Catalogue description HENRY FANSHAWE, QUEEN'S REMEMBRANCER

The list reflects the nineteenth century arrangement of the papers and incorporates, with correction where appropriate, information in the slip listing of those papers, OBS 1/118.

Members of the Fanshawe family were each successively King's/Queen's Remembrancer, exercising the office in person or by deputy for more than a century from 1565, apart from the brief tenure of Sir Christopher Hatton (Remembrancer 1616-1619), and with an interlude for the Commonwealth period, when Richard Fanshawe was deprived of office. The family retained a reversionary interest until the end of the seventeenth century; the last of the family to hold the office of King's Remembrancer was Simon, 5th viscount Fanshawe, Queen's/King's Remembrancer 1709-1716. Their long tenure of one of the senior offices of the Upper Exchequer, and the litigation in the Exchequer to which members of the family were a party, including suits about the office itself, means that their papers still bulk large in the records.

The names Thomas and Henry were recurrent within the Fanshawe family and, where possible, the list distinguishes between different individuals. The succession of office holding, with dates of death, is as follows: · Henry (I) Fanshawe (d 1568): Queen's Remembrancer 1565-1568 · Thomas (I) Fanshawe (d 1601): Queen's Remembrancer 1568-1601. Nephew of Henry. · Henry (II) Fanshawe (d 1616; knighted 7 May 1603): Queen's/King's Remembrancer 1601-1616. Son of Thomas by his first wife. · Thomas (II) Fanshawe (d 1665; knighted 2 February 1626; lst viscount Fanshawe 5 Sept 1661) : King's Remembrancer 1619-1641 and 1660-1665. Son of Henry (II) : reversionary interest to Simon (I) Fanshawe, 1631 · Richard Fanshawe: King's Remembrancer August 1641-c 1642 (deprived) · Thomas (III) Fanshawe (d 1674; 2nd viscount) :King's Remembrancer 1665-1674. Son of Thomas (II) : reversionary interests granted in 1675 to Henry (III) Fanshawe (d 1685); Charles, 4th viscount Fanshawe (d 1710), and Evelyn, 3rd viscount Fanshawe (d 1687) · Simon (II) Fanshawe (d 1716; 5th viscount) : Queen's/King's Remembrancer 1709-1716. Son of Thomas (II); died s.p.m. For a history of the Fanshawe family see H C Fanshawe, History of the Fanshawe Family (Newcastle upon Tyne,1927)