Family and Education

b. c.1649, 2nd but 1st surv. s. of John Fagg I, and bro. of John Fagg II. educ. Steyning academy (William Corderoy) 1662-3; St. Catherine’s, Camb. 1663; I. Temple 1664, called 1671. m. 21 Sept. 1671, Elizabeth, da. of Benjamin Culpepper of Lindfield, 1s. 2da. suc. fa. as 2nd Bt. 18 Jan. 1701.1

Offices Held

Commr. for assessment, Suss. 1673-80, 1689-90, j.p. May 1688-d.

Biography

Fagg was prepared for Cambridge at a boarding school in Steyning kept by an ejected minister. He became a barrister, but his elder brother died in the following year and he is unlikely to have practised. He was returned for Shoreham on the family interest at the first general election of 1679. There was a contest, but Fagg’s own return was unopposed. A Whig and a probable dissenter, he was marked ‘honest’ on Shaftesbury’s list. He was named only to the elections committee in the first Exclusion Parliament, but, unlike his father, voted for the bill. He was defeated in the August election by the court candidate John Hales, and his petition was never reported. He regained the seat in 1681 after a contest, but left no trace on the records of the Oxford Parliament. Later in the year the local Whigs approved him and his younger brother as candidates for Steyning, but he is not known to have stood in 1685. He was probably a Whig collaborator in 1688, when he was appointed to the commission of the peace; but he again failed to go to the poll in 1689. He was a country Whig under William III. He died on 22 Aug. 1715 and was buried at Albourne. Both his son and his grandson were returned for Steyning, the former as a Tory in 1708 and the latter as Whig in 1734.2

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Author: Basil Duke Henning

Notes

• 1. Vis. Suss. (Harl. Soc. lxxxix), 43; D. R. Lacey, Dissent and Parl. Pols. 392; PCC 174 Fagg.
• 2. CJ, ix. 638; CSP Dom. 1680-1, p. 473.