ward III, possibly an offshoot of the Yorkshire family of the same name, was born on 8 March 1738–9, in the neighbourhood of London, his father being an office in the horse guards. He entered the navy in 1750, and, after serving under Keppel and Arbuthnot, was promoted to be lieutenant on 20 Dec. 1757. In 1759 he was a lieutenant of the Eurus with Captain John Elphinston [q. v.] in the operations in the St. Lawrence, and continued actively serving till August 1760. He had no further employment till June 1766, when he was appointed to the Greyhound, and from June 1769 to September 1776 he was again on half-pay as a lieutenant. In May 1778 he was promoted to the command of the Alert cutter, and in her, while attached to the grand fleet under Keppel, and in company with the Arethusa, captured, after a sharp engagement, the French lugger Coureur, at the same time that the Arethusa was beaten off in her celebrated fight with the Belle Poule. A few months later the Alert was herself captured by the Junon frigate of 40 guns, and Fairfax was detained a prisoner during the greater part of the war. In January 1782 he was promoted to post rank, and appointed to the Tartar frigate, which he commanded till the peace. In 1793 he was appointed to the Sheerness, in which and in the Repulse he remained till 1796, when he was appointed flag-captain to Admiral Duncan, the commander-in-chief in the North Sea [see Duncan, Adam, Lord]. In the Venerable with Duncan he shared in the difficulties of the mutiny and the glories of Camperdown, his services on which occasion were rewarded by his being made a knight banneret (United Service Gazette, 12 Jan. 1829). He continued in command of the Venerable till 7 Jan. 1801, when he was promoted to flag rank. He had no further service; was advanced to be a vice-admiral on 13 Dec. 1806; and died in Edinburgh on 7 Nov. 1813. He was twice married: first, in 1767, to Hannah, daughter of the Rev. Robert Spears of Burntisland; she died without issue in 1770: secondly, to Margaret, daughter of Mr. Samuel Charters, and cousin of the Russian admiral, Sir Samuel Greig [q. v.]; by her he had a son, Henry, created a baronet in 1836, and, with other issue, a daughter, Mary, afterwards Mrs. Somerville [q. v.]
[Ralfe's Naval Biog. iv. 485; Naval Chronicle (with an engraved portrait), v. 465; Foster's Baronetage; Official Documents in the Public Record Office; information communicated by Sir W. G. H. T. Ramsay-Fairfax, bart., in whose possession is the portrait by Sir Martin Shee, engraved for the Naval Chronicle.]
FAIRFIELD, CHARLES (1761?–1804), painter, executed some original works of great merit, which passed almost unnoticed owing to his retired and diffident nature and the seclusion in which he lived. He is best known as a copyist of the works of the Dutch and Flemish masters of the seventeenth century. These were extremely well done, and were eagerly sought after by dealers, who disposed of them as originals. A copy by him of Teniers's ‘Le Bonnet Rouge’ was ‘of the most striking perfection of finish and tone, capable of deceiving any one could it have but age’ (manuscript notes in Anderdon, Collectanea Biographica, print room, British Museum). He died in Brompton in 1804 in his forty-fifth year. He etched a few plates, including one of a ‘Cavalier at the Door of an Inn,’ after Metsu.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Gent. Mag. (1805), lxxv. 880; Nagler's Künstler-Lexikon; Bryan's Dict. of Painters and Engravers, ed. Graves.]
FAIRHOLM, CHARLES. [See Ferme, Charles.]
FAIRHOLT, FREDERICK WILLIAM (1814–1866), engraver and antiquarian writer, born in London in 1814, was the son of a German named Fahrholz, who came to England and worked in a sugar, and then in a tobacco manufactory, anglicising his name to Fairholt. Frederick William was his sixteenth child by his wife, the daughter of a Spitalfields silk-weaver named Dugwell. At school Fairholt used to fill up the large capitals in his copybook with pictures, and he received regular drawing lessons when he was twelve. When a boy he was awarded the silver ‘Isis’ medal of the Society of Arts for a drawing; and before he was twenty-one he worked at print colouring, and was for some time the assistant of a scene-painter. For fourteen years, apparently in the early part of his life, he had employment in a tobacco factory. When twenty-one he became an assistant to S. Sly, the wood-engraver, and from this time worked steadily at engraving. He made many hundreds of drawings on wood to illustrate Charles Knight's publications, the ‘Penny Magazine,’ ‘London,’ ‘Illustrated Shakespeare,’ &c. The first important work entirely illustrated by him was Jackson and Chatto's ‘Treatise on Wood Engraving,’ 1839. Among the other works illustrated by him are: Halliwell's ‘Sir John Maundeville,’ 1839; Hawkins's ‘Silver Coinage of England,’ 1841; S. C. Hall's ‘Mansions of England,’ 1843–5; Halliwell's ‘Life of Shakespeare,’ 1848; Chatto's ‘Facts and Speculations on Playing Cards,’
