Thomas Fairfax, 3rd Lord Fairfax of Cameron (17 January 1612 – 12 November 1671) was an English army officer and politician who commanded the New Model Army from 1645 to 1650 during the English Civil War. Because of his dark hair, he was known as "Black Tom" to his loyal troops. He was the eldest son and heir of Ferdinando Fairfax, 2nd Lord Fairfax of Cameron, and succeeded to the title of Lord Fairfax in 1648 on the death of his father, although he was generally known as Sir Thomas Fairfax to distinguish them. He adopted the profession of arms as a young man, when he served under Horace Vere in the Netherlands. In 1637, he married Vere's daughter Anne.
Fairfax was recalled to English service in 1639, for the first of King Charles' disastrous Bishops' Wars against Scotland. When these defeats led to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642, Lord Fairfax declared for Parliament and was named general of Parliament's forces in the north, with Sir Thomas his second-in command. Sir Thomas later moved to join Parliament's stronger Eastern Association army, with which he achieved several significant victories, notably the decisive Battle of Marston Moor. In January 1645, when Parliament "new modelled" its armies, he was named commander-in-chief, and under his leadership the Army forced the surrender of the king in 1646.
When Royalist uprisings broke out in 1648, Fairfax first subdued the insurgents in Kent, then laid siege to Colchester in Essex. After the radicals in the Army and their supporters in Parliament proposed in 1649 to try the king, Fairfax refused to participate in the trial and attempted to prevent the execution. In 1650, he resigned his commission and retired to his estate. By 1660, seeing England fallen into disputes for power among rival factions, he backed General George Monck in his campaign that led to the restoration of the monarchy under King Charles II. Not long afterward, he retired again from public life until his death in 1671.
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Origins
Thomas Fairfax was born to a Yorkshire family that could trace its descent to the 13th century. His grandfather, Thomas Fairfax, 1st Lord Fairfax of Cameron (1560-1640) fought under the Earl of Essex in the defense of the Protestant Netherlands against Spain. His grandson Thomas was born on 17 January 1612 at Denton Hall, Yorkshire, to Ferdinano Fairfax and his first wife, Mary, daughter of Edmund Sheffield, 1st Earl of Mulgrave. There was a younger brother, Charles, born 22 March 1614.
He was educated at St John's College, Cambridge, at which he matriculated at the age of 14 years in 1626, and admitted to Gray's Inn for the study of law on 26 May 1628. But his grandfather, old Lord Thomas Fairfax, wanted to see this grandson and namesake follow him into the wars for Protestantism, and young Thomas joined the forces of Horace Vere in the Netherlands by 1630.
During the Eighty Years' War, the Netherlands became a military school for British soldiers. In his few years of service there, young Thomas Fairfax came to know many of the future commanders of the Civil War, on all sides of the conflict. On his arrival he took part in the siege of Bois-le-Duc. However, Horace Vere retired in 1632 after the siege of Maastricht. Fairfax had sufficiently impressed him that the old general gave him his daughter Anne; they were married at Hackney on 20 June 1637. Their daughter Mary was born the next year on 30 July.
Bishops Wars
In 1639, he commanded a troop of Yorkshire dragoons which marched with King Charles I against the Scots in the First Bishops' War, which ended with the Pacification of Berwick before any fighting took place. In the Second Bishops' War the following year, the English army was routed at the Battle of Newburn. Fairfax fled with the rest of the defeated army, but was nevertheless knighted in January 1641 for his services.
Pre-Civil War events
The Fairfaxes, father and son, though serving at first under King Charles I, were opposed to the arbitrary prerogative of the Crown, and Sir Thomas declared that "his judgment was for the Parliament as the king and kingdom's great and safest council". Charles endeavoured to raise a guard for his own person at York, intending it, as the events afterwards would prove, to form the nucleus of an army. Fairfax was employed to present a petition to his sovereign, entreating him to listen to the voice of his parliament, and to discontinue the raising of troops. This was at a great meeting of the freeholders and farmers of Yorkshire convened by the king on Heworth Moor near York. Charles attempted to ignore the petition, pressing his horse forward, but Fairfax followed him and placed the petition on the pommel of the king's saddle.
Civil War
When the civil war began in 1642, his father, Lord Fairfax, was appointed general of the Parliamentary forces in the north, and Sir Thomas was then made lieutenant-general of the horse under him. Both father and son distinguished themselves in the Yorkshire campaigns.
In 1643, a minor battle between Cavaliers for Charles I and a small group of Roundheads under Fairfax, who were en route from Tadcaster to Leeds, took place at Seacroft. Fairfax was obliged to retreat across Bramham moor, and summed up the Battle of Seacroft Moor as "the greatest loss we ever received".
Sometimes severely defeated, but more often successful, and always energetic, prudent and resourceful, father and son contrived to keep up the struggle until the crisis of 1644, when York was held by the Marquess of Newcastle against the combined besieging forces of the English Parliamentarians and the Scottish Covenanters, while Prince Rupert hastened with all available forces to the relief of the besieged garrison. A gathering of eager national forces within a few square miles of ground naturally led to a battle, and Marston Moor (2 July 1644) proved decisive for the struggle in the north. The younger Fairfax bore himself with the greatest gallantry in the battle and, though severely wounded, managed to join Oliver Cromwell and the victorious cavalry on the other wing. One of his brothers, Colonel Charles Fairfax, was killed in action. But the Marquess of Newcastle fled the kingdom, and the Royalists abandoned all hope of retrieving their affairs. The city of York was taken, and nearly the whole of the north would submit to the Parliament.
