characters. That Fairfax and the civil war were ripe for such treatment is suggestive of his continued recognition among the public at the time. Marshall’s story is told through the eyes of a fictitious young lady, Heather Rainecourt, who foresees that Fairfax was born for greatness when she first meets him, well before war broke out. Despite her royalist sympathies, she is on hand to bandage his wrist during his desperate escape from Bradford to Hull, considering him ‘too good for the Roundheads’. Marshall depicts a Fairfax dubbed ‘fiery Tom’ by his troops and as the leader of ‘audacious sallies with his levies of Denton and Nunappleton tenants against desperate odds.’ Romanticizing the nature of Fairfax’s leadership, as well as his relationship with his tenantry, she attributed the parliamentarian triumph at Marston Moor to him, not to Cromwell. The royalist characters in the novel constantly admire Fairfax’s military prowess, grace and decency, lamenting his presence among the rebels. It is underlined throughout that the royalists would have fared much better if he had been among them. The novel ends by considering Fairfax’s supposed lack of political genius to be a positive attribute, but nevertheless depicts Fairfax’s rising in favour of General Monck in January 1660 as having ‘decided the fate of England.’ Published during the Boer War, Marshall’s Siege of York was intended to praise a bygone military hero and thereby foster patriotic feeling in the young. Together Markham’s biography and Marshall’s novel would have gone some way to establish Fairfax within the Victorian ‘great men’ school of history. Much of this traditional image of Fairfax remains in Lindsey Davis’s recent novel Rebels and Traitors. Here he is depicted with ‘intelligent brown eyes, set in a cheerful chin-up Yorkshire face, generously framed by waving brown hair.’ According to Davis, Fairfax had ‘obvious charisma’, but was ‘a diffident man, who had a genuine air of surprise at his sudden elevation’ to command the New Model. Again, his exploits were admired by the leading royalist
character, Orlando Lovell. Reflecting on the defeat at Marston Moor, Lovell describes Fairfax as: ‘A sickly stubborn, crazily brave northerner. Armies have these characters, men who flare alight when action starts.’ Likewise, tales of Fairfax’s early exploits in Yorkshire, including his escape from Bradford, helps inspire the parliamentarian character, Gideon Jukes to want to join the New Model Army. Alongside depictions of his military ability and gentlemanly conduct, Fairfax has developed a reputation as a preserver. This is ironic considering the destruction wrought by his armies, and provides a sharp contrast to Cromwell’s folkloric image as a destroyer. The story that the Fairfax family saved York Minster from destruction is rooted in the archives of the corporation. After York’s surrender, in July 1644, the corporation thanked Lord Ferdinando Fairfax with ‘a butt of sack and a tunn of French wine’ for ‘the great love and affection he hath shewed to the Citty.’ The surrender articles prohibited the defacement of churches and left the administration of justice to the city’s magistrates. Ferdinando was celebrated in verse for saving York Minster from ‘the Caledonian Boar.’ The ninth article of surrender stipulated that the incoming parliamentarian garrison needed to be two thirds Yorkshiremen, and the thirteenth pledged that no churches would be defaced or plundered. Sir Thomas was held to have saved the Minster’s windows by removing them for safekeeping after York’s surrender. In 1700 Samuel Gale praised Sir Thomas for this ‘Honourable and Noble Act’, while James Torre concurred in 1719 by lauding the ‘generous and tender regard’ of Lord Fairfax, for ‘his saving the City, as well as its Cathedral’. In 1932 the twelfth baron Fairfax unveiled a tablet commemorating this in York Minster’s Chapter House. Sir Thomas ensured that Roger Dodsworth was permitted to transcribe the monastic records in St Mary’s Tower, York, before that building was exploded, and this too was celebrated in Marshall’s novel.