WILLIAM FITZWILLIAM, Earl of Southampton (d. 1542), lord high admiral of England, was the younger son of Sir Thomas Fitzwilliam of
Aldwarke, West Riding of Yorkshire, by Lucy, daughter and coheiress of John Neville, marquis of Montacute.
From the time when he was not more than ten years of age he had been brought up with the king
[Henry VIII], and was perfectly familiar with his personal habits, his likings
and dislikings. He shared in the king's love of sportsmanship, but was ignorant of Latin, and though he spoke French fluently was a poor
French scholar.1 In 1509, as one of the king's cupbearers, he was awarded many grants and privileges; two years later he obtained
the place of esquire of the body in reversion. In 1513, being one of the chief commanders in the fleet sent out against the French, he was
'sore hurt with a quarell' in a fight near Brest in Brittany2. Before the end of that year, on 25 Sept., he was knighted for
his good services at the Siege of Tournay,3 and shortly afterwards created vice-admiral of England.
In 1518 he was treasurer of Wolsey's household. In February 1521 Wolsey sent him as ambassador to the French
court, seeing that he would be a useful instrument. He was keen, bold, sagacious, able to resist flattery and cajolery, and never lost
his presence of mind. The French king [Francis I] received him cordially, talked of sport, and presumed upon
his want of experience. Fitzwilliam meanwhile kept his eyes open to all that went on, and gave the highest satisfaction to Wolsey. After
many difficulties and much tedious negotiations both powers consented to accept Henry's mediation.
When war was declared against France
in the following year, Fitzwilliam was appointed vice-admiral of the navy, under the command of the Earl of Surrey,
his special duty being to protect the English merchantmen from the attacks of the enemy.4
He commanded in 1523 the fleet stationed in the Channel to bar Albany's passage to Scotland. On 10 May 1524 he left England to take up
his appointment as captain of the garrison of Guisnes in Picardy, where he remained until the spring of 1525. By April 1525 he was again
in France, and with Sir Robert Wingfield attended a council at Mechlin, which he quitted for Guisnes on 21 May. In October 1525 he was
deputed with John Taylor, LL.D., to take the oath of the lady regent, Louise of Savoy, then at Lyons
(Francis I being a prisoner in Spain), for ratifying the articles of a treaty just concluded between the crowns
of England and France.5 Ill health obliged him to return home in January 1526. On 24 April of that year, being then comptroller
of the king's household, he was elected K.G.6 At the end of the year he was sent, along with Clerk, bishop of Bath and Wells,
to offer Francis I the hand of the Princess Mary [aged 10], and thus
promote an alliance with France.
In June 1528 he narrowly escaped falling a victim to the sweating sickness, then epidemic.7
In May 1529 he accompanied the Duke of Suffolk on an embassy to France. During the same year he was one of those
who subscribed the articles exhibited against Wolsey.8 He was present when the great seal was taken
from Wolsey, 17 Oct. 1529, and with Gardiner was appointed to see that no part of the cardinal's goods were
embezzled. About this time Fitzwilliam, 'on the part of the king, mediated' a quarrel which had arisen between the two houses of parliament
in consequence of Fisher's hasty declaration 'that nothing now would serve with
the commons but the ruin of the church.'9
In October 1529 Fitzwilliam succeeded More as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster.
For a short time in 1533 he acted as lord privy seal. On 26 May 1535 he took passage for Calais to be present at the diet of French and
English commissioners, returning in June. In the same capacity of commissioner he arrived at Calais on the following 17 Aug. to redress
'such things as were out of order in the town and marches,' and remained thus employed until October. Soon afterwards he was joined in
another embassy to France, with the Duke of Norfolk and Dr. Cox regarding the marriage of the Duke of
Angouleme, the French king's third son, with the Princess Elizabeth.10 He was on the council in 1536,
when Sir Henry Norris confessed to adultery with Anne Boleyn. He also formed one
of the tribunal appointed to try Norris and the three other commoners of a similar crime. Norris at his trial declared that he was deceived
into making his confession by Fitzwilliam's trickery11
He succeeded the Duke of Richmond as lord high admiral 16 Aug. 1536, and held the ofhce until 18 July 1540. In
the same year he took part in the suppression of the insurrection in Lincolnshire [see Pilgrimage of Grace].
