exchequer. About the same time he was knighted. In the autumn of 1523 he was entrusted by the king with the delicate task of negotiating a marriage between Lord Henry Percy, who was supposed to be engaged to Anne Boleyn, and Lady Mary Talbot, daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury. Fitzjames's diplomacy was crowned with success. On 23 Jan. 1525–6 he succeeded Sir John Fyneux [q. v.] as chief justice of the king's bench. He was a trier of petitions in parliament in November 1529, and signed the articles of impeachment exhibited against Wolsey on 1 Dec. of the same year. He seems to have exerted himself at Wolsey's request to save Christchurch from sequestration (ib. iii. pt. i. 12, 197, pt. ii. 873, 1383, iv. pt. iii. 2690, 2714, 2928; Cobbett, State Trials, i. 296; Brewer, Reign of Henry VIII, ed. Gairdner, ii. 177; Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council, vii. 338; Dugdale, Chron. Ser. 80, 81). Two letters are extant from Fitzjames to Cromwell, one dated 29 Oct. 1532, describing the state of legal business and the ravages of the plague, the other, dated 8 March, and apparently written at Redlynch in 1533, in which he complains much of illness, and begs to be excused attendance in London. He was present, however, at the coronation of Anne Boleyn on 1 June 1533. His name is appended to a proclamation of 7 Nov. 1534, fixing the maximum price of French and Gascon wines at 4l. per tun, pursuant to statute 23 Hen. VIII, c. 7. He was a member of the special tribunals that tried in April 1535 the Carthusians, Robert Feron, John Hale, and others, for high treason under statute 25 Hen. VIII, c. 22, the offence consisting in having conversed too freely about the king's marriage. He also helped to try Fisher and More in the ensuing June and July. It is probable that he secretly sympathised with the prisoners, as he preserved a discreet silence throughout the proceedings, broken only when the lord chancellor directly appealed to him to say whether the indictment against More was or was not sufficient by the curiously cautious utterance, ‘By St. Gillian, I must needs confess that if the act of parliament be not unlawful, then the indictment is not in my conscience invalid.’ On 2 Sept. 1535 he wrote to Cromwell, interceding on behalf of the abbot of Glastonbury, who he thought was being somewhat harshly dealt with by the visitors of the monasteries. In October 1538 he made his will, being then ‘weak and feeble in body.’ He retired from the bench in the same year, or early in the following year, his successor, Sir Edward Montagu, being appointed on 21 Jan. 1538–9. The exact date of his death is uncertain. His will was proved on 12 May 1542. He was buried in the parish church of Bruton, Somersetshire (State Papers, i. 384, 387; Trevelyan Papers, Camden Soc. ii. 55–7; Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII, Foreign and Domestic, viii. 229, 350, 384, ix. 85; Cobbett, State Trials, i. 393). The reputation of Fitzjames suffered much at the hands of Lord Campbell, whose errors and fabrications were ably exposed by Foss. It is impossible, with the meagre materials at our command, to say how far Fitzjames may have allowed subserviency to the king to pervert justice. His complicity in the judicial murders of 1535 leaves a stain on his memory. On the other hand he seems to have been superior to bribes.
[Fuller's Worthies, Somersetshire; Lloyd's State Worthies, i. 125–9; Collinson's Somersetshire, i. 226; Hutchins's Dorset, ii. 222; Foss's Lives of the Judges.]
FITZJAMES, RICHARD (d. 1522), bishop of London, son of John and grandson of James Fitzjames, who married Eleanor, daughter of Simon Draycot, was born at Redlynch, in the parish of Bruton, Somersetshire. Nothing is known of him till he became a student at Oxford, which Wood says was about 1459. He was elected fellow of Merton College in 1465, and had taken his degree of M.A. before he was ordained acolyte (XIV Kal. Maii, 1471). Fuller speaks of him as being of right ancient and worthy parentage; but Campbell, in his life of his nephew, Sir John Fitzjames [q. v.], speaks of him as of low origin, though he gives no authority for the statement. He served the office of proctor in the university of Oxford in 1473, and in 1477 became prebendary of Taunton in the cathedral church of Wells, in succession to John Wansford, subdean of Wells, resigned. He was afterwards chaplain to Edward IV, and took degrees in divinity. He was principal of St. Alban Hall from Michaelmas day 1477 to the same day 1481, and treasurer of St. Paul's 1483–97 and prebendary from 1485 to 1497. In 1485 he became rector of Aller and vicar of Minehead, both in Somerset, and in 1495 was incorporated M.A. at Cambridge. He held Aller till 1497, when he was succeeded by Christopher Bainbridge, afterwards cardinal and archbishop of York. He was, says Wood, a frequent preacher, but read, not preached, his sermons. On 12 March 1483 he succeeded John Gygur in the wardenship of his college. This post he held till 1507, and won golden opinions for his liberality and excellent government of the
