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THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA
A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL INFORMATION
ELEVENTH EDITION
VOLUME X SLICE II
Fairbanks, Erastus to Fens
Articles in This Slice
FAIRBANKS, ERASTUS FASCIA FAIRFAX, EDWARD FASCINATION FAIRFAX OF CAMERON, FERDINANDO FAIRFAX FASCINE FAIRFAX OF CAMERON, THOMAS FAIRFAX FASHION FAIRFIELD (Connecticut, U.S.A.) FASHODA FAIRFIELD (Iowa, U.S.A.) FAST AND LOOSE FAIRHAVEN FASTI FAIRHOLT, FREDERICK WILLIAM FASTING FAIRMONT FASTOLF, SIR JOHN FAIR OAKS FAT FAIRŪZĀBĀDĪ FATALISM FAIRY FATE FAIRY RING FATEHPUR FAITHFULL, EMILY FATEHPUR SIKRI FAITH HEALING FATHER FAITHORNE, WILLIAM FATHERS OF THE CHURCH FAIZABAD FATHOM FAJARDO FATIMITESFAIRBANKS, ERASTUS (1792-1864), American manufacturer, was born in Brimfield, Massachusetts, on the 28th of October 1792. He studied law but abandoned it for mercantile pursuits, finally settling in St Johnsbury, Vermont, where in 1824 he formed a partnership with his brother Thaddeus for the manufacture of stoves and ploughs. Subsequently the scales invented by Thaddeus were manufactured extensively. Erastus was a member of the state legislature in 1836-1838, and governor of Vermont in 1852-1853 and 1860-1861, during his second term rendering valuable aid in the equipment and despatch of troops in the early days of the Civil War. His son Horace (1820-1888) became president of E. & T. Fairbanks & Co. in 1874, and was governor of Vermont from 1876 to 1878.
His brother, Thaddeus
The latter’s son Henry, born in 1830 at St Johnsbury, Vermont, graduated at Dartmouth College in 1853 and at Andover Theological Seminary in 1857, and was professor of natural philosophy at Dartmouth from 1859 to 1865 and of natural history from 1865 to 1868. In the following year he patented a grain-scale and thenceforth devoted himself to the scale manufacturing business of his family. Altogether he obtained more than thirty patents for mechanical devices.
FAIRFAX, EDWARD (c. 1580-1635), English poet, translator of Tasso, was born at Leeds, the second son of Sir Thomas Fairfax of Denton (father of the 1st Baron Fairfax of Cameron). His legitimacy has been called in question, and the date of his birth has not been ascertained. He is said to have been only about twenty years of age when he published his translation of the Gerusalemme Liberala, which would place his birth about the year 1580. He preferred a life of study and retirement to the military service in which his brothers were distinguished. He married a sister of Walter Laycock, chief alnager of the northern counties, and lived on a small estate at Fewston, Yorkshire. There his time was spent in his literary pursuits, and in the education of his children and those of his elder brother, Sir Thomas Fairfax, afterwards baron of Cameron. His translation appeared in 1600,—Godfrey of Bulloigne, or the Recoverie of Jerusalem, done into English heroicall Verse by Edw. Fairefax, Gent., and was dedicated to the queen. It was enthusiastically received. In the same year in which it was published extracts from it were printed in England’s Parnassus. Edward Phillips, the nephew of Milton, in his Theatrum Poetarum, warmly eulogized the translation. Edmund Waller said he was indebted to it for the harmony of his numbers. It is said that it was King James’s favourite English poem, and that Charles I. entertained himself in prison with its pages. Fairfax employed the same number of lines and stanzas as his original, but within the limits of each stanza he allowed himself the greatest liberty. Other translators may give a more literal version, but Fairfax alone seizes upon the poetical and chivalrous character of the poem. He presented, says Mr Courthope, “an idea of the chivalrous past of Europe, as seen through the medium of Catholic orthodoxy and classical humanism.” The sweetness and melody of many passages are scarcely excelled even by Spenser. Fairfax made no other appeal to the public. He wrote, however, a series of eclogues, twelve in number, the fourth of which was published, by permission of the family, in Mrs Cooper’s Muses’ Library (1737). Another of the eclogues and a Discourse on Witchcraft, as it was acted in the Family of Mr Edward Fairfax of Fuystone in the county of York in 1621, edited from the original copy by Lord Houghton, appeared in the Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society (1858-1859). Fairfax was a firm believer in witchcraft. He fancied that two of his children had been bewitched, and he had the poor wretches whom he accused brought to trial, but without obtaining a conviction. Fairfax died at Fewston and was buried there on the 27th of January 1635.
