Sir Guy Fairfax

FAIRFAX, Sir GUY (d. 1495), judge, was of a Yorkshire family, and third son of Richard Fairfax of Walton, by his wife, Anastasia, daughter of John Carthorpe. He is mentioned (Rot. Parl. iv. 164) in 1421 as seised of the manor of Hameldene, being then very young. From his father he inherited the manor of Steeton in Yorkshire, where he built a castle.

At first he seems to have been occupied with purely local business. He was in the commission of array for the West Riding in 1435, and in 1460 was commissioned to inquire what lands there were in that riding belonging to Richard, duke of York, who had been attainted in the previous parliament. One of his colleagues was Sir William Plumpton, whose counsel he afterwards was in 1469. He first appears in the year-books in Michaelmas 1463 as a serjeant and member of Gray's Inn. On 28 April 1468 he was appointed king's serjeant, and in 1476 became recorder of York. He was raised to a judgeship of the king's bench and is first mentioned as a judge in Trinity term 1477. In this office he won an honourable reputation, and on 8 Oct. 1482 he received a grant of a hundred merks yearly in addition to his salary. He was continued in his judgeship on each subsequent demise of the crown, and under Edward V became chief justice of Lancaster (Grants of Edward V, 6).

He died in 1495.

By his wife, Margaret, a daughter of Sir William Ryther, he had six children, four sons (the eldest, William, a judge of the common pleas under Henry VIII) and two daughters.

Refs

• [Foss's Judges of England; Year-books, 3 and 17 Edward IV; Drake's York, p. 363; Plumpton Correspondence, lii, lxvi.]

Sources

1. Dictionary of National Biography
2. Plantagenet Ancestry of Seventeenth-century Colonists: the Descent from the Later Plantagenet Kings of England, Henry III, Edward I, Edward II, and Edward III, of Emigrants from England and Wales to the North American Colonies Before 1701 (2nd ed., 1999), Faris, David, (2nd edition. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1999), FHL book 973 D2fp., p. 30 BLADEN:7.

Links

• http://histfam.familysearch.org/getperson.php?personID=I16764&tree=...
• http://www.tudorplace.com.ar/FAIRFAX.htm#Guy%20FAIRFAX%20(Sir)1_