Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 19.djvu/275

 wood mentions a work by himself ‘De Pace Ecclesiæ,’ not otherwise known.

[Baines's Lancashire, iv. 440; Middle Temple MS. Records; Merchant Taylors' MS. Records; Parl. Hist. i. 734 sq.; Stow's London; Strype's Annals; Wood's Athenæ, ed. Bliss, i. 598; Wright's Elizabeth and her Times; Biog. Brit. (1750); Official Lists of M.P.'s.] 

FLEETWOOD, WILLIAM (1656–1723), bishop of Ely, a descendant of the ancient family of Fleetwood of Hesketh, Lancashire, fifth of six children of Captain Geoffrey Fleetwood by Anne, daughter of Mr. Richard Smith, prothonotary to the Poultry Compter, and nephew of James Fleetwood [q. v.], bishop of Worcester, was born on 1 Jan. 1656, in the Tower of London, where his father resided till his death in April 1665. William was on the foundation at Eton, and was elected scholar of King's College, Cambridge, on 27 Nov. 1675, and in due course became a fellow. He graduated B.A. 1679, M.A. 1683, D.D. 1705. On the death of Provost Copleston in 1689, the appointment of his successor being claimed by the crown, Fleetwood and another fellow were deputed to assert the right of the college to elect their own provost, which they succeeded in maintaining (Cole MSS. xvi. 35). In the same year, not long after his admission to holy orders, he gained his earliest celebrity as a preacher by a sermon delivered in King's College Chapel, at the commemoration of the founder, Henry VI, on 25 March, deservedly admired by his contemporaries as ‘a perfect model and pattern of that kind of performance.’ Fleetwood speedily became one of the most celebrated preachers of the day. He was often appointed to preach before the royal family, the houses of parliament, and other public bodies on great occasions. A sweet voice and graceful delivery commended, we are told, the sound sense and fervent piety of his sermons. His sermons were rendered more useful by ‘the fine vein of casuistry which ran through most of them, wherein he displayed a peculiar talent, and gave ease to many weak and honest minds’ (Memoir, p. viii). Fleetwood's reading was wide and his learning accurate. Browne Willis terms him a ‘general scholar,’ and one specially ‘versed in antiquities.’ His first work besides occasional sermons was a collection of pagan and Christian inscriptions, illustrated with notes, chiefly original, entitled ‘Inscriptionum Antiquarum Sylloge’ (1691). In 1707 he published anonymously his ‘Chronicon Pretiosum,’ a book very valuable for its research and general accuracy on the value of money and the price of corn and other commodities for the previous six centuries. The question had occurred whether the statutes of a college making the possession of an estate of 5l. per annum a bar to the retention of a fellowship were to be interpreted literally, or with regard to the altered value of money. Fleetwood clearly makes good the more liberal interpretation (, Lives, i. 150). Fleetwood was a generous patron of letters. He encouraged Hickes in the publication of his ‘Thesaurus Septentrionalis.’ Hearne in the preface to his ‘Liber Scaccarii,’ and Browne Willis in the ‘History of the Cathedral of St. Asaph,’ acknowledge his ‘communicativeness’ (Cathedrals, iii. 367). The Boyle lectureship was offered to him, but ill-health prevented him from lecturing. The materials he had prepared were subsequently published by him in 1701, as ‘An Essay on Miracles,’ those, namely, of Moses and of Jesus Christ. Hoadly wrote a reply to this essay, to which Fleetwood, from his extreme aversion to controversy, made no rejoinder.

Fleetwood was a zealous whig, an ardent friend of the revolution and of the Hanoverian succession. Soon after the accession of William and Mary he was appointed chaplain to the king, but no other mark of royal favour followed till just before William's death, when he was nominated to a canonry at Windsor. The letters of nomination had not received the royal seal when the king died, and the House of Commons endeavoured to set them aside in favour of one of their own chaplains. Queen Anne, however, replied to their petition that ‘if the king had given the canonry to Dr. Fleetwood, Dr. Fleetwood should have it.’ He was installed on 2 June 1702. By the interest of Dr. Henry Godolphin [q. v.], provost of Eton and canon of St. Paul's, he was appointed to a fellowship at Eton and to the chapter rectory of St. Augustine and St. Faith's on 26 Nov. 1689, to which was speedily added the lectureship of St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, Fleet Street, where he usually preached three times a week to admiring crowds. But his love of retirement and his attachment to Eton and Windsor induced him in 1705 to exchange his London preferments for the living of Wexham, Buckinghamshire, worth only 60l. per annum, where he devoted much of his time to his favourite historical and antiquarian studies. In 1708 Queen Anne, of her own personal act and without his knowledge, appointed him to the see of St. Asaph, vacant by the death of Beveridge, to which he was consecrated on 8 June of that year. Anne called Fleetwood ‘my bishop,’ attended his sermons, and favoured him till her death, in spite of the outspoken whiggism which made