The Fairfaxes provided a knight of the shire in 1324, and were deeply conscious of their ancestry, traced back to the thirteenth century in a frieze Fairfax’s father erected in the great chamber at Gilling. The MP’s grandfather, Sir Nicholas Fairfax†, was a member of the Council in the North and steward of the dissolved abbey of St. Mary’s, York, worth about £1,000 a year during the 1570s. He and his son improved their estates by purchase and enclosure, perhaps intimidating those who stood in their way: Sir William was accused on at least one occasion of failing to pay sums owed for one of his acquisitions.
While suspected of Catholic sympathies, most of the family remained loyal during the 1569 northern rising, although the future MP’s cousin Henry Fairfax of Dunsley, a recusant from 1590, later assaulted two constables distraining his goods for arrears of recusancy fines. In 1594 Fairfax’s marriage brought his own loyalty into question, as his wife was Catholic and his mother-in-law was accused of harbouring priests connected with the exiled earl of Westmorland.
Fairfax’s prospects were not affected by Sheffield’s removal from the presidency in 1619, as the new incumbent, Lord Scrope, was his wife’s second cousin. It was doubtless Scrope who recommended Fairfax as a partner for secretary of state (Sir) George Calvert* at the Yorkshire election of 1620, but Fairfax was apparently reluctant to challenge his father’s former partner Sir John Savile, and resigned his interest to Sir Thomas Wentworth* at the earliest possible opportunity. His return for Hedon on the interest of his brother-in-law Sir Henry Constable, Viscount Dunbar, was probably intended to salve his pride. His only mention in the records of the 1621 Parliament was as a member of the committee for a bill confirming copyhold tenures on Prince Charles’s manor of Kendal, in Westmorland (10 March).
Re-elected at Hedon for the next three parliaments, Fairfax was never very active: he may have been the Member who supported Sir Robert Phelips’ motion for a grant of two subsidies without fifteenths in 1625, but this is more likely to have been his relative Sir Thomas Fairfax I*, who was closely involved in the politics of the session as Wentworth’s partner as knight of the shire. Neither man is recorded to have spoken on any other occasion, but the Hedon MP was named to 10 committees in 1624 and 1626, some of which were politically significant: the bill for an exchange of lands between the Crown and the archbishop of York (19 May 1624) confirmed the duke of Buckingham’s title to York House; while the committee to draft the preamble to the subsidy bill (25 May 1626) was actually intended to delay progress in voting supply until Buckingham’s impeachment had been resolved. Fairfax had a personal interest in the estate bill of his wife’s cousin Viscount Montagu (5 Apr. 1624), and his role as a militia officer gave him a stake in the bill to regulate the office of muster-master (28 Mar. 1626).
In February 1626 Fairfax was named as a recusant officeholder in the Commons because of the Catholicism of his eldest son, Thomas. It was resolved to exclude him from censure when an unnamed Member vouched for him as ‘a good Protestant, and breeding up his children so in our religion’. This ignored the role of Lady Fairfax, a recusant convict since 1599, who had evaded punishment for employing Catholic maids, and had sent two of her sons to Catholic seminaries on the Continent; this omission suggests that she had recently died. Fairfax remained above suspicion himself: when appointed vice-president in 1609, Sheffield stated that ‘it is not usual for any to supply this place whose wives are recusants, yet my good opinion of yourself, and the hope I have of your own freedom from that sort will not suffer me to admit of that bar to your employment’.
Fairfax’s appointment as sheriff of Yorkshire in November 1627 barred him from Parliament in 1628, but allowed him to block the government’s demand for Privy Seal loans aimed specifically at Forced Loan refusers shortly before the session began: the matter was allowed to rest after he reported to the Privy Council that collection of the Privy Seals had been halted following their recall in the Proclamation summoning Parliament.
Fairfax may have recruited Wentworth’s help in obtaining a peerage, as the award of the Irish viscountcy of Kilbarry was signed by the king on 19 July 1628, shortly after Wentworth joined the Court. The impetus behind this grant was undoubtedly the recent elevation of his relatives Sir Thomas Belasyse* and Sir Thomas Fairfax I to English and Scottish peerages. The title changed to Viscount Emley when the patent was issued in January 1629, but he thereby trumped the Denton Fairfaxes, who had paid £1,500 for a Scottish barony. Sir Ferdinando Fairfax* consoled himself by insisting that while Fairfax claimed to have purchased his title for £900, ‘it is most certain it cost him at least £1,300’. Belasyse, now Lord Fauconberg, went one step further and complained in the Lords about Fairfax’s precedence over English barons. Fairfax’s patent was consequently brought before the Lords, who petitioned the king. In June it was agreed that Irish and Scottish viscounts should retain their precedence over English barons, but be removed from public office in England. As a result, Fairfax was removed from the bench, and was not reinstated until 1633.
Fairfax was subjected to another investigation in May 1628, when his cousin Francis Fairfax petitioned the Lords for relief in a long-running quarrel over the rectory of Acaster Malbis, a dispute which highlighted the unscrupulous methods Fairfax used to enlarge his estates. Francis and his brother Thomas had acquired a life interest in the rectory at the death of their father in 1606, when Fairfax, who already owned the manor of Acaster, became guardian of their interests. Sir Thomas, having obtained a reversionary lease of the rectory from the Crown in 1605,
Fairfax’s will of 22 Oct. 1634 made generous provision for his younger sons: Henry was to receive a total of £3,000 in cash and goods, William the manor of Coniston in Holderness and a life annuity of £120, Nicholas (a recusant) an annuity of £50; while the two youngest, apprenticed to London merchants, were given £1,000 apiece. His heir was not mentioned except in a codicil, which set aside £1,200 to provide for Thomas’s son William, on condition that he was raised as a Protestant. Fairfax died at Howsham, his wife’s jointure manor, on 23 Dec. 1636, and was buried at nearby Scrayingham.