Houses of Parliament (Act 8 & 9 Will. III c. 4), finding Fenwick guilty of high treason, punishable by death. His wife, Mary, persevered in her attempts to save his life, but her efforts were fruitless, and Fenwick was beheaded in London on 28 January 1697, with the same formalities as were usually observed at the execution of a peer. He was the last person ever executed under an Act of Attainder. By his wife, Mary (d. 1708), daughter of Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Carlisle, and his wife Anne Howard, he had three sons and one daughter, all of whom died young, and are buried with Fenwick at St Martin-in-the-Fields. Macaulay says that of all the Jacobites, the most desperate characters not excepted, he (Fenwick) was the only one for whom William felt an intense personal aversion. Fenwick's hatred of the king is said to date from the time when he was serving in Holland, and was reprimanded by William, then Prince of Orange. A horse, White Sorrel, owned by Fenwick was among items of his estate confiscated by the Crown on his attainder and a fall from that horse was partly responsible for William's death. The horse purportedly stumbled when it stepped on a molehill. In recognition of this, the Jacobites' secret toast was to 'The little Gentleman in Black Velvet.' He is also commemorated in the folk tune Sir John Fenwick's The Flower Among Them All. His wife had a memorial created for him in York Cathedral and she was buried there after she died on 27 October 1708. Notes References Attribution 1640s births 1697 deaths 3rd Dragoon Guards officers Baronets in the Baronetage of England English Jacobites English generals 17th-century soldiers English MPs 1661–1679 English MPs 1679 English MPs 1680–1681 English MPs 1681 English MPs 1685–1687 People executed by Stuart England by decapitation People executed under the Stuarts for treason against England Executed English people 17th-century English criminals English politicians convicted of crimes