FLEETWOOD, William (1656-1723)

A staunch Whig, Fleetwood was slighted by one Tory adversary as both ‘a religious and political bishop.’ T. Trueman, A Letter to a Friend, occasion’d by the Bishop of St Asaph’s Preface to his Four Sermons. (1712), 3. Although born in the Tower of London where his father was an ordnance officer, Fleetwood was descended from the Lancashire branch of the family. By the time of his death in 1723, he was able to bequeath a ‘small estate’ in Lancashire and £1,500 in cash legacies (not including bonds and annuities). Following in the footsteps of his uncle, the royalist James Fleetwood, bishop of Worcester, he studied at Eton and King’s College Cambridge before entering the Church. Buss, Ancestry of William Fleetwood, 3-4. After the 1688 Revolution, Fleetwood became a prolific apologist for Whig ideology. He was able to draw a patriotic lesson from any theme, whether he was preaching on vice, public prayer, education or even coin clipping (which wrecked trade and dishonoured the kingdom). He also became an ardent apologist for the war with France as a national (and Protestant) duty. A Compleat Collection of the Sermons, Tracts, and Pieces … by … Dr William Fleetwood ed. W. Powell (1737), 38, 59, 69, 79.

Fleetwood made his public debut preaching in the chapel of King’s College, Cambridge on 25 Mar. 1689 (in commemoration of the college’s founder, Henry VI) and grew rapidly in popularity, leading to ecclesiastical preferments in London and at court. W. Fleetwood, A Sermon preached before the University of Cambridge, … 25th of March, 1689 (1689); Compleat Collection ed. Powell, p. ii. On 5 Nov. 1691, his anniversary sermon before the Commons gave him the opportunity to vent his ire against Catholicism, embodied in both the French king and the Pretender. W. Fleetwood, A Sermon preached before the Honourable House of Commons … 5th November 1691 (1691); R.H. Dammers, ’Bishop Fleetwood’s A sermon on the fast day and the politics of Spectator 384’, Philo. Quart. lxii. 171. Throughout the 1690s, Fleetwood became increasingly politicized, challenging non-jurors with lengthy expositions of ultra-patriotic whiggism, and defending Queen Mary from charges of usurping the throne from her father and younger brother (whose legitimacy he called into question). W. Fleetwood, A Defence of the Archbishop’s Sermon on the death of her late Majesty (1695), passim. He was deeply troubled at the loss of the young duke of Gloucester, preaching a sermon in August 1700 that he would re-print in 1712 as his fears grew for the Protestant succession. W. Fleetwood, A Sermon preach’d on the death of the Duke of Gloucester … August the 4th 1700 (1708); Preface to W. Fleetwood, Four Sermons.

In 1702, Fleetwood was made a canon of Windsor. CSP Dom. 1702-3, p. 358. Based in the City of London, where he was linked to the Mercers’ Company, Fleetwood pastored, studied and published, preaching frequently in praise of English military successes. TNA, PROB 11/592; Compleat Collection ed. Powell, 197. In 1705, he resigned his London appointments to devote more time to his studies and to Eton College. Compleat Collection ed. W. Powell, p. iii. During this period, he broadened his intellectual interests and wrote the statistical treatise that would secure him a place in the history of modern economics. [W. Fleetwood], Chronicon Preciosum (1707).

In spite of his politics, Fleetwood was much liked by the queen, who was instrumental in 1708 in securing his elevation in succession to William Beveridge, bishop of St Asaph. Compleat Collection ed. W. Powell, p. iv. Yet the timing of his elevation was highly significant; the Junto was at that time influencing political and ecclesiastical appointments and the ministry of Sidney Godolphin, earl of Godolphin, was coming under increasing attack for its prosecution of the war. E. Carpenter, Tenison, 184. It is likely that Fleetwood was needed to bolster government support in the House. Fleetwood was categorized as a Whig in a printed list of party classifications for the first Parliament of Great Britain, compiled in about May 1708. He was consecrated the following month and in July was appointed to preach the thanksgiving service of 19 Aug. for the British victory at Oudenaarde. Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 328. His sermon expatiated on his familiar theme of the French threat to English liberty as well as lamenting the assault on the clergy resulting from a swathe of anti-clerical publications. Compleat Collection ed. Powell, 435-44; Holmes, Trial of Sacheverell, 26-27.

