Daniel Fleming

Who was Daniel Fleming?

Sir Daniel Fleming, was an English antiquary.

Fleimng was the eldest son of William Fleming of Coniston, North Lancashire, and Rydal, Westmoreland, by Alice, eldest daughter of Roger Kirkby of Kirkby, Lancashire, was born on 25 July 1633, and educated at Queen's College, Oxford, which he entered in 1650, and Gray's Inn. By the death of his father in 1653 he inherited considerable estates in the neighbourhood of Rydal, for which he paid heavy fines to the parliament. At the Restoration he was appointed sheriff of Cumberland. He was a constant correspondent of Secretary Williamson, and his letters in the Record Office, some of which have been calendared, afford a lively picture of the state of affairs in Cumberland and Westmoreland during the latter half of the seventeenth century, and exhibit him as a staunch supporter of the church of England, and enemy alike of the Protestant dissenter and the Roman Catholic. He regretted the release of George Fox in 1666 as likely to discourage the justices from acting against the quakers, and credited to the full the reports of their burning ‘steeple houses.’