Talk:Thomas Fairfax

Sections
I think this article need sections. --Cantalamessa 13:16, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

NPOV
Prince William and Miss Middleton are descended from A Sir Thomas Fairfax but not this one. This Fairfax (see Genealogics, TudorPlace and Tompsett's database at Hull) had only a daughter, who married the Duke of Buckingham after the Restoration and died childless. The Sir Thomas Fairfax who IS their common ancestor lived from about 1476 to 1520 and married Agnes Gascoigne, great-great-great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Smlark (talk • contribs) 16:26, 27 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Actually, your Buckingham and Sir Thomas Fairfax pages bear this out. Had Buckingham and Mary Fairfax left issue, their Buckingham House would not have been demolished, leaving room for Buckingham PALACE to be built.

This article is obviously written by someone with a very favourable view of Fairfax and the Roundheads. All speculation into the character of anyone involved should be removed. --70.187.199.42 22:11, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * It apppears to be not dissimilar in tone from the 1911 EB article (see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thomas_Fairfax%2C_3rd_Lord_Fairfax_of_Cameron&oldid=731776) from whence it came. If you could specify specific examples which you consider problematic then that might be a useful starting point. Greenshed 23:08, 14 June 2007 (UTC)


 * This article seems consistent with everything else I have read regarding Fairfax, who seems to be generally well regarded by historians. 194.75.128.200 (talk) 15:03, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

In his handling of the Siege of Colchester I find Lord Fairfax to be a general guilty of war crimes, and a dishonorable man. I give three examples of many injustices that Fairfax inflicted in Colchester: 1. he executed Royalist leaders without proper trial. 2. when the starving civilians of Colchester wanted to leave the town, including children, he refused to let them. 3. he allowed prisoners of war in his care to be stripped naked and abused. Colchester1870 (talk) 20:57, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
 * FWIW, you should make sure to compare his actions with those of contemporaries, not modern standards, which are much improved. Francis Bond (talk) 06:34, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the proposal was moved. --BDD (talk) 21:15, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Thomas Fairfax, 3rd Lord Fairfax of Cameron → Thomas Fairfax – "Thomas Fairfax" already redirects here, so he is already the primary meaning. He only acquired the title on the death of his father in March 1648, but he is mainly known for his achievements before then in the Civil Wars, particularly his victories at the Battle of Marston Moor and the Battle of Naseby, when he was plain Thomas Fairfax. A move like this is completely in accordance with WP:NCROY. PatGallacher (talk) 15:21, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Conditional support with a question: Yes, Wikipedia should avoid unnecessarily decorating people's names with honorific titles. But are we really sure this person is the WP:PRIMARY member among the candidate Thomas Fairfaxes? There seems to be quite a few of them (and there may even be others covered on Wikipedia that are not listed on the dab page). —BarrelProof (talk) 17:32, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I have looked at the other Thomas Fairfaxes on the dab page, and I don't think any of them rival this person in importance, the leading Parliamentary general of the First Civil War, whose achievements have been overshadowed by his second-in-command Oliver Cromwell. PatGallacher (talk) 18:00, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Good enough for me. —BarrelProof (talk) 18:39, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Yep. Straw Cat (talk) 17:49, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Support. The age of nobility has passed. Or do the British still worry about which Fairfax was second baron and which one was third? A lot of these articles were originally from the 1911 edition of Britannica, so they are done in this old timey style. There should be no special rules for aristocrats. Just title the article however the person is usually referred to in the sources. DNB calls him "Thomas Fairfax". Two from one (talk) 11:54, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

property in the american colonies?
I saw an unsourced article that seemed to imply that not only did Thomas Fairfax own property in the American colonies, but that Fairfax County, Virginia is named for him. Sadly I can't find any actual citations to this fact. Was he or one of his descendents owners of the land here? Is this worth noting? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.163.114.163 (talk) 15:29, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Reply to above: see the article in some contraption or other called Wikipedia on Fairfax County Virginia, (apparently now a very plush suburb of Washington DC), a piece of an immense chunk of Virginia once owned - and lived in too - by a direct descendant of this Sir Thomas Fairfax in the later seventeenth century, and named after its owner.Delahays (talk) 14:57, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Titles and stuff
Not sure I follow the apparently egalitarian argument, to which Fairfax himself was certainly no friend, especially at Burford and other places. The whole point of the Civil Wars in Britain was the best way of keeping the kingdom or kingdoms safe for people like Fairfax to enjoy life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Part of that was respect for status. To grasp how that worked, we need to know who had it, why, and what it implied. I don't want to bring it back in the twenty-first century, but if I want to grasp the seventeenth I don't want Wikipedia to pretend that such things didn't exist in it on the grounds that they shouldn't now Delahays (talk) 14:42, 12 August 2019 (UTC).

Added 'one source' template
I added the 'one source' template, as the article is almost entirely based on Chisholm 1911. Although I have no reason to doubt Chisholm's accuracy, it is evident that he writes from a particular point of view on the Commonwealth and its parties, and the article could be improved in its neutrality by reference to other sources as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GarethAd (talk • contribs) 04:14, 8 November 2019 (UTC)


 * Please feel free to improve the article further as others have done: it already has a range of sources. Dormskirk (talk) 09:29, 8 November 2019 (UTC)


 * I don't have the expertise to improve it, and I won't get into an editing war, but the 'one source' template is appropriate. There are other sources, but Chisholm is the only source for Pre-Civil War section and seven out of nine paragraphs in the Civil War section, as well as parts of several other sections, amounting to well over 3/4 of the article. This need not matter too much, except that the paragraph beginning "With the collapse of the Royalist cause..." contains two unwarranted and unsupported statements of opinion, passed off as fact, which appear to be those of Chisholm. The particular passages are "the propaganda of the Independents" and "the overthrow of parliament". These were still to some extent live political controversies in 1911, and it is evident that, on these points, Chisholm is not a neutral commentator. He takes the Presbyterian side. GarethAd (talk) 15:57, 8 November 2019 (UTC)


 * I have removed the two phrases that you were concerned about. I hope that helps. Dormskirk (talk) 16:04, 8 November 2019 (UTC)