Fleetwood proved to be a diligent pastor. His devotional works were translated into Welsh, he paved St Asaph cathedral at his own cost, railed against cults and superstitions, and saw local religious traditions as an obstacle to full Protestantisation. He had little respect for the Welsh language, yet disapproved of clergy who used English to impress ‘the best families’ in the parish; this he regarded as pastoral neglect and ‘complaisance to a few’. G.H. Jenkins, Literature, Relig. and Soc. in Wales, 1660-1730, 269; J. Gwynn Williams, ‘Witchcraft in Seventeenth Century Flintshire’, Jnl. Flints. Hist. Soc. xxvii. 5-35; The Bishop of St Asaph’s Charge to the Clergy of that diocese in 1710 (1712), 11-12. Fleetwood’s religious approach stressed practical piety as an instrument of social and moral control and his politics were never far from the surface. Jenkins, Literature, Relig. and Soc. 78.

Fleetwood took his seat in the House on 15 Mar. 1709, four months after the start of the session, introduced by William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle, who would be one of his closest companions in London throughout the following decade. Nicolson, London Diaries, 493, 496, 502, 525, 534, 551, 576, 584, 589, 593, 608, 611, 626. He attended on 15 days (14 of them in April), which may perhaps be linked to the passage of two pieces of closely-fought legislation introduced by the Whigs: the general naturalization bill and the bill for improving the Union (also known as the treason bill); both of which were introduced into the Lords shortly before Fleetwood took his seat. The session ended on 21 Apr. and Fleetwood (always in need of intellectual stimulus and easily bored) requested an associate to procure him a copy of the Latin Councils ‘put out by the Nonjuror whose name I’ve forgotten’, so that he could take it with him to Wales. Add. 4274, f. 166. Fleetwood seems to have been one of several clergymen suggested as possible successors at Chichester in the first quarter of 1709 but at the end of May he appears to have dropped out of the running and was busy making preparations for his journey to his diocese. Christ Church, Oxf. Wake mss 17, f. 215.

Fleetwood returned to the House on 13 Dec. 1709, four weeks after the opening of the session, following which he attended 62 per cent of sittings. On 20 Dec. he was ordered to preach at the Abbey on 30 Jan. 1710. Shortly after his return to London, he was embroiled in at least two disputes involving affairs in St Asaph, presumably resulting from his efforts to stamp his authority on his diocese. One concerned a petition from the dean and chapter of St Asaph seeking legislation to prevent the bishop claiming rights of mortuary on the death of clergy in the diocese. TNA, C 6/360/7; SP 34/36/192. The focus of his attention, though, was the brouhaha arising from Dr Henry Sacheverell’s notorious sermon against the Revolution. In response, Fleetwood had preached against passive obedience and non-resistance, again couching his opposition in terms of patriotic loyalty. W. Fleetwood, Sermon in Refutation of Dr Sacheverell’s Doctrine of Passive Obedience and Non-resistance (1710). He wrote anonymously to the clergy of Shropshire and North Wales, warning against those who used scripture (specifically the ‘divine right’ text, Romans 13) to legitimate the actions of a bad monarch. The Thirteenth Chapter to the Romans, Vindicated from the abusive senses put upon it. Written by a curate of Salop. (1710). He defended in print the queen’s title and de facto authority, not only by virtue of her position as the daughter of James II, but because her younger brother’s claim to the throne had been blocked by act of Parliament. He found ‘not ten men of sense and character… but did not absolutely condemn [Sacheverell’s] discourse as a rhapsody of incoherent, ill-digested thoughts dressed in the worst language’. It was, he claimed, worthy of neither a clergyman nor a ‘tolerable Englishman’. Fleetwood, The Thirteenth Chapter to the Romans Vindicated (1710), 1, 13. Fleetwood used his sermon on 30 Jan. as a political instrument for the present, rather than a memorial of the past, preaching that the regicide had been bad for English honour. Moreover, it had become a difficult anniversary that played into partisan hands: some thought that preaching obedience infringed civil liberties; others believed that to speak of liberty, opened ‘a door to mutiny … and flat rebellion’. Compleat Collection ed. Powell, 453-63. On 20 Mar. he voted that Sacheverell was guilty of high crimes and misdemeanours. Add. 15574, ff. 65-68.

