William Fleetwood
Encyclopedia
Bishop of St Asaph
The Bishop of St Asaph heads the Church in Wales diocese of St Asaph.The diocese covers the counties of Conwy and Flintshire, Wrexham county borough, the eastern part of Merioneth in Gwynedd and part of northern Powys. The Episcopal seat is located in the Cathedral Church of St Asaph in the town of...
and Bishop of Ely
Bishop of Ely
The Bishop of Ely is the Ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Ely in the Province of Canterbury. The diocese roughly covers the county of Cambridgeshire , together with a section of north-west Norfolk and has its see in the City of Ely, Cambridgeshire, where the seat is located at the...
, remembered by economists and statisticians for constructing a price index
Price index
A price index is a normalized average of prices for a given class of goods or services in a given region, during a given interval of time...
in his Chronicon Preciosum of 1707.
Life
Fleetwood was descended of an ancient Lancashire family, and was born in the Tower of LondonTower of London
Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress, more commonly known as the Tower of London, is a historic castle on the north bank of the River Thames in central London, England. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, separated from the eastern edge of the City of London by the open space...
on New Year's Day 1656. He received his education at Eton
Eton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....
and at King's College, Cambridge
King's College, Cambridge
King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. The college's full name is "The King's College of our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge", but it is usually referred to simply as "King's" within the University....
. About the time of the Revolution
Glorious Revolution
The Glorious Revolution, also called the Revolution of 1688, is the overthrow of King James II of England by a union of English Parliamentarians with the Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange-Nassau...
he took orders, and was shortly afterwards made rector of St Austin's, London, and lecturer of St Dunstan's in the West. He became a canon of Windsor in 1702, and in 1708 he was nominated to the see of St Asaph, from which he was translated in 1714 to that of Ely. He died at Tottenham, Middlesex, on the 4th of August 1723.
Fleetwood was regarded as the best preacher of his time. He was accurate in learning, and effective in delivery, and his character stood deservedly high in general estimation. In episcopal administration he far excelled most of his contemporaries. He was a zealous Hanoverian, and a favourite with Queen Anne
Anne of Great Britain
Anne ascended the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland on 8 March 1702. On 1 May 1707, under the Act of Union, two of her realms, England and Scotland, were united as a single sovereign state, the Kingdom of Great Britain.Anne's Catholic father, James II and VII, was deposed during the...
in spite of his Whiggism
Whiggism
Whiggism, sometimes spelled Whigism, is a historical political philosophy that grew out of the Parliamentarian faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The whigs' key policy positions were the supremacy of Parliament , toleration for Protestant dissenters, and opposition to a Catholic on the...
. His opposition to the doctrine of non-resistance brought him into conflict with the Tory ministry of 1712 and with Swift
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...
, but he never entered into personal controversy.
His principal writings are An Essay on Miracles (1701); Chronicum preciosum (an account of the English coinage, 1707); and Free Sermons (1712), containing discourses on the death of Queen Mary. He had lost his first wife, Frances Smith; and later he had a third wife, Mary, daughter of Sir John Coke and widow of Sir Edward Hartopp. the Duke of Gloucester and King William. The preface to this last was condemned to public burning by Parliament, but, as No. 384 of The Spectator, circulated more widely than ever. A collected edition of his works, with a biographical preface, was published in 1737. His memorial by monumental masons Edward Stanton (sculptor) and C. Horsnaile is in north chancel aisle of Ely Cathedral
Ely Cathedral
Ely Cathedral is the principal church of the Diocese of Ely, in Cambridgeshire, England, and is the seat of the Bishop of Ely and a suffragan bishop, the Bishop of Huntingdon...
.
Chronicon Preciosum
In the (anonymously published) Chronicon Preciosum Fleetwood asked, how much would £5 in 1440 buy today? The question (the case) arose because a correspondent would lose the fellowship of an Oxford college if he had outside income in excess of £5; the college statute was composed in 1440. Fleetwood showed how much bread, drink, meat, cloth and books could be purchased at the earlier and later dates. He tabulated the changing prices of many commodities and noted that most of the prices grew at the same rate. He concluded that £5 in the fifteenth century would be worth £28 or £30 today, at the beginning of the eighteenth.Adam Smith
Adam Smith
Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...
used some of Fleetwood's data in the Wealth of Nations (1776) at the end of Book I, chapter XI but he did not develop—or even adopt—the idea of comparing purchasing power at different dates. Admiration for Fleetwood's work and efforts to build on it only came in the nineteenth century. For Edgeworth
Francis Ysidro Edgeworth
Francis Ysidro Edgeworth FBA was an Irish philosopher and political economist who made significant contributions to the methods of statistics during the 1880s...
the Chronicon Preciosum was "the oldest and one of the best treatises on index-numbers."
Fleetwood's sermons often dealt with subjects of economic interest. For example, his sermon against clipping (of gold coins), delivered before the Lord Mayor of London, explained the function of money and the "mischiefs of corrupting and debasing money." He published his sermon on paying debts during the South Sea panic.
Fleetwood seems to have been a practical Christian and, from the account of his life, a very political bishop.
Economic writings
- A Sermon against Clipping (London, 1694)
- Chronicon Preciosum: or An Account of English Money, the Price of Corn and Other Commodities, for the Last 600 Years (London, 1707) The work appeared in his collected works of 1737 and was reissued in 1745 with a longer title and under the author's name.
- The Justice of Paying Debts (1718)
Further reading
- Richard Stone Some British Empiricists in the Social Sciences 1650-1900, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
- W. A. Chance "A Note on the Origins of Index Numbers," The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 48, No. 1. (Feb., 1966), pp. 108–110.
- M. G. Kendall "The Early History of Index Numbers," Review of the International Statistical institute, Vol. 37, No. 1. (1969), pp. 1–12.