The estate descended via George's son Charles (died 1628) to another
George Fleetwood (1623–1672), a major-general and one of the
regicides of King Charles.[5][nb 1] In 1660 George Fleetwood was found guilty of killing the king, and although his life was spared, his estate of The Vache was confiscated and given to the then Duke of York, the future King
James II.[6] His wife,
Hester Fleetwood and their children would have been homeless, but they were allowed to remain until George's mother, Anne Fleetwood, died in 1673.[7]
The Vache (then spelled Vatche) was part of the dowry of Mary Margaret Alston, who married Rev Dr
Francis Hare at
St Paul's Cathedral in 1728. The couple lived there, bringing up their seven children while the bishop wrote the books that made his name. He died in 1740 and was buried in a mausoleum in the local church. Their eldest son, Robert (named after
Robert Walpole), had the Vache settled on him when he came of age; it is mentioned in his 1752 marriage settlement with Sarah Selman.[8] He became a Prebendary Canon of
Winchester Cathedral, and, as he also owned
Herstmonceux Castle, nearer to the city, he decided to sell the Vache in the 1770s.[9] The estate was acquired by Admiral
Sir Hugh Palliser.[10] Following Palliser's death in 1796, the building passed to his son and was then sold to Thomas Allen in 1826; the house passed down the Allen family until it was sold to James Robertson in 1902.[11]
After the Second World War, homelessness and overcrowding sparked
a nationwide movement of squatting. One of the first of these occurred at The Vache in September 1946. The leader was an ex-Commando, John Mann, of Chalfont St. Giles, who had been sharing a small cottage with his wife, his five-year-old son, and ten strangers. At the local pub one night, Mann heard a Polish captain say that a deserted army camp at nearby Vache Park was being readied for Polish soldiers of General
Władysław Anders's army in exile. Mann decided to get there first.[12] At dawn, he and a handful of homeless veterans bloodlessly routed three Polish guards and seized Vache Park. Next day, 120 families had moved into the spacious army huts. After a flurry of resistance, local authorities capitulated.[12]
Captain James Cook monument
The Vache is the site of a monument to Captain
James Cook, erected by Admiral Sir Hugh Palliser.[13]
'To the memory of Captain James Cook/the ablest and most renowned Navigator this or any country hath produced', 'He raised himself solely by his merit/from a very obscure birth, to the rank/of a Post Captain in the Royal Navy, and/was unfortunately killed by the Savages/of the island Owhyee on the 14th of/February 1779 ...[13]
Notes
^Some older sources such as
Dictionary of National Biography (1889) "Fleetwood, George, Volume xix"
pp. 265,266 state that George Fleetwood was the son of Sir Georg Fleetwood, knt., of the Vache, near Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, and Catherine, daughter of Henry Benny of Waltham, Essex; and that in the will of Sir George Fleetwood, who died December 1620, George Fleetwood is described as his third son, but Edward and Charles, his elder brothers, appear to have died without issue. While
John Bernard Burke publishing in the 1830s lists George Fleetwood (regicide) as a brother of
Charles Fleetwood (parliamentary general), and
George Fleetwood (Swedish general) as their uncle, brother of Sir William who is listed as their father (John Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland Enjoying Territorial Possessions Or High Official Rank: But Uninvested with Heritable Honours, Volume 4, Colburn, 1838.
p. 522)—This is unlikely as Burk's family tree does not explain how George the regicide came to inherit (and lose) the Vache when there were others closer in line to inherit the estate, but several other old sources also include this relationship, for example
Mark Noble (1798) in The Lives of the English Regicides: And Other Commissioners of the Pretended High Court of Justice, Appointed to Sit in Judgement Upon Their Sovereign, King Charles the First, Volume I,
p. 243.
^Christopher Durston, "Fleetwood, George, appointed Lord Fleetwood under the protectorate (bap. 1623, d. in or after 1664)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004
accessed 16 November 2009