Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 19.djvu/267

  :: them now living,' 1675.
 * 1) 'A Treatise of the Sports of Wit,' 1675 (only two copies known, one in the Huth Library).



FLEET, JOHN (d. 1712), governor of the East India Company, was, according to Luttrell, by trade a sugar baker, but according to Le Neve a wine cooper. He was elected sheriff of London on 11 Oct. 1688, and alderman soon afterwards, having in the interval been knighted. He was also chosen captain of the city horse volunteers in July 1689, and lord mayor on 1 Oct. 1692. His accession to the latter office was celebrated by a pageant called 'The Triumphs of London,' written by Elkanah Settle and performed in the Grocers' Hall on 29 Oct. He represented the city of London in parliament between March 1692-3 and 1705, with the exception of the short parliament which sat from 30 Dec. 1701 to 2 July 1702. On 26 April 1695 he was elected governor of the East India Company. It was a critical epoch in the history of the company, the charter having become legally forfeit in consequence of the interest due to the government having fallen into arrear. The government was itself in financial straits. A rival company had also been projected which offered the government a loan of 2,000,000l. at 8 per cent., while the best offer which Fleet was authorised to make on behalf of the old company was an advance of 700,000l. at 6 per cent. The new company was accordingly incorporated on 5 Sept. 1698, and the old company found it necessary to effect an amalgamation. This was carried out on 22 July 1702. Fleet was appointed, on 11 July 1702, one of the commissioners to execute the office of lieutenant of London, and on 14 March 1704-5 he was elected president of St. Bartholomew's Hospital. He married twice, his second wife being the relict of Newcomb, the king*s printer. He died in 1712 and was buried at Battersea.



FLEETWOOD, CHARLES (d. 1692), soldier, was the third son of Sir Miles Fleetwood of Aldwinkle, Northamptonshire, and of Anne, daughter of Nicholas Luke of Woodend, Bedfordshire (pedigree communicated by W. S. Churchill, esq.). Sir Miles Fleetwood was receiver of the court of wards, and died in 1641. His eldest son, Sir William (b. 1603), who succeeded to his father's estates and office, took the side of the king, and died in 1674. [q. v.], the second son, sought his fortune in the service of Sweden, and is noticed below. Charles, who appears to have been much younger than his brothers, was left by his father an annuity of 60l., chargeable on the estate of Sir William Fleetwood (Royalist Composition Papers, 2nd ser. xxiii. 165). He was admitted a member of Gray's Inn 30 Nov. 1638 (Harleian MS. 1912). In 1642 he and other young gentlemen of the Inns of Court entered the life-guard of the Earl of Essex (, ed. 1751, p. 17). Though a simple trooper Fleetwood was in September 1642 employed by Essex to bear a letter to the Earl of Dorset, containing overtures of peace to the king, but was dismissed without an answer (, ed. Macray, ii. 340). He was wounded at the first battle of Newbury, by which time he had risen to the rank of captain (Bibliotheca Gloucestrensis, p. 244). In May 1644 parliament rewarded him with the receivership of the court of wards, forfeited by his brother (, i. 256, ed. 1853). In the same year he was in command of a regiment in the Earl of Manchester's army, and already notorious as a favourer of sectaries. ‘Look at Colonel Fleetwood's regiment,’ writes a presbyterian; ‘what a cluster of preaching officers and troopers there is!’ (Manchester's Quarrel with Cromwell, p. 72). His support of preaching officers involved him in a quarrel with Sir Samuel Luke (, Original Letters, 3rd ser. iv. 260–6). Fleetwood commanded a regiment of horse in the new model, fought at Naseby, and assisted in the defeat of Sir Jacob Astley at Stow-on-the-Wold (, Anglia Rediviva, pp. 67, 107, 174;, vi. 140). In May 1646 Fleetwood entered the House of Commons as member for Marlborough (Return of Members of Parliament, i. 496). In the quarrel between the army and the parliament in the summer of 1647 he played an important part. His regiment was one of those which unanimously refused to take service in Ireland; he himself was one of the four military commissioners sent to explain the votes of parliament to the army (30 April 1647), and also one of the officers appointed by the army to treat with the commissioners of parliament (1 July 1647) (, vi. 468, 475, 603). According to the statements of Lilburn and Holles he was deeply engaged in the plot for seizing the king at Holmby (, An Impeachment of High Treason against Oliver Cromwell, 1649, p. 55;