Fleetwood was in the House for the prorogation on 5 April. The day before, he had accompanied William Wake, bishop of Lincoln and John Hough, bishop of Lichfield and Coventry to the Lords, where they ‘sat upon the booksellers’ bill’. Meanwhile the Sacheverell affair continued to exercise him. A complaint was made that Frederick Cornwall, a Ludlow clergyman (with the collusion of the Montgomeryshire sheriff Francis Herbert^‡), had forced his way into the pulpit and preached the Welshpool assize sermon held on 25 Mar. in place of Fleetwood’s nominee. Cornwall had then taken the opportunity to condemn the few ‘great men at court’ who governed the Church. HP Commons, 1690-1715, iv. 333; Holmes, Trial of Sacheverell, 237. Fleetwood was pressed by Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland to bring the man to book, but he was forced to refer the matter to Humphrey Humphreys, bishop of Hereford, as Cornwall was beneficed in that diocese rather than St Asaph. Humphreys’ efforts to discipline Cornwall proved ineffective and he reported to Sunderland that he could only hope that Fleetwood had ‘consulted some learned civilian what method is to be used to bring this man to justice’ fearing that to prosecute ineffectively would only give further publicity to his cause. Add. 61652, f. 213; Add. 61610, ff. 30, 69. Fleetwood was similarly hamstrung by his efforts to block Sacheverell’s institution to a living in his diocese. He argued, among other things, that Sacheverell ought to be able to preach in Welsh, but was ultimately forced to give way. Add. 72494, ff. 171-2; Add. 72495, ff. 4-5; Holmes, Trial of Sacheverell, 239.

Following the Tory victory in the 1710 election, Fleetwood went into opposition. In a list of 3 Oct. Robert Harley, later earl of Oxford, wrote him off as a likely political opponent. Fleetwood remained unswervingly loyal to the ‘old ministry’: his gratitude to queen and country, he claimed, would not allow him to vote against his friends. ‘When I have saved my conscience, I give myself up to what I call my honour, and … I shall always be on the side of the late ministry because … they served the queen and nation so well’. Despite receiving the goodwill of Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester and being encouraged to change sides, Fleetwood remained an implacable opponent of peace with France. While Tories asserted that the Whig ministry had prosecuted a ‘calamitous’ war, Fleetwood could see only that ‘all our millions and our blood spent for these twenty years past, will end in a despicable peace’. T. Trueman, Letter to a Friend, 4, 5, 9, 10; Compleat Collection ed. W. Powell, p. v.

Fleetwood was one of a number of bishops to attend a meeting at Lambeth on 11 Nov. 1710 which resulted in resolutions ‘to set up a prolocutor’ and ‘to get an address ready that shall meddle with no state affairs’. On 20 Nov. he joined Bishop Wake in waiting on the queen. That evening he was one of a handful of clergy that ‘tallied long’ with Wake and further meeting continued over the few days. LPL, ms 1770 (Wake diary), ff. 100, 101. On 25 Nov. Fleetwood took his seat in the House at the opening of the new session. He attended 42 per cent of sittings (spread evenly throughout the session). The ministry’s agenda in the House ran alongside a major dispute in Convocation. According to Wake, Fleetwood had not been at Convocation on the day that Francis Atterbury, the future bishop of Rochester, was presented as prolocutor, but he joined Wake (with nine other bishops) in protesting against Atterbury’s election. The queen’s licence to a new quorum of bishops (dominated by Tories) led to a series of opposition strategy meetings of Whigs including Fleetwood and overseen by John Somers, Baron Somers, and William Cowper, Baron Cowper. Sykes, William Wake, i. 124-30.

