The Proprietors of the Northern Neck

Appendix

The Alienation of the Fairfax Estates in Yorkshire.

In his story of the sixth Lord Fairfax, Archdeacon Burnaby says:

Lord Fairfax had the misfortune to lose his father while young; and at his decease he . . . came under the guardianship of his mother and grandmother, the dowager Ladies Fairfax and Culpeper. . . . He had been persuaded, upon his brother Henry's arriving at the age of twenty-one years, or rather compelled, by the Ladies Culpeper and Fairfax under a menace, in case of refusal, of never inheriting the Northern Neck, to cut off the entail, and to sell Denton Hall, and the Yorkshire estates, belonging to this branch of the Fairfax family, which had been in their possession for five or six centuries, in order to redeem those of the late Lord Culpeper that had descended to his heiress exceedingly encumbered and deeply mortgaged.

This striking story was uncritically adopted and bruited by the Belvoir Fairfaxes as a facile explanation of the fact that they did not inherit English lands with their peerage; and, in consequence, has several times been repeated in print. Thus, in 1848, Mr. Johnson, in his memoir of the Fairfax family (The Fairfax Correspondence, i. p. cxxvi) adopted it without qualification and, as recently as 1916, Senator Beveridge (Life of John Marshall, i, 47) followed suit. Even Sir Clements Markham,⁵⁷ who had studied the record, was at one time affected by it, though he did not repeat the specific charge. He says, referring to the alienation of Nun Appleton:

Lady Fairfax, the mother, permitted the completion of the purchase without making any protest although both her Yorkshire agent, Mr. Robert Clayton, arid, afterwards, Brian Fairfax, explained all the circumstances to her and urged her to put forward the claim that had been so successfully enforced by her husband in 1700 and not to neglect the interests of her infant son. She was busy with the affairs of her estate in Kent and would take no steps. This was in February, 1710.

An examination of the evidence⁵⁸ for the actual transaction shows that Burnaby's statement contains about as many errors as could be packed into so many words, and that Sir Clements Markham also does Catherine Culpeper injustice.

Here then are the facts, which it seems make quite as good a story as Burnaby's in any event:

1. Of the manors which were alienated, those of Denton and Bilborough were acquired by the Fairfaxes at the beginning of the sixteenth century by marriage with an heiress, Isabel Thwaites. Nun Appleton and Bolton Percy were religious houses and were acquired later, on the dissolution of the monasteries. At the beginning of the eighteenth century these estates had thus been in the possession of the Fairfaxes for less than two centuries, not five or six. The earliest Fairfax manor in Yorkshire, that of Walton, which was acquired in 1250 and was continuously held by the senior stem of the family (ultimately raised to the peerage as Viscounts Fairfax of Gilling) down into the eighteenth century, was never possessed by the Denton branch and was not involved in the alienation we are now considering.
2. The grandmother and mother of the sixth Lord Fairfax were never his guardians. Those guardians, who were appointed by the will of the fifth Lord Fairfax, were his own kinsmen, Admiral Robert Fairfax and Brian Fairfax, the younger.
3. Lady Culpeper took no part in the alienation of the Fairfax estates, for the good reason that she had been dead for several years when, as will appear, the sixth Lord Fairfax executed his deeds of alienation. So far was this act from being affected by compulsion, even posthumus compulsion, by Lady Culpeper under threat of withholding the inheritance of the Virginia estate, the record shows that, at the time of the alienation, the sixth Lord Fairfax was already in possession of Lady Culpeper's interest in the Northern Neck under specific provision of her will. Indeed, in a letter (Fairfax MS., Bodleian Library) to a kinsman in Yorkshire, written from Oxford, July 7, 1710, a few months after the deaths of his father and grandmother, and five years before the alienation in which he took part, he said:
   
   'All I have during my mother's life is what my grandmother Colepeper left me.'
4. The estates were alienated when Henry Culpeper Fairfax was nineteen, not twenty-one. He had no more to do with it than his grandmother.
5. The sixth Lord Fairfax did not 'cut off the entail' of his paternal estates in Yorkshire. That fatal act had been accomplished a generation before his birth by the third Lord Fairfax. What the sixth Lord Fairfax did was, indeed, under compulsion, though not that of his grandmother or even of his mother. It was the compulsion of a specific direction of his father's will, enforced by a decree of the Lord Chancellor, for liquidation of obligations which had been assumed by his father.

