Carrie Fitzwater
| In office | 1654 AN to 1660 AN |
| Monarch | Elizabeth I |
| Prime Minister | Christophe Landry |
| Other offices | President Pro Tempore of the Constitutional Convention (1653 AN) Leader of the National Unity Party (to 24.XI.1659 AN) Minister for Women and Lord Great Chamberlain (1665 AN to 1670 AN) |
| Member of Parliament | for Israat & Anglia (Anglia & Israat) |
| Party | National Unity Party |
| Born | c. 1618 AN Israat, Commonwealth of Hamland |
| Died | 1687 AN (aged 69) Nivardom, Constancia |
| Profession | Lawyer and political economist |
Carrie Fitzwater (c. 1618 AN to 1687 AN) was a Caputian politician of the National Unity Party, one of the framers of the constitution of the Kingdom of the Union of Caputia and among the most prolific legislators of its Parliament. She was the first Chancellor of the Exchequer of the kingdom and the first holder of its women's portfolio.
A lawyer and political economist from Israat, Fitzwater entered public life through the Constitutional Convention that followed the Hammish Civil War, presided over it as President Pro Tempore, and drafted the constitution that the Convention developed into the Constitution Act. She served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the first government under Christophe Landry, sat in Parliament as the member for Israat & Anglia, and led the National Unity Party until she handed it to Gerhardt Eugen Seydlitz in 1659 AN. Her legislative record ran from the first Address in Reply of the new Parliament to the Neutrality Act of 1658 AN and the National Social Grant Act of 1665 AN, and she returned to government in the First Seydlitz Government as Minister for Women and Lord Great Chamberlain.
After the collapse of the kingdom in the White Plague, Fitzwater carried the records of the Treasury and the National Credit System into exile and served the Royal Caputian Government in Exile at Nivardom in Constancia as keeper of its financial records. She died there in 1687 AN.
Early life
Fitzwater was born in about 1618 AN in Israat, one of the eastern regions of the Commonwealth of Hamland, and trained in law and political economy. She practiced in Israat through the last years of the Commonwealth and held no office under it, so that the Hammish Civil War found her a private lawyer of the region rather than a figure of the old state.
Unrest broke out in Anglia and Israat after the unexplained death of Gerardo Lopez, an adviser to Interim Prime Minister Donat Ravaillac, and the military's obstruction of the investigation drove the tensions that ended in Ravaillac's assassination and the rise of General Augustus Eliphas. Israat, where Fitzwater practiced, remained contested ground for the rest of the war, and the eastern regions lost between 30 and 60 percent of their people to the Alexandrian Flu.
Constitutional Convention
Fitzwater was one of the 250 deputies of the Constitutional Convention that assembled at the Zalae City Hall to settle the shape of the successor state to the Commonwealth. The Convention chose the name Caputia for the new nation and resolved to offer its crown to Regina Ravaillac, who had led the Ravaillac Loyalists through the war.
When the Convention's President, Regina Ravaillac, left to attend the peace conference at Maison Verneuil, the deputies elected Fitzwater President Pro Tempore in her place. In the chair she began drafting a constitution for the new state. Her draft became the framework that the Convention developed into the Constitution Act, to which Queen Elizabeth I granted royal assent by letters patent and which the country approved by a margin of some 8.3 million votes in the founding referendum, with a turnout of about 90 percent of more than twelve million registered citizens. The document reserved ample powers to the Crown, named the Queen the supreme judicial authority of the kingdom, and vested legislative authority in a unicameral Parliament sitting in the same Zalae City Hall where the Convention had written it.
Chancellor of the Exchequer
On the formation of the kingdom's first government under Christophe Landry in 1654 AN, Fitzwater was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, Second Lord of Her Majesty's Treasury and Lord Privy Seal, and was sworn of the Privy Council (PC), whose members were styled Right Honorable.
She inherited a treasury with no reliable measure of what remained of the country: the war had killed more than a million people, and the Alexandrian Flu a large part of the population of the eastern regions, including her own. At the Treasury she grounded the kingdom's first budgets in published estimates of its population and gross domestic product, a body of analysis she later expanded into a public manual on the workings of the Caputian economy. The kingdom's banking system began during her chancellorship, and its accounts were kept in the Caputian laurel.
She left the Treasury on the formation of the Merrick government in 1660 AN, and was later named president and chief executive of three of the kingdom's state corporations: the General Company of the Caputian Kingdom, the Royal Caputian Mining Company, and the Greater Keltian Trading Company.
Member of Parliament
Fitzwater sat in Parliament as the National Unity Party member for Israat & Anglia, the constituency of her native state of Anglia & Israat. The first Parliament seated 250 members, a chamber later enlarged to 422, and her party entered it as the largest, with 128 seats against the National Salvation Party's 61, the Liberal League's 20, Hatnuah's 10, and 31 members sitting as independents, three seats more than half the chamber.
Party leadership
Within the National Unity Party Fitzwater was nominated interim Party Chairman, elected to the National Executive Committee, and served as Party Leader through the first years of the kingdom. At the Third Party Congress on 24.XI.1659 AN she endorsed the party secretary, Gerhardt Eugