Because of this, as well as his honourable battlefield conduct and active role in the 1660 Stuart Restoration after Cromwell's death in 1658, Fairfax was exempted from the retribution that was exacted on many other leaders of the revolution.

(His family title of Lord Fairfax of Cameron was in the peerage of Scotland, then still independent from England, which was why he was able to sit in the English House of Commons after he inherited it.)

[2][3] Fairfax studied at St John's College, Cambridge,[4] and Gray's Inn (1626–1628), and then volunteered to join Sir Horace Vere's expedition to fight for the Protestant cause in the Netherlands.

[5] In 1639, he commanded a troop of Yorkshire dragoons which marched with King Charles I against the Scots in the First Bishops' War, which ended with the Pacification of Berwick before any fighting took place.

[6] When the civil war began in 1642, his father, Lord Fairfax, was appointed general of the Parliamentary forces in the north, and Sir Thomas was then made lieutenant-general of the horse under him.

[a][6] In 1643, a minor battle between Royalists for Charles I and a small group of Roundheads under Fairfax, who were en route from Tadcaster to Leeds, took place at Seacroft.

A gathering of eager national forces within a few square miles of ground naturally led to a battle, and Marston Moor (2 July 1644) proved decisive for the struggle in the north.

The younger Fairfax bore himself with the greatest gallantry in the battle and, though severely wounded, managed to join Oliver Cromwell and the victorious cavalry on the other wing.

After a short preliminary campaign, the New Model Army justified its existence, and "the rebels' new brutish general", as the king had called him, proved his capacity as commander-in-chief in the decisive Battle of Naseby (14 June 1645).

The king had returned from Wales and established himself at Oxford, where there was a strong garrison but, ever vacillating, he withdrew secretly, and proceeded to Newark to throw himself into the arms of the Scots Covenanter army there.

In July the person of the King was seized by Cornet Joyce, a subaltern of cavalry—an act which sufficiently demonstrated the hopelessness of controlling the army by its Articles of War.

[5] John Milton, in a sonnet written during the siege of Colchester, called upon the Lord General to settle the kingdom, but the crisis was now at hand.

He approved, if he did not take an active part in, Pride's Purge (6 December 1648), but on the last and gravest of the questions at issue he set himself in deliberate and open opposition to the policy of the officers.

He had given his adhesion to the new order of things, and had been reappointed Lord General, but he merely administered the affairs of the army; when in 1650 Scots Covenanter Kirk Party eventually declared for Charles II, and the Council of State resolved to send an army to Scotland in order to prevent an invasion of England, Fairfax resigned his commission.

[11] For the last time Fairfax's appearance in arms helped to shape the future of the country, when George Monck invited him to assist in the operations about to be undertaken against John Lambert's army.

In December 1659 he appeared at the head of a body of Yorkshire gentlemen, and such was the influence of Fairfax's name and reputation that 1,200 horse quit Lambert's colours and joined him.

[11] He was put at the head of the commission appointed by the House of Commons to wait upon Charles II at The Hague and urge his speedy return.

[16] As a soldier he was exact and methodical in planning, in the heat of battle "so highly transported that scarce any one durst speak a word to him",[17] chivalrous and punctilious in his dealings with his own men and the enemy.

But his modesty and distrust of his powers made him less effectual as a statesman than as a soldier, and above all he is placed at a disadvantage by being both in war and peace overshadowed by his associate Cromwell, who was politically talented and able to manipulate public antipathy against Charles to lead to his execution, something Fairfax never wanted.

[5] Fairfax, played by actor Dougray Scott, is a pivotal character in the 2003 film To Kill a King,[18] as well as in Rosemary Sutcliff's 1953 historical fiction Simon, being portrayed as inspiring and fair.

[19] He also appears as a central character in Sutcliff's 1959 novel The Rider of the White Horse, which gives an account of the early stage of the Civil War from the point of view of his wife,[a] and in Howard Brenton's 2012 play 55 Days.