FAIRFAX OF CAMERON, THOMAS FAIRFAX, 3RD BARON (1612-1671), parliamentary general and commander in-chief during the English Civil War, the eldest son of the 2nd lord, was born at Denton, near Otley, Yorkshire, on Jan. 17, 1612. He studied at St. John's College, Cambridge (1626-29), and then served as a volunteer with the English army in the Low Countries under Sir Horace (Lord) Vere, whose daughter Anne he married in 1637. He was knighted in 1640.
The Fairf axes, father and son, though serving at first under Charles I., were opposed to the arbitrary prerogative of the crown. When Charles endeavoured to raise a guard for his own person at York, intending it to form the nucleus of an army, Fairfax presented a petition asking him to discontinue the raising of troops. This was at a meeting of the freeholders and farmers of Yorkshire convened by the king on Heworth Moor near York. War broke out, Lord Fairfax was appointed general of the Par liamentary forces in the north, and his son, Sir Thomas, was made lieutenant-general of horse under him. Both father and son distinguished themselves in the campaigns in Yorkshire (see GREAT REBELLION) . Sometimes severely defeated, more often successful, and always energetic, prudent and resourceful, they maintained the struggle until the crisis of 1644, when York was held by the marquess of Newcastle against the combined forces of the English Parliamentarians and the Scots, and Prince Rupert hastened with all available forces to its relief. The battle of Marston Moor (q.v.) was decisive of the struggle in the north. The younger Fairfax bore himself with the greatest gallantry in the battle, and though severely wounded managed to join Crom well and the victorious cavalry on the other wing. One of his brothers, Colonel Charles Fairfax, was killed in the action.
After the passing of the Self-denying Ordinance Thomas Fair fax was selected to succeed Essex, the new lord general, with Cromwell as his lieutenant-general and cavalry commander, and after a short preliminary campaign the "New Model" justified its existence, and "the rebels' new brutish general," as the king called him, his capacity as commander-in-chief in the decisive victory of Naseby (q.v.). The king fled to Wales. Fairfax be sieged Leicester, and was successful at Taunton, Bridgwater and Bristol. Oxford surrendered in 1646, and it is characteristic of the man that the general's first act was to set a strong guard on the Bodleian Library.
In Jan. 1647 Charles was delivered up by the Scots to the commissioners of parliament. Fairfax met the king beyond Not tingham, and accompanied him during the journey to Holmby, treating him with the utmost consideration. In the confused negotiations between the various parties which followed, Fairfax was placed in the unpleasant position of intermediary between his own officers and parliament. He was more at home in the field than at the head of a political committee, and, finding events too strong for him, he sought in vain to resign his commission as commander-in-chief. He remained the titular chief of the army party, and with the greater part of its objects he was in complete, sometimes most active, sympathy. Shortly before the outbreak of the second Civil War, Fairfax succeeded his father in the barony and in the office of governor of Hull. In the field against the English Royalists in 1648 his operations culminated in the successful siege of Colchester, after the surrender of which place he approved the execution of the Royalist leaders Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle, holding that these officers had broken their parole. At the same time Cromwell's great vic tory of Preston crushed the Scots, and the Independents became practically all-powerful.
Milton, in a sonnet written during the siege of Colchester, called upon the lord general to settle the kingdom, but the crisis was now at hand. Fairfax approved, if he did not take an active part in, Pride's Purge (Dec. 6, 1648), but on the question of the fate of Charles he opposed the army officers. He presided over the judges who were to try the king at the preliminary sitting. Then, convinced that the king's death was intended, he refused to act. In calling over the court, when the crier pronounced the name of Fairfax, Lady Fairfax, from the gallery, cried out "that the Lord Fairfax was not there in person, that he would never sit among them, and that they did him wrong to name him as a commissioner." His last service as commander-in-chief was the suppression of the Leveller mutiny at Burford in May He had been reappointed lord general, but the council of state resolved to send an army against the Scots in 165o. Fairfax re signed his commission. Cromwell was appointed his successor. Fairfax received a pension of L5,000 a year, and lived in retire ment at his Yorkshire home of Nunappleton till after the death of the Protector.
The troubles of the later Commonwealth recalled him to political activity, when Monk invited his co-operation against Lambert's army. When, in Dec. 16S9, he appeared at the head of a body of Yorkshire gentlemen, 1,200 horse quitted Lambert's colours and joined him. That day secured the restoration of the monarchy. Fairfax was elected member for Yorkshire in the "free" parliament, and led the commission appointed by the House of Commons to wait upon Charles II. at The Hague and urge his speedy return.
The remaining eleven years of the life of Lord Fairfax were spent in retirement at his seat in Yorkshire. He died at Nun appleton on Nov. 12, 1671, and was buried at Bilborough, near York. 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" (Whitelocke), chivalrous and punc tilious in his dealings with his own men and the enemy. Honour and conscientiousness were equally the characteristics of his private and public character. But both in war and peace he was overshadowed by his associate Cromwell.
Lord Fairfax translated some of the Psalms, and wrote poems on solitude, the Christian warfare, the shortness of life, etc. Dur ing 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 en deavoured to save the libraries from pillage, and he enriched the Bodleian with some valuable mss. His only daughter, Mary Fairfax, was married to George Villiers, the profligate duke of Buckingham of Charles II.'s court.
See the correspondence of Fairfax (2 vols. ed. G. W. Johnson 1849, and 2 vols. ed. R. Bell, as Memorials of the Civil War, 1849) ; C. R. Markham, The Great Lord Fairfax (1870) ; S. R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War His descendant Thomas, 6th baron (1692-1782), inherited from his mother, the heiress of Thomas, 2nd Baron Culpepper, large estates in Virginia, U.S.A., and having sold Denton Hall and his Yorkshire estates he retired there about 1746, dying a bachelor. He was a friend of George Washington. Thomas found his cousin William Fairfax settled in Virginia, and made him his agent, and Bryan (1737-1802), the son of William Fairfax, eventually inherited the title, becoming 8th baron in 1793. His claim was admitted by the House of Lords in 1800. But it was practically dropped by the American family, until, shortly before the coronation of Edward VII., the successor in title was dis covered in Albert Kirby Fairfax , a descendant of the 8th baron, who was an American citizen. In Nov. 1908 Albert's claim to the title as 12th baron was confirmed by the House of Lords.