Glimpses Of Our Ancestors In Sussex - online book

With Sketches Of Sussex Characters, Remarkable Incidents &c

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The Sussex Regicides, &c.                181
by Cromwell, as not approved by the Protector's Council. At the death of Cromwell he, like Col. Morley, came again to the front. He was put in command of the Sussex Militia by the Council of State, directed to secure Chichester and Arundel, and to hold correspondence with the forces in Surrey, Kent, and Wilts. During the struggle between the Presbyterian party in the Rump and Lambert at the head of the Republicans, Fagg was made Governor of Portsmouth, and, probably, his acquiescence in Monk's plans for the Restoration obtained for him that immunity which he subse­quently enjoyed for the past, and even favour in the future; for he was made first a Knight and then a Baronet by Charles II., and- was secured in all his possessions. Amongst these was Wiston House, the old residence of the Shirleys, in West Sussex, which the father of "the three Shirleys" had been compelled to sell from poverty, and which Dr. Thomas Shirley, a descendant, attempted to recover by law from Sir John Fagg, but failed, and was unlucky enough to be committed for breach of privilege in proceeding against the new Courtier and old Republican, Sir John. We are told that Sir John Fagg had a family of 16 children; but the male line seems soon to have failed, and Wiston passed, by the marriage, in 1743, of the heiress, Elizabeth Fagg, to Sir Charles Matthews Goring, to the Gorings. The name of Fagg is not now to be found amongst the gentry of Sussex, any more than are those of Culpepper, Challoner, Covert, Caryll, Springet, Boord, and a score more of once familiar Sussex names.
The close connection of Sir John Trevor, and, through him, of Col. Morley and Sir John Fagg with the great patriot, John Hampden, explains to some extent the support they gave to the Parliamentary cause, and, though not in the same degree, to the Protectorate. Hampden himself, it will be borne in mind, was a cousin of Cromwell, and so Cromwell was connected by family ties as well as political sympathies with these leading men of Sussex. The blood of Cromwell and of Hampden still flows in Sussex veins.
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