The extreme partisanship that split the episcopate was temporarily laid aside by the Christmas celebrations; Fleetwood took Christmas Day communion at Westminster Abbey with his Tory opponents Thomas Sprat, bishop of Rochester, Offspring Blackall, bishop of Exeter and George Hooper, bishop of Bath and Wells and they all attended the St Stephen’s dinner at Lambeth. Fleetwood returned from the latter in Wake’s coach. Nicolson, London Diaries, 525; LPL, Ms 1770, f. 102. In the new year, however, Fleetwood voted solidly with the Whigs in all votes concerning the war in Spain. On 9 Jan. 1711 (in a division of the committee of the whole) he voted against the resolution to resume the House, whereupon the House went on to vote that the account of the war in Spain by Charles Mordaunt, 3rd earl of Peterborough had been ‘faithful and honourable’. Nicolson, London Diaries, 531. Two days later, he protested against a resolution to reject the petitions of Henri de Massue de Ruvigny, earl of Galway [I] and Charles O’Hara, Baron Tyrawley [I], and then against the resolution that the defeat at Almanza had been caused by the lords in question, together with Genreral James Stanhope^†, the future Earl Stanhope. On 12 Jan. he protested against the censure of the previous Whig ministers for having approved a military offensive in Spain and, on 3 Feb. he protested against the resolution that the Whig ministers, by not supplying the deficiencies of men granted by Parliament, had neglected the service. Six days later, Fleetwood, who on several occasions was an active member of the sub-committee for the Journal, signed two of the three protests against the deletion from the Journal of part of the two protests against resolutions made on the 3rd. On 24 Feb. he attended a meeting hosted by Wake to review the Whig strategy reports on the Convocation quorum for presentation to the queen. LPL, ms 1770, f. 105. In March, he preached at court, advising ‘the party that is now uppermost to be very easy and moderate to those that are under for that they would have their turn to be uppermost again’. His address unsurprisingly occasioned ‘much talk’. Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 47, ff. 183-4; NLS, Advocates’ mss Wodrow pprs. letters Quarto V, f. 176. Absent from the session for four weeks in late spring, on 26 Apr. he registered his proxy in favour of John Tyler, bishop of Llandaff. He returned to the House on 23 May and attended until the end of the session. With only four bishops in the House, he was one of three bishops to make their distaste for the bill for building new churches in London plain by leaving the chamber before the bill came to be read. Add. 72495, ff. 75-76.

The perception that Fleetwood was a committed partisan of the Whig cause is reinforced by a list, probably dating from December 1711, in the hand of Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, which listed Fleetwood with three other bishops and 19 peers, in what was probably a memorandum concerning their opposition the ministry’s peace policy. For Fleetwood, the government’s overtures to France were a compelling reason to attend the House more frequently and he attended the following session more than any other (71 per cent of sittings), including the opening day, 7 December. It is almost certain that he supported the addition of a clause advocating ‘No Peace without Spain’ to the Address, as on 8 Dec. he was listed among those thought likely to insist on the inclusion of those words when the Address was finalized. On 10 Dec. he reported to the antiquarian, Thomas Hearne that ‘we have this day passed the bill against occasional conformity, without any manner of dispute or division.’ Bodl. Rawl. letters 5, f. 68. On 16 Dec. Henry Prescott received a letter from Fleetwood in which the bishop ‘triumphs upon the general vogue against the peace and on the access of Lord Nottingham to the Whig side’. Prescott Diary (Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. cxxxii), 338. Although forecast on 19 Dec. as a likely opponent of permitting Scots peers to sit by virtue of post-Union British titles, on 20 Dec. Fleetwood voted against barring such men from taking their places. With the Whigs in the ascendancy, on the last day before the Christmas recess, 22 Dec., he was invited to preach the fast sermon before the Lords on 16 Jan. 1712.

The House convened again on 2 Jan. 1712, as planned after a short adjournment engineered by the Whigs, and Fleetwood joined ten of his fellow bishops in voting with the Whigs against a further adjournment. Brit. Pols in Age of Anne, 399-400, 517. Three days later, he joined a number of his fellow bishops dining at Chelsea, where they were hosted by Jonathan Trelawny, bishop of Winchester. Nicolson, London Diaries, 576. The ministry’s fortunes had revived by the time Fleetwood came to preach on 16 Jan., and when they met again, they adjourned the House until the 17th, so preventing him from delivering his sermon. Undeterred, Fleetwood, a seasoned propagandist, gave the piece to the press. Compleat Collection ed. Powell, p. vii. It was blatantly political. He took as his theme Psalm 68: 30 (‘the people that delight in war’), manipulating the text to exonerate (the recently dismissed) John Churchill, duke of Marlborough from his ‘just’ war-mongering whilst damning the Tories’ ‘prostitutions of honour and conscience’ and the ‘sorceries of France’. Dammers, ‘Bishop Fleetwood’s A Sermon on the fast day’, 171. The ministry’s censors intimidated the publisher into removing three of the most critical passages, but even in its expurgated form, the sermon prompted a series of polemics on the nature of English political and religious identity. Dammers, ‘Bishop Fleetwood’s A Sermon on the fast day’, 168; Add. 72495, f. 155.

