William Fleetwood

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Bishop William Fleetwood, 1656-1723

17th C. English cleric and political arithmetician.

Born in the Tower of London, and descended from a notable Lancashire family, William Fleetwood was educated at Eton and enrolled in King's College, Cambridge in 1675. Fleetwood was ordained an Anglican priest around the time of the Glorious Revolution 1688, and subsequently made rector of St. Austin's London. Making a name for himself as a gifted preacher, he also became a lecturer and Dunstan's, and was appointed royal chaplain to king William III and Mary II of England. He was made canon of Windsor around 1702. In 1708, Fleetwood was invested at Bishop of St Asaph (Wales). After the ascension of George I, Fleetwood was transferred in 1714 to the prestigious see of Bishop of Ely (Cambridgeshire).

In religious matters, Fleetwood was a solid, even zealous, Protestant Whig, who embraced the Glorious Revolution as Divine providence, confirming England's mission in the cause of international protestantism. He opposed the High Church Toryism preached by Henry Sacheverell, that gained popularity in certain quarters (especially the universities) during Queen Anne's reign. Fleetwood was one of the principal figures behind the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), formed in 1701, to promote conversion of indigenous peoples in Africa, as well as natives and slaves in the American colonies, to Anglican Christianity.

Although sometimes casually referred to as a Mercantilist, William Fleetwood was not a Mercantilist thinker in any sense. William Fleewtood's principal claim to be on this list was his 1707 Chronicon Preciosum, a massive collection of historical price statistics.

The nearly-as-massive sub-title of the second (1745) edition of the work explains Fleetwood's motive: he wanted to calculate if £5 in 1700 was worth the same as £5 in 1400. The reason was eminently of urgent academic interest: an eligibility condition for receiving a fellowship established by a college charter c.1440 (conjectured that Fleetwood had either All Soul's, Oxford or his own King's College, Cambridge in mind) is that the student must not have an alternative outside income that exceeds £5. If he does, then he must forfeit the fellowship. Fleetwood sought to demonstrate that this original £5 condition should be adjusted for purchasing power, that inflation since the 15th C. made it a very low threshold that most current students easily surpassed. Fleetwood compared the value of different commodities and stipends across the centuries concluded that the fellowship should be kept. Fleetwood's 1707 treatise was heralded by Edgeworth (1925) as "the oldest and one of the best treatises on index-numbers" before the modern age.

William Fleetwood touches on some economic matters in some of his sermons (e.g. clipping, 1694, debts, 1718), but more from angle of personal morality than political economy.

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Major Works of William Fleetwood

Inscriptionum antiquarum Syloge, 1691 [bk]
A Sermon Against Clipping, preached before the Right Hon. Lord Mayor and Court of Alderman, at Guildhall Chapel, on December 16th, 1694 [1854 Works ed]
A Sermon on the education of children, 1696 [bk]
An Essay upon Miracles, in two discourses, 1701 [bk]
A Sermon Preached Before the Queen, at Windsor, June 17th, 1705, 1705 [bk]
[Anon] Chronicon preciosum: or, an account of English money, the price of corn, and other commodities, for the last 600 years, in a letter to a student in the University of Oxford, 1707 [bk, av] [1845 Works ed]
Chronicon Preciosum, or, an account of English gold and silver money; the price of corn and other commodities; and of the stipends, salaries, wages, jointures, portions, day labour, &c., in England, for six hundred years, shewing from the decrease of the value of money, and from the increase of the value of corn and other commodities &c, that a Fellow, who has an estate in land of inheritance or a perpetual pension of five pounds per annum, may conscientiously keep his Fellowship, and ought not to be compelled the leave the same, though the statutes of his College (founded between the years 1440 and 1460) did then vacate his Fellowship on such a condition, [1745 ed]
A Sermon Preach'd before the Right Honourable the lords Spiritual and Temporal, 1710 [bk]
A Sermon Preached Before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 1711 [bk]
A Sermon on Fast-day, January 16, 1711-12 against such that delight in War, 1712 [bk]
Funeral Sermon upon Mr. Noble, 1713 [bk]
A Letter to an Inhabitant of the Parish of St. Andrew's Holbourn, about new ceremonies in the Church, 1717 [bk], [1854 ed]
Two Sermons, the one before the King, on March the 2d. 1717. being the first Sunday in Lent, and publish'd by His Majesty's Special Command. The Other preach'd in the City, on the Justice of Paying Debts. 1718 [bk]
The Justice of paying debts, a sermon preached in the City. 1718 [1854 Works ed].
A Sermon upon swearing, 1721 [bk]
The relative duties of parents and children, husbands and wives, masters and servants, consider'd in sixteen practical discourses, [1722 ed], [1854 Works ed]
Papists not excluded from the throne, upon the account of religion, [1745 ed]
The Works of the Right Reverend William Fleetwood, D.D., sometime Bishop of Ely, 1737, [1854 ed, cont, v.1, v.2, v.3]

HET

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Resources on William Fleetwood

"Preface" (biography of Fleetwood), to 1737 Complete Works [1854 ed.]
"The Occasion of Fleetwood's 'Chronicon Preciosum", by G.N. Clark, 1936, English Historical Review, p.686-90
Some British Empiricists in the Social Sciences, 1650-1900 by Richard Stone, 1997
Wikipedia

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