FAIRFAX OF CAMERON, FERDINANDO FAIRFAX, 2nd Baron (1584-1648), English parliamentary general, was a son of Thomas Fairfax of Denton (1560-1640), who in 1627 was created Baron Fairfax of Cameron in the peerage of Scotland. Born on the 29th of March 1584, he obtained his military education in the Netherlands, and was member of parliament for Boroughbridge during the six parliaments which met between 1614 and 1629 and also during the Short Parliament of 1640. In May 1640 he succeeded his father as Baron Fairfax, but being a Scottish peer he sat in the English House of Commons as one of the representatives of Yorkshire during the Long Parliament from 1640 until his death; he took the side of the parliament, but held moderate views and desired to maintain the peace. In the first Scottish war Fairfax had commanded a regiment in the king’s army; then on the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642 he was made commander of the parliamentary forces in Yorkshire, with Newcastle as his opponent. Hostilities began after the repudiation of a treaty of neutrality entered into by Fairfax with the Royalists. At first he met with no success. He was driven from York, where he was besieging the Royalists, to Selby; then in 1643 to Leeds; and after beating off an attack at that place he was totally defeated on the 30th of June at Adwalton Moor. He escaped to Hull, which he successfully defended against Newcastle from the 2nd of September till the 11th of October, and by means of a brilliant sally caused the siege to be raised. Fairfax was victorious at Selby on the 11th of April 1644, and joining the Scots besieged York, after which he was present at Marston Moor, where he commanded the infantry and was routed. He was subsequently, in July, made governor of York and charged with the further reduction of the county. In December he took the town of Pontefract, but failed to secure the castle. He resigned his command on the passing of the Self-denying Ordinance, but remained a member of the committee for the government of Yorkshire, and was appointed, on the 24th of July 1645, steward of the manor of Pontefract. He died from an accident on the 14th of March 1648 and was buried at Bolton Percy. He was twice married, and by his first wife, Mary, daughter of Edmund Sheffield, 3rd Lord Sheffield (afterwards 1st earl of Mulgrave), he had six daughters and two sons, Thomas, who succeeded him as 3rd baron, and Charles, a colonel of horse, who was killed at Marston Moor. During his command in Yorkshire, Fairfax engaged in a paper war with Newcastle, and wrote The Answer of Ferdinando, Lord Fairfax, to a Declaration of William, earl of Newcastle (1642; printed in Rushworth, pt. iii. vol. ii. p. 139); he also published A Letter from ... Lord Fairfax to ... Robert, Earl of Essex (1643), describing the victorious sally at Hull.
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 the 17th of January 1612. He studied at St John’s College, Cambridge (1626-1629), and then proceeded to Holland to serve as a volunteer with the English army in the Low Countries under Sir Horace (Lord) Vere. This connexion led to one still closer; in the summer of 1637 Fairfax married Anne Vere, the daughter of the general.
The Fairfaxes,
In the south and west of England, however, the Royalist cause was still active. The war had lasted two years, and the nation began to complain of the contributions that were exacted, 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, and the reconstruction of the armed forces of the parliament. Sir Thomas Fairfax was selected as 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 besieged Leicester, and was successful at Taunton, Bridgwater and Bristol. The whole west was soon reduced.
Fairfax arrived in London on the 12th of November 1645. In his progress towards the capital he was accompanied by applauding crowds. Complimentary speeches and thanks were presented to him by both houses of parliament, along with a jewel of great value set with diamonds, and a sum of money. The king had returned from Wales and established himself at Oxford, where there was a strong garrison, but, ever vacillating, he withdrew secretly, and proceeded to Newark to throw himself into the arms of the Scots. Oxford capitulated, and by the end of September 1646 Charles had neither army nor garrison in England. In January 1647 he was delivered up by the Scots to the commissioners of parliament. Fairfax met the king beyond Nottingham, and accompanied him during the journey to Holmby, treating him with the utmost consideration in every way. “The general,” said Charles, “is a man of honour, and keeps his word which he had pledged to me.” With the collapse of the Royalist cause came a confused period of negotiations between the parliament and the king, between the king and the Scots, and between the Presbyterians and the Independents in and out of parliament. In these negotiations the New Model Army soon began to take a most active part. The lord general was placed in the unpleasant position of intermediary between his own officers and parliament. To the grievances, usual in armies of that time, concerning arrears of pay and indemnity for acts committed on duty, there was quickly added the political propaganda of the Independents, and in July the person of the king was seized by Joyce, a subaltern of cavalry—an act which sufficiently demonstrated the hopelessness of controlling the army by its articles of war. It had, in fact, become the most formidable political party in the realm, and pressed straight on to the overthrow of parliament and the punishment of Charles. Fairfax was more at home in the field than at the head of a political committee, and, finding events too strong for him, he sought to resign his commission as commander-in-chief. He was, however, persuaded to retain it. He thus 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 he displayed his former energy and skill, and 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 victory 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 was in agreement with Cromwell and the army leaders in demanding the punishment of Charles, and he was still the effective head of the army. He approved, if he did not take an active part in, Pride’s Purge (December 6th, 1648), but on the last and gravest of the questions at issue he set himself in deliberate and open opposition to the policy of the officers. He was placed at the head of the judges who were to try the king, and attended the preliminary sitting of the court. Then, convinced at last that the king’s death was intended, he refused to act. In calling over the court, when the crier pronounced the name of Fairfax, a lady in the gallery called 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.” This was Lady Fairfax, who could not forbear, as Whitelocke says, to exclaim aloud against the proceedings of the High Court of Justice. His last service as commander-in-chief was the suppression of the Leveller mutiny at Burford in May 1649. He had given his adhesion to the new order of things, and had been reappointed lord general. But he merely administered the affairs of the army, and when in 1650 the Scots had declared for Charles II., and the council of state resolved to send an army to Scotland in order to prevent an invasion of England, Fairfax resigned his commission. Cromwell was appointed his successor, “captain-general and commander-in-chief of all the forces raised or to be raised by authority of parliament within the commonwealth of England.” Fairfax received a pension of £5000 a year, and lived in retirement at his Yorkshire home of Nunappleton till after
Lord Fairfax had a taste for literature. He translated some of the Psalms, and wrote poems on solitude, the Christian warfare, the shortness of life, &c. 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 1642-1644, 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 MSS. His only daughter, Mary Fairfax, was married to George Villiers, the profligate duke of Buckingham of Charles II.’s court.