On 26 Feb. 1712 Fleetwood voted in the House with the Whig opposition against the Commons’ anti-Presbyterian amendments to the Scottish Toleration bill. Bodl. Ballard 36, f. 122; Nicolson, London Diaries, 574. The following day he accompanied Wake and three other bishops to Convocation and on 12 Apr. Fleetwood voted against the committal of the Scottish ecclesiastical patronage bill. LPL, ms 1770, f. 118; Add. 72495, ff. 134-5. Four weeks later, he accompanied Wake, William Talbot, bishop of Oxford, and John Evans, bishop of Bangor, to a meeting with Sunderland where, with Somers, Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend, and Charles Montagu, Baron Halifax, they discussed tactics to be employed in Convocation. LPL, ms. 1770, f. 120. On 20 May Fleetwood received the proxy of Thomas Tenison, archbishop of Canterbury and on 26 May that of Bishop Hough (both vacated at the end of the session). On the 28th, Fleetwood joined Bishops Talbot and Evans in voting for an address to the queen to overturn the orders restraining James Butler, 2nd duke of Ormond, from engaging the French and then signed the protest against the Lords’ rejection of the motion. The queen outlined the Treaty of Utrecht on 6 June; on the 7th, Fleetwood again registered his protest against the failure to amend the address welcoming the peace. Fleetwood missed the last three weeks of parliamentary business in the summer of 1712.

In the meantime, Fleetwood had responded to the censorship of his abortive January sermon. He republished four of his political sermons with a new preface, in which, as ‘a good Englishman, as well as a good clergyman’, he defended Marlborough, restated Whig political ideology, and opposed the peace plan. Compleat Collection ed. Powell, 557. On 21 May Richard Steele^‡ published the preface in the Spectator, increasing its circulation to 14,000 people ‘who would otherwise never have seen or heard of it’. Ibid. p. vi. Although White Kennett^†, the future bishop of Peterborough, dismissed a review of the preface carried in the Examiner as ‘intolerably dull’, Parliament responded promptly. Following a complaint to an outraged House of Commons, a motion of condemnation was proposed on 10 June by John Hungerford^‡, seconded by John Manley^‡, ‘thirded by… the court’. There was further support for the motion from Charles Eversfield^‡ and Henry St John, later Viscount Bolingbroke. Fleetwood was defended by Sir Joseph Jekyll^‡, Nicholas Lechmere†, (later Baron Lechmere) and Peter King^† (later Baron King). After voting that the Preface was ‘malicious and factious, highly reflecting upon the present administration’, the Commons ordered its burning in Palace Yard. Fleetwood was said to have responded by ordering his cook to burn the Commons’ motion. He was also not alone in remarking that the Commons’ order was a worthy gift to make to the Pretender on his birthday (10 June). Wake mss 17, f. 329; Verney ms mic. M636/54, Ld. Fermanagh to R. Verney, 12 June 1712; Add. 72495, f. 152. A week later, in a letter to his close friend Gilbert Burnet^* [2122], bishop of Salisbury, Fleetwood spoke of the action as revenge ‘by a wicked party’ but insisted the assault affected him ‘very little’. From his perspective, England had fallen ‘into the very dregs of Charles the Second’s politics’ and France would ‘use us as she pleases, which … will be as scurvily as we deserve’. Compleat Collection ed. Powell, p. vi. In spite of all these provocations, at a Lambeth dinner on 14 June, Fleetwood was reported as being ‘in the best humour’. Wake mss 2, f. 139.

The printed responses to the Preface ranged from the crude to the elegant, from the assertion by ‘Tom Trueman’ that all who defended the principle of resistance should have their tongues and hands cut off, to the satirical Tryal and Condemnation of Don Prefatio d’Asaven. Trueman, Letter to a Friend, 4, 5, 9, 10; The Tryal and Condemnation of Don Prefatio d’Asaven (1712), passim. The most ruthless satire claimed to be a letter of thanks to Fleetwood from Thomas Wharton, earl of Wharton, and the Whig Kit-Cat Club. A Letter of Thanks from my Lord W****n to the Lord Bishop of St Asaph in the name of the Kit-Cat-Club (1712). Its true author, Jonathan Swift, equated Fleetwood’s whiggery with atheism and branded the bishop as a self-publicist who ‘had rather live in a blaze, than lie buried in obscurity’. Fleetwood’s anonymous defence of his ‘revolution principles’ heaped more coals on the head of the French king, whilst placing his brand of whiggism firmly in the ideology developed at the time of the Revolution. Dammers, ‘Bishop Fleetwood’s A Sermon on the fast day’, 174; Swift, Works ed. Davis, vi. 151-5; [W. Fleetwood], Revolution-Principles: Being a Full Defence of the Bishop of St Asaph’s Preface to the Four Sermons (1713), preface. The Rev. Ralph Bridges, meanwhile, overseeing the effect of the print campaign concluded, ‘if the wise preceding Parliament to this had served Dr S[acheverel]l’s sermons only so, without the solemnity of an impeachment, they might for ought I know been still in being and Lords [over] us’. Add. 72495, f. 155.

