 when a warrant was issued for his transportation to Tangier. According to some accounts, he died there in 1672. Others say that his wife Hester Fleetwood successfully pleaded for his release and that he was not transported but allowed to emigrate to America.

References

This article contains text under a Creative Commons License by David Plant, the British Civil Wars and Commonwealth website http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/biog/fleetwood-george.htm