In the West, South and South West of England, however, the Royalist cause remained strong. The war had lasted two years, and the nation began to complain of the contributions that were exacted of and the excesses that were committed by the military. Dissatisfaction was expressed with the military commanders and, as a preliminary step to reform, the Self-denying Ordinance was passed. This involved the removal of the Earl of Essex from the supreme command, along with other Members of Parliament. This was then followed by the New Model Ordinance, which replaced the locally raised Parliamentary regiments with a unified army. Sir Thomas Fairfax was selected as the new Lord General, with Cromwell as his Lieutenant-General and cavalry commander. After a short preliminary campaign, the New Model Army justified its existence, and "the rebels' new brutish general", as the king had called him, proved his capacity as commander-in-chief in the decisive Battle of Naseby (14 June 1645). The king fled to Wales. Fairfax besieged Leicester, and was successful at Taunton, Bridgwater and Bristol. The whole of the west was soon reduced.
Interregnum
During the Commonwealth of England in 1654, Fairfax was elected MP for the newly created constituency of West Riding in the First Protectorate Parliament. He received a pension of £5,000 a year, and lived in retirement at his Yorkshire home of Nunappleton until after the death of the Lord Protector in 1658. Nunappleton and Fairfax's retirement there, as well as his personality, are the subject of Andrew Marvell's country house poem, Upon Appleton House. The troubles of the later Commonwealth recalled Lord Fairfax to political activity, and in 1659 he was elected MP for Yorkshire in the Third Protectorate Parliament.
Restoration
For the last time Fairfax's appearance in arms helped to shape the future of the country, when George Monck invited him to assist in the operations about to be undertaken against John Lambert's army. In December 1659 he appeared at the head of a body of Yorkshire gentlemen, and such was the influence of Fairfax's name and reputation that 1,200 horse quit Lambert's colours and joined him. This was speedily followed by the breaking up of all Lambert's forces, and that day secured the restoration of the monarchy. For these actions, along with his honourable conduct in the civil war, he was spared from the wave of Royalist retributions. In April 1660 Fairfax was re-elected MP for Yorkshire in the Convention Parliament. He was put at the head of the commission appointed by the House of Commons to wait upon Charles II at The Hague and urge his speedy return. His actions assisted the Stuart Restoration. Fairfax provided the horse which Charles rode at his coronation.
Later life
The remaining eleven years of the life of Lord Fairfax were spent in retirement at his seat in Yorkshire. His wife died in 1665 and Fairfax died at Nun Appleton Priory in 1671. He was buried at St James' Church, Bilbrough, near York.
Writings
Fairfax had a taste for literature. He translated some of the Psalms, and wrote poems on solitude, Christian warfare and the shortness of life. During the last year or two of his life he wrote two Memorials which have been published—one on the northern actions in which he was engaged in 1642–44, and the other on some events in his tenure of the chief command. At York and at Oxford he endeavoured to save the libraries from pillage, and he enriched the Bodleian with some valuable manuscripts. His correspondence was edited by G. W. Johnson and published in 1848–49 in four volumes.
The metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell wrote "Upon Appleton House, To My Lord Fairfax", nominally about Fairfax's home, but also his character as well as England during his era.
Family
Fairfax married Hon. Anne de Vere, daughter of Horace Vere, 1st Baron Vere of Tilbury and Mary Tracy, on 20 June 1637. They had two daughters, Hon. Mary Fairfax (30 July 1638 – 20 October 1704), who married George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, and Elizabeth.
Fairfax was succeeded as Lord Fairfax by a cousin, Henry Fairfax, 4th Lord Fairfax of Cameron.
Analysis
As a soldier he was exact and methodical in planning, in the heat of battle "so highly transported that scarce any one durst speak a word to him", chivalrous and punctilious in his dealings with his own men and the enemy. Honour and conscientiousness were equally the characteristics of his private and public character. But his modesty and distrust of his powers made him less effectual as a statesman than as a soldier, and above all he is placed at a disadvantage by being both in war and peace overshadowed by his associate Cromwell, who was politically talented and able to manipulate public antipathy against Charles to lead to his execution, something Fairfax never wanted.
In fiction
Fairfax, played by actor Dougray Scott, is a pivotal character in the 2003 film To Kill a King, as well as in Rosemary Sutcliff's 1953 historical fiction Simon, being portrayed as inspiring and fair. He also appears as a central character in Sutcliff's 1959 novel The Rider of the White Horse, which gives an account of the early stage of the Civil War from the point of view of his wife, and in Howard Brenton's 2012 play 55 Days. Douglas Wilmer portrayed him in the 1970 Ken Hughes film Cromwell.
He was played by Jerome Willis in the 1975 historical film Winstanley. He appears in Michael Arnold's novel Marston Moor, which includes an account of Fairfax's adventures in the eponymous battle. He was also a central character, played by Nigel Anthony, in the 1988 BBC Radio production of Don Taylor's play God's Revolution.