Fleetwood was present at the traditional St Stephen’s dinner at Lambeth in 1712. LPL, ms. 1770, f. 128. In advance of the new session in April 1713, Swift (in a list amended by Oxford) assumed that Fleetwood would continue to oppose the ministry. Fleetwood attended the House on only 10 days (15 per cent of sittings). His activity in the House was nevertheless significant on the question of the Union. On 1 June, in the vote on the motion proposed by James Ogilvy, 4th earl of Findlater [S], to bring in a bill to dissolve the Union, Fleetwood and John Moore, bishop of Ely (both holding at least one proxy apiece), left the Lords before the 6 o’clock division; by doing so they saved the day for the government by failing to vote with the Whig opposition, who wished to adjourn the debate and prolong the issue, thereby putting further pressure on the ministry. Scot. Hist. Soc. Misc. XII, p. 156. He last attended on 5 June, when the government narrowly won a vote on the second reading of the malt bill, and was thus absent for another narrow defeat on that measure on 8 June. Politics, Relig. and Soc. in Eng. 1679-1742 ed. G. Holmes, 123-4, 127. About 13 June Oxford estimated that Fleetwood would oppose the ministry over the bill confirming the 8th and 9th articles of the French commercial treaty.

At the beginning of February 1714 Fleetwood was noted as ‘much out of order’ suffering from a complaint that seems to have troubled him for some time, though he was well enough to be visited by Wake on 6 and 18 Feb. and again on 4 and 10 March. LPL, ms 1770, ff. 140-1. He was consequently absent from the opening of the new session on 16 Feb. and remained absent for the first seven weeks of the session. He first took his seat at last on 8 Apr. and was present for 38 per cent of all sittings. He appears to have taken no part in the passage of the mortuaries in Welsh dioceses bill in spite of the previous efforts of the dean and chapter of St Asaph about the matter. TNA, SP 34/36/192. At the end of May or beginning of June Nottingham forecast Fleetwood as a likely opponent of the schism bill; on 11 June Fleetwood voted as expected against the extension of the bill to Ireland in a close division that was carried by the government by a single vote. Nicolson, London Diaries, 612-3. Four days later, he voted against the bill itself, registering his protest with Wake, Moore, Evans and Tyler on the grounds that Dissenters were already disabled from office and too disparate to threaten the educational monopoly of the Church. Add. 70070, newsletter, 15 June 1714. In July Fleetwood was one of those consulted by Wake over the heresy case involving the academic Dr Samuel Clarke. Wake assured Clarke that all those to whom he had sent material (Fleetwood among them) were ‘your very good friends’. Add. 4370, ff. 6-7. He last attended on 8 July, the penultimate day of the session.

Fleetwood did not attend the brief parliamentary session that met in the wake of the queen’s death on 1 August. It was widely anticipated that he would succeed Moore as bishop of Ely as a political reward, but with Nottingham as lord president of the new king’s council and Townshend determined to secure a mixed ministry, Fleetwood’s career prospects were for a while uncertain. Although Nottingham had wanted Ely for his own brother (the dean of York) on 18 Dec. Fleetwood was translated to Ely in a compromise negotiated between Tenison, Nottingham and Townshend. Add. 4222, f. 20; Bodl. Add. A. 269, ff. 35, 38; Sykes, Wake, ii. 99-100; Every, High Church Party, 156; Carpenter, Tenison, 188; Horwitz, Rev. Pols. 246-7.

Having long suffered from convulsions and apoplexy, Fleetwood died in Tottenham on 4 Aug. 1723 and was buried in Ely Cathedral on the 10th. Hearne, Remarks and Collections. viii, 105. According to Timothy Godwin, bishop of Kilmore [I], both he and Charles Trimnell, bishop of Winchester and formerly of Norwich ‘had such broken constitutions that it is rather a wonder that they held out so long’. Wake mss 14/103. Although he had quarrelled with his only son Charles (a fellow of King’s, Cambridge), whom Fleetwood had refused permission to become a clerical pluralist, he nevertheless made him his residuary legatee. Buss, Ancestry of William Fleetwood, 6. The bishop’s widow and son executed the will. Fleetwood’s nephew, William Powell, canon of Ely, published the bishop’s works in 1737. Compleat Collection ed. Powell.