Family and Education

b. by 1521, s. of William Fitzwilliam of Masbrough, Yorks. m. 1541/42, Elizabeth, da. and h. of Sir Thomas Clifford, bro. of 1st Earl of Cumberland, 4s.1

Offices Held

Commr. relief, Hants 1550; j.p. by 1552-d.; keeper of Hurstbourne Park, Hants 30 Apr. 1552-Mar. 1555.2

Biography

John Fitzwilliam was a ‘near kinsman’ from Yorkshire of Sir William Fitzwilliam I, Earl of Southampton, who in 1538 settled his estates on a nephew with remainder firstly to an illegitimate son and secondly to John Fitzwilliam. It was the earl who arranged Fitzwilliam’s marriage to his niece Elizabeth Clifford and settled some of his Yorkshire lands on the pair shortly before his death. Fitzwilliam’s title to his own and his wife’s lands was contested and he had to bring a number of actions in Chancery to strengthen it, with what result is unknown. He had made his home in Hampshire before his marriage and during the mid 1540s he was associated there with his wife’s uncle Sir Anthony Browne. In 1551 Browne’s son, Anthony Browne I, conveyed land to him, and it must have been the younger Browne who as owner of Midhurst and sheriff had him returned to the Parliament of March 1553: his fellow-Member William Denton was steward of Browne’s household. Fitzwilliam’s service as a justice of the peace, for which he had recently been thanked, and his friendship with Sir Richard Cotton presumably made him acceptable to the Duke of Northumberland, on whose initiative the Parliament was summoned. In 1557 Fitzwilliam fought at St. Quentin with Browne, by then Viscount Montagu. Four years later he appears to have sold or mortgaged his Hampshire property to Robert Springham of London for £1,400. He died on 17 June 1562 at the house of Master Kindlemarch who kept a ‘house for gentlemen’ in the parish of St. John Zachary, London, and was buried in the parish church on the following day. His son and heir William was then 15.3

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: R. J.W. Swales

Notes

• 1. Date of birth estimated from marriage. Vis. Yorks. (Harl. Soc. xvi), 62-63; Barbican House, Lewes, BA 16; C1/1218/11; 142/140/179.
• 2. CPR, 1553, pp. 144, 358; 1553-4, p. 19; 1554-5, p. 122; APC, iv. 4.
• 3. Barbican House, Lewes, BA 16; LP Hen. VIII, xx; C1/1218/4, 5, 11, 1427/123-5; HMC 15th Rep. V. 7; CPR, 1549-51 p. 236; VCH Hants, ii. 504, 516; PCC 23 Ketchyn; Machyn’s Diary (Cam. Soc. xlii), 286.