In his Analecta Fairfaxiana, Charles Fairfax of Menston records (The Fairfax Correspondence, i, 314) a conversation he had in 1640 with

'my dear father, the first Thomas, Lord Fairfax... not many months before his death... He, walking in his great parlour at Denton I only then present, did seem much perplexed and troubled in his mind. But after a few hours broke out with these or the like expressions: 'Charles, I am thinking what will become of my family when I am gone. I have added a title to the heir male of my house, and shall leave a competent estate to support it. Ferdinando will keep it, and leave it to his son. But such is Tom's pride (led much by his wife) that he, not contented to live in our rank, will destroy his house.' '

Tom was the future Parliamentary general; and justified his grandfather's fears by dividing the inheritance for the benefit of an only daughter, who had made a dizzy marriage, thus depriving the heir male of the competence necessary to support the title which the first Lord Fairfax had so wistfully provided to that end. When the fifth Lord Fairfax died in debt and Yorkshire knew no more the descendants of the old Knight of Denton, his prophecy was fulfilled.

What happened was this: In contemplation of 'Tom's' marriage his grandfather and father, seeking to establish their name and dignity on an enduring basis, joined in a deed of settlement dated 13 May, 13 Car. I, i.e., 1637 (The Fairfax Correspondence, iv, 253) by which they proposed to entail certain property to support the peerage. As the grandfather had prophesied, 'Tom' defeated their purpose. On November 2, 1650, having no son, be levied a fine (ibid., p. 254) and thereby docked the entail in the interest of his only daughter, afterwards Duchess of Buckingham. Ultimately, on April 23, 1666, he in turn executed a deed of settlement (ibid, pp. 256 ff.) by which, only in part carrying out his grandfather's plan, he assured Denton and Bilborough and certain other lesser manors to his cousin Henry, who was to succeed him as fourth Lord Fairfax; but separated from the inheritance Nun Appleton and Bolton Percy to be held for the benefit of his daughter, with remainder, however, to the holder of the Fairfax peerage. In this situation the Duchess of Buckingham attempted in 1700 to sell the estates assigned to her. Although the fifth Lord Fairfax then effectually defeated the intended sale, by an alert assertion of his own right as remainderman, the Duchess built up such a legal theory of her father's deed of settlement that after her death in 1704, the fifth Lord Fairfax found himself hopelessly enmeshed in a net of lawyers' opinions as to his rights and, being in financial straits, determined to cut the gordian knot. Accordingly, in the last year of his life he himself sold Nun Appleton and Bolton Percy, for a price far below their value, but probably for all that could be expected for the tainted title he had to offer.⁵⁹ The purchaser was Alderman William Milner of Leeds (significantly described by a contemporary wag as 'Alderman Million' ) whose descendants, soon baronets but now extinct, remained in possession until the present generation. Lord Fairfax's will reveals the despair in which this transaction had left him and also his sense of honour in respect to his debts. He devised his entire estate, except a certain West India wreck in which he had an interest, to trustees, to sell the property, pay the debts and turn over what was left to his oldest son. After his death the trustees made every effort to straighten out the tangled affairs. They contemplated attacking the sale of Nun Appleton and Bolton Percy,⁶⁰ but soon abandoned that thought in the more pressing necessity of saving Denton and Bilborough, which were now threatened. After futile negotiations and vain hopes of realizing the wherewithal from the Spanish wreck, the creditors filed a bill in chancery to enforce the exercise of the power of sale in respect to Denton and Bilborough; and, in due course, sales of those estates were decreed.⁶¹ When he came of age, the young sixth Lord Fairfax, feeling bound in honour as well as in law to give effect to his father's intention, did his part to carry out the decree. It may be that his mother endeavored to dissuade him from this as Quixotic, and that Burnaby's story had its origin in such an effort.

Denton was purchased by another rich merchant of Leeds, Samuel Ibbetson⁶² but, fortunately for the tradition, Bilborough was bid in by Admiral Robert Fairfax, the representative of the junior or Steeton branch of the family. There his descendants live today, the representatives of their family in Yorkshire (See Walford's County Families).

On July :24, 1716, the young Lord Fairfax wrote (Markham, Admiral Robert Fairfax, p. 270) to his kinsman, the Admiral, from Somerset House in London, where he sat surrounded by solicitors:

I have executed the conveyance of Bilborough to you. I hope you have a good bargain and heartily wish you and yours good success with the estate.

Your affectionate kinsman and servant,
Fairfax.

It was the end of an old song.