Family and Education

bap. 9 Mar. 1613, 1st s. of Sir Robert Fisher, 1st Bt. of Great Packington by Elizabeth, da. of Sir Anthony Tyringham^† of Tyringham, Bucks. m. 8 Dec. 1662, Jane (d. 9 Sept. 1689), da. of Thomas Lane of Bentley, Staffs. s.p. suc. fa. 29 Mar. 1647.1

Offices Held

J.p. Warws. Mar. 1660-c.73; commr. for oyer and terminer, Midland circuit July 1660, assessment, Warws. Aug. 1660-80, Westminster 1663-4, Coventry 1664-80, loyal and indigent officers, Warws. 1662.2

Biography

Fisher’s great-grandfather, a gentleman pensioner at the court of Henry VIII, acquired Great Packington at the dissolution of the monasteries. His grandfather was returned for Tamworth in 1584. Fisher’s father was a commissioner of array, and he himself bore arms in the royalist garrison of Lichfield in the Civil War, though his brother, Thomas, was ‘always well-affected to Parliament’. He compounded at one-sixth on an estate of £660 p.a. for £1,711 in 1648. In 1656 he petitioned for exemption from the decimation tax on the grounds that in recent years he had manifested his good will to the regime.3

Fisher was returned for Coventry, seven miles from his home, at the general election of 1661. He was not an active Member of the Cavalier Parliament, being named to only 20 committees, most of which were in the first session. He was among those appointed to consider the bill restoring bishops to the House of Lords and the bill of pains and penalties, and to bring in a militia bill. He married the sister of John Lane, on whom an annuity of £1,000 had been settled in recognition of her part in the King’s escape after the battle of Worcester, and was listed as a court dependant in 1664. He was absent from a call of the House on 15 Dec. 1666, and on 13 Apr. 1668 he was given permission to go into the country for the recovery of his health. Sir Thomas Osborne included him in 1669 among the independent Members who usually voted for supply, but his last committee was on a private bill on 13 Mar. 1671. Not long afterwards he seems to have been removed from the Warwickshire bench, presumably for reasons of health. Secretary Coventry wrote to him to attend the spring session of 1675, but he did not receive the government whip in the autumn, and Sir Richard Wiseman noted his absence. Though Shaftesbury classed him as ‘doubly vile’, his name appeared on no further list of court supporters, except to indicate that he was again absent. He did not stand again, and died on 13 Apr. 1683. He was buried at Great Packington. His title was inherited by a nephew, but no later member of the family entered Parliament.4

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Author: A. M. Mimardière

Notes

• 1. Vis Warws. (Harl. Soc. lxii) 32-33.
• 2. Warws. Recs. v. p. xvii.
• 3. VCH Warws. iv. 36, 182; Dugdale, Antiqs. Warws. 989; Cal. Comm. Comp. 1548; SP23/204/312-18; Verney Mems. ii. 30.
• 4. T.W. Whitley, Parl. Rep. Coventry, 102; D. Ogg, Reign of Chas. II, 483; Life of Dugdale ed. Hamper, 145.