Background
George Fenwick was the son of George Fenwick of Brinkburn and his wife Dorothy Forster.
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GEORGE FENWICK
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On February 11, 1621/2, he was admitted to Gray’s Inn (Joseph Foster, Register of Admissions to Gray’s Inn, 1521-1889). In 1626 he bought the estate of Brinkburn. In 1632 Fenwick was one of the group of lords and gentlemen to whom the Earl of Warwick, president of the Council for New England, granted forty leagues of territory west of the Narragansett River.
He is not named in the patent but in 1635 signed the commission of John Winthrop, Jr. , sent over as governor, and agreements between the patentees and Winthrop and Lyon Gardiner, who were to oversee the construction of a fort, the laying out of a town, and the building of houses.
In 1636 Fenwick visited Saybrook, the town at the mouth of the Connecticut River begun by Winthrop and Gardiner.
In the summer of 1639 Fenwick and his wife sailed to New England and took up their residence at Saybrook. They were joined by Fenwick’s sisters, Mary and Elizabeth. Fenwick expected the other patentees at Saybrook, but with the assembling of the Long Parliament in 1640, they came into power in England and remained there. In December 1644 Fenwick sold the fort at Saybrook to Connecticut and agreed that the territory between the Connecticut and Narragansett rivers should be settled under the jurisdiction of Connecticut if that were possible. On October 22, 1645, he conveyed to the town of Guilford in the New Haven Colony, land to the west of the Connecticut River.
From 1643 to 1645 he was one of the commissioners of the New England Confederation. In 1644, 1645, 1647 and 1648 he was elected a magistrate of the Connecticut Colony although at the time of his election in 1647 and 1648 he was in England.
He was elected from Berwick to the Parliaments of 1654 and 1656 and was one of the members excluded from the latter Parliament by the Council.
He died on March 15, 1656/7.
Achievements
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He was elected to the Long Parliament in 1645 and added to the parliamentary commission for plantations. He was named a member of the Pligh Court of Justice appointed to try Charles I, but did not serve. He was a colonel in the parliamentary army and in 1648 governor of Tynemouth, in 1649 governor of Berwick, and in the following year governor of Edinburgh and Leith.
Membership
He was named a member of the Pligh Court of Justice.
Connections
He soon returned to England and there married Alice, daughter of Sir Edward Apsley and widow of Sir John Boteler. Probably in November 1645, Lady Fenwick died and was buried at Saybrook, and Fenwick, with one daughter, returned to England.
In 1652 he married Katherine, the daughter of Sir Arthur Hesilrige.
Elizabeth married Sir Thomas Hesilrige, and Dorothy, Sir Thomas Williamson.
Fenwick left his property in America to his sister Elizabeth, who had remained in Connecticut and married Captan John Cullick.
