Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 19.djvu/272

Fleetwood also when sentence was pronounced, and signed the death-warrant (, Trial of Charles I). In 1649 and 1650 he was colonel of the Buckinghamshire militia, and was chosen a member of the eighth and last council of state of the Commonwealth (1 Nov.–10 Dec. 1653, Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1653–4, p. xxxvi). He represented the county of Buckingham in the assembly of 1653, and again in the parliament of 1654 (Old Parliamentary History, xx. 176, 297). Cromwell knighted him in the autumn of 1656, and summoned him to his House of Lords in December 1657 (Perfect Politician, ed. 1680, p. 293; Old Parliamentary History, xxi. 168). On the occasion of Sir George Booth's rising parliament authorised Fleetwood to raise a ‘troop of well-affected volunteers’ (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1659–60, pp. 125, 565). He refused to assist Lambert against Monck, opposed the oath of abjuration in parliament, was entrusted with the command of a regiment by Monck in the spring of 1660, and proclaimed Charles II at York (11 May 1660) (Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. p. 159). When the regicides were summoned to surrender he gave himself up (16 June), but was excepted from the Act of Indemnity (, Register, pp. 181, 240). At his trial (October 1660) Fleetwood pleaded guilty, was sentenced to death, and said, weeping, that he had confessed the fact, and wished he could express his sorrow (Trial of the Regicides, pp. 28, 276). A saving clause in the Act of Indemnity suspended the execution of those who claimed the benefit of the king's proclamation, unless their conviction was followed by a special act of parliament for their execution. Fleetwood accordingly petitioned parliament, stating that his name was inserted in the list of commissioners without his knowledge and against his will, and that his signature to the warrant was extorted by Cromwell, ‘whose power, commands, and threats (he being then young) frighted him into court.’ He produced certificates from Monck and Ashley of his services in forwarding the Restoration, and begged ‘to be represented to his majesty as a fit object of his royal clemency and mercy to hold his life merely by his princely grace’ (Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. p. 159). His life was spared, but his estate of the Vache confiscated and given to the Duke of York. In 1664 a warrant was issued for Fleetwood's transportation to Tangier, but it seems to have been suspended at the solicitation of his wife. According to Noble he was finally released and went to America. He was twice married and had issue. A miniature of Fleetwood by S. Cooper, dated 1647, belongs to G. Milner Gibson Cullum, Esq., F.S.A.

[Pedigree and wills kindly communicated by W. S. Churchill, esq.; Dom. State Papers; Noble's Lives of the Regicides, 1798.] 

FLEETWOOD, GEORGE (1605–1667), Swedish general and baron, was second son of Sir Miles Fleetwood of Cranford and Aldwinkle, Northamptonshire, receiver of the court of wards, and was grandson of the first Sir William of Aldwinkle. Sir Miles had two other sons, William (afterwards Sir William of Aldwinkle) and Charles, the parliamentary general [q. v.] George was baptised at Cople, Bedfordshire, 30 June 1605, and in 1629 raised a troop of horse with which he went to Germany and joined the Swedish army under Gustavus Adolphus, who gave him the rank of lieutenant-colonel. He returned to England, and having collected a regiment of foot conducted it to the scene of war in 1630. He became a Swedish knight 3 June 1632, and in 1636 was sent on a mission to England. He was commandant of Greifswald and Colberg in 1641, and having returned to Sweden in 1653 was raised to the rank of baron by Queen Christina, 1 June 1654. In the following year he was sent by Charles X as envoy extraordinary to Cromwell, in response to Whitelocke's embassy. He was accompanied by his eldest son, Gustavus Miles Fleetwood, who was enrolled among the life-guard of Charles II, and pursued in England his education in the civil and military accomplishments of the day. Fleetwood became a Swedish lieutenant-general in 1656, and, having left England in 1660, member of the council of war in 1665. In 1640 he married Brita Gyllenstjerna, of the family of that Christina Gyllenstjerna who, in 1520, defended Stockholm against the Danes. By that lady he had four sons and two daughters. He died 11 June 1667, and was buried at Nyköping. He was a man of great energy and prudence, much trusted by his superiors. Whitelocke mentions him frequently in his ‘Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the years 1653 and 1654,’ and a letter from Fleetwood to his father in 1632, describing the battle of Lützen, at which he was present, is published in the ‘Camden Miscellany,’ vol. i. 1847. There are several branches of his descendants now in Sweden. Nathaniel Whiting, minister of Aldwinkle, dedicated his ‘Old Jacob's Altar newly repaired,’ 1659, 4to, to the three brothers, William, George, and Charles.

[Information kindly supplied by W. S. Churchill, esq., of Manchester; Whitelocke's Swedish Embassy; Camden Miscellany, vol. i. Attartaflor, or Swedish Tables of Nobility, Stockholm (1859), gives the correct genealogy. Burke in his Extinct and Dormant Baronetcies repeats genealogical errors of Mark Noble.] 