Fleming was born on 25 July 1633, the eldest son of William Fleming of
Coniston, North
Lancashire, and
Rydal,
Westmoreland, by Alice, eldest daughter of Roger Kirkby of
Kirkby, Lancashire. He was educated at
The Queen's College, Oxford, which he entered in 1650, and
Gray's Inn. By the death of his father in 1653 Fleming inherited considerable estates in the neighbourhood of
Rydal, for which he paid heavy fines to the parliament. At the
Restoration he was appointed sheriff of
Cumberland. He was a constant correspondent of Secretary
Joseph Williamson: his letters, which went to the
Public Record Office, afford a lively picture of the state of affairs in Cumberland and Westmorland during the latter half of the 17th century. They exhibit him as a staunch supporter of the
Church of England, and enemy alike of the Protestant dissenter and the Roman Catholic. He regretted the release of
George Fox in 1666 as likely to discourage the justices from acting against the Quakers, and gave credence to reports of their burning "steeple houses". Fleming is said by
Thomas Wotton to have been an assistant in the annotation of
William Camden's
Britannia; no acknowledgment, however, is to be found in the preface to
Edmund Gibson's edition. It was at Fleming's suggestion that
Thomas Brathwaite left his collection of coins of the Roman era to the
University of Oxford. He died in 1701. ==Family==