Sir Thomas Fairfax and the politics of pain

Sir Thomas Fairfax (1612–1671) was one of the most influential figures of the British Civil Wars. His life, however, was starkly coloured by physical suffering which informed his political and military as well as his private conduct. I argue that analysis of his public action which dismisses his excuses of ill health as a convenient fiction undermines the extent of his fragility of health as a result of increasingly disabling chronic illness and the numerous war wounds which he had acquired by 1645. Fairfax’s material body was not distinct from his political or military persona, despite his apparent ability to ‘overcome’ pain on the battlefield: just as the strain of his command worsened his health, so did his health inform his public action. His invocations of illness were not politically neutral, but rather informed by early modern understandings of the intimate relationship between body and soul.