William Fleetwood (recorder)

William Fleetwood (1535? – 1594) was an English lawyer and politician. He was Member of Parliament for Marlborough in 1558, Lancaster in 1559 and 1567, and for the City of London several times between 1572 and 1592, but his most significant position was as Recorder of London from 1571 to 1591. A lawyer of the Middle Temple, he was a Queen's Serjeant in 1592.

Fleetwood was born about 1535, the (possibly illegitimate) son of Robert Fleetwood, in turn the third son of William Fleetwood of Heskin in Lancashire. He was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, which he left without a degree, and the Middle Temple, from where he was called to the bar. He became a freeman by patrimony of the -Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors of the City of London on 21 June 1557; autumn reader of his inn on 21 May 1563; steward of the company's manor of Rushbrook in 1564, and counsel in their suit against the Clothworkers in 1565.

In 1558 Fleetwood was elected to the House of Commons as one of the members for Marlborough, thus sitting in the last of Queen Mary's parliaments, and later was a member for Lancaster in the first two parliaments of Elizabeth's reign (1559 and 1563). In 1559 he was one of the commissioners to visit the dioceses of Oxford, Lincoln, Peterborough, Coventry, and Lichfield, and in 1568 he became "double reader in Lent" to the Middle Temple.

By the Earl of Leicester's influence, on 26 April 1571 Fleetwood was appointed as Recorder of London, an important position which he held for twenty years, and in the same year was made a commissioner to inquire into the customs. On 8 May 1572 he was returned to Parliament for the City of London. As Recorder of London he was famous for rigorously and successfully enforcing the laws against vagrants, mass-priests, and other papists.

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