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 1659–60, p. xxvi), was again elected member for Yorkshire (March 1660), and was chosen to head the commissioners of the two houses sent to the king at the Hague. Although he had done so much to forward the Restoration, he returned to Nun Appleton without either honours or rewards. Ludlow represents him as opposing the vindictive policy of the Convention parliament and saying openly ‘that if any man deserved to be excepted, he knew no man that deserved it more than himself, who being general of the army, and having power sufficient to prevent the proceedings against the king, had not thought fit to make use of it to that end’ (Memoirs, p. 344). One of Fairfax's last letters is an earnest plea for the moderate and equitable treatment of the persons suspected of a share in the so-called Yorkshire plot (1663). During the last seven years of his life Fairfax was crippled by disease. His cousin Brian thus describes him: ‘He sat like an old Roman, his manly countenance striking awe and reverence into all that beheld him, and yet mixed with so much modesty and meekness as no figure of a mortal man ever represented more. Most of his time did he spend in religious duties, and much of the rest in reading good books’ (, p. 392). During this period he composed his two autobiographical works: ‘A Short Memorial of the Northern Actions during the War there, from the Year 1642 till 1644;’ and ‘Short Memorials of some things to be cleared during my Command in the Army.’ The first of these deals with the military history of the Yorkshire campaigns; the second is a vindication of his conduct while general, and somewhat too much of a political apology to be entirely trusted.

Lady Fairfax died on 16 Oct. 1665, Fairfax himself on 12 Nov. 1671; both were buried in the church of Bilbrough, near York. The will of Lord Fairfax is reprinted by Markham, who also gives a list of portraits, medals, and engravings representing him (pp. 430, 440). According to the same authority the best portrait of Fairfax is a miniature by Hoskins, painted about 1650. In complexion he was so dark that, like Strafford, he was nicknamed ‘Black Tom.’ Sprigge, who devotes several pages to an account of his character and person, terms him ‘tall, yet not above first proportion, but taller as some say when he is in the field than at home’ (Anglia Rediviva, ed. 1854, pp. 47, 325). Whitelocke thus describes Fairfax in 1646: ‘The general was a person of as meek and humble carriage as ever I saw in great employment, and but of few words in discourse or council. … But I have observed him at councils of war, that he hath said little, but hath ordered things expressly contrary to the judgment of all his council; and in action in the field I have seen him so highly transported, that scarce any one durst speak a word to him, and he would seem more like a man distracted and furious, than of his ordinary mildness, and so far different temper’ (Memorials, ed. 1853, ii. 20). His personal courage was so conspicuous that his enemies denied him the other qualities of a general. Walker styles him ‘a gentleman of an irrational and brutish valour’ (Hist. of Independency, ed. 1660, i. 29). But Fairfax had also signal merits as a leader. He was remarkable for the rapidity of his marches, the vigour of his attacks, and the excellence of the discipline which he maintained. In his Yorkshire campaigns, though always outnumbered, he continually took the offensive. In the campaign of 1645 the rapidity with which he captured so many fortresses and the smallness of his losses prove his skill in sieges. In victory he was distinguished by the moderation of the terms he imposed, and by generosity to his opponents. The letter in which he proposed a treaty to Hopton in March 1646 is an example of this, and his numerous letters on behalf of royalist officers show the care with which he watched over the observance of articles of surrender. The execution of Lucas and Lisle was a solitary instance of severity, and by no means an indefensible one.

Fairfax was a man of strong literary tastes, and, in the words of Aubrey, ‘a lover of learning.’ His first act after the surrender of Oxford was to set a strong guard to preserve the Bodleian (, Lives, ii. 346). He assisted the genealogical researches of Dodsworth, and continued the pension which his grandfather had granted to him [see ]. By his will Fairfax bequeathed to the Bodleian twenty-eight valuable manuscripts and the whole of the collection formed by Dodsworth. That library also acquired in 1858 a volume of poems and translations by Fairfax entitled ‘The Employment of my Solitude,’ extracts from which are printed by Markham (Life of Fairfax, pp. 415–27;, Annals of the Bodleian, p. 95).

[A selection from the papers of the Fairfax family is given in the Fairfax Correspondence, of which the first two volumes were published in 1848, edited by G. W. Johnson; the last two in 1849, edited by Robert Bell, under the title of Memorials of the Civil War. The originals of these letters are now dispersed, some being in the British Museum, others in the collection of Mr. Alfred Morrison (Hist. MSS. Comm. 9th Rep. pt. ii. p. 407). An account of the different editions of Lord Fairfax's Memorials is