On 18 Oct. 1537, having in the meantime been made treasurer of the king's household, Fitzwilliam was raised to the peerage as Earl of
Southampton. He remained treasurer for about a year. In November 1538 he was sent down to Warblington in Hampshire to examine the
Countess of Salisbury, who was implicated in the Nun of Kent's conspiracy.12
She denied all knowledge of the plot, and was removed to Cowdray, near Midhurst in Sussex, a place belonging to Fitzwilliam himself, where
she was detained.13 Cowdray had been sold to Fitzwilliam by Sir David Owen in 1528.14
In 1539, when an invasion of England was threatened, he took command of the fleet at Portsmouth. At the parliamentary election of 1539
he put out his utmost strength to secure for the king a manageable House of Commons, going in person round Surrey, Sussex, and Hampshire,
where his own property was situated.15 On 11 Dec. 1539 he met Anne of Cleves at Calais to conduct
her to her future country. Detained by the bad weather for fifteen days, Fitzwilliam, to beguile the time, taught the princess to play at
cards. Meanwhile he wrote to advertise the king of her arrival, and, thinking that he must make the best of a matter which was past remedy,
repeated the praises of the lady's appearance. Cromwell afterwards accused Fitzwilliam of having encouraged false
hopes in his letters from Calais.16 He witnessed the arrest of Cromwell, 10 June 1540, when, according to Marillac, 'to show that he
was as much his enemy in adversity as in prosperity he had pretended to be his friend, he stripped the Garter off the fallen minister.'17
Shortly afterwards, 'upon some discontent between Henry and the king of France, whereupon the French raised forces in Picardy, Fitzwilliam,
with John, Lord Russel, then newly made high admiral, carried over two troopes of northern horse into those parts.' 18
He died at Newcastle-upon-Tyne in October 1542, while on his march into Scotland, leading the van of the English army commanded by the Duke of
Norfolk. In honour of his memory 'his standard was borne in the foreward throughout that whole expedition.'19 In his will, dated
10 Sept. 1542, he desired to be buried in the parish church of Midhurst, where a new chapel was to be built for a tomb for himself and his wife
Mabel, at an expense of five hundred marks, 'if he should die within one hundred miles of it.'20 The chapel remains, but there are
no signs of a tomb; he was therefore probably buried at Newcastle. To the king he gave 'his great ship with all her tackle, and his collar of
the Garter, with his best George beset with diamonds.'
He married in 1513 Mabel, daughter of Henry, lord Clifford, and sister of Henry, first earl of Cumberland, but by this lady, who died in 1535,
he had no issue. Consequently the earldom of Southampton at his decease became extinct, while his entailed estates would rightly devolve upon
his two nieces, daughters of his elder brother, Thomas Fitzwilliam, who was slain at Flodden Field in 1515:
Alice, married to Sir James Foljambe, and Margaret, the wife of Godfrey Foljambe. The Cowdray estate fell to his half-brother,
Sir Anthony Browne.
There is a portrait of Fitzwilliam in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, which is considered to be a copy of the one by Holbein, destroyed
at Cowdray by the fire in September 1793.21
1. Brewer, Reign of Henry VIII.
2. Holinshed, Chronicles, ed. Hooker, 1587, iii. 810.
3. ib. p. 824.
4. Herbert, Reign of Henry VIII, p. 123.
5. Holinshed, iii. 892; Herbert, p. 181.
6. K.G. = Knight of the Garter. Beltz, Memorials of the Garter, p. clxxiii.
7. Letters and Papers of Reign of Henry VIII, ed Brewer, iv. 1932.
8. Herbert, p. 274.
9. ib. p.293.
10. ib. p. 383.
11. Froude, History of England, cabinet edit., 1870, ch. xi..
12. See his letter to Cromwell in Sir H. Ellis's Original Letters, 2nd ser. ii. 110-14.
13. Froude, ch. xv.
14. Sussex Archæol. Coll. v. 178, vii. 40.
15. Letter of Fitzwilliam to Cromwell, Cotton MS. Cleopatra, E. 4, cited in Froude, ch. xvi..
16. Froude, ch. xvii.; deposition of the Earl of Southampton in Strype, Memorials, 8vo ed. vol. ii.
17. Froude, ch. xvii.
18. Herbert, p. 484.
19. ib. p. 483.
20. Abstract of will registered in P. C. C. 16, Spert, in Nicolas, Testamenta Vetusta, ii. 707-9.
21. Sussex Archæol. Coll. vii. 29 n.
Source:
Goodwin, Gordon. "William Fitzwilliam, Earl of Southampton."
The Dictionary of National Biography. Vol XIX. Leslie Stephen, Ed.
New York: Macmillan and Co., 1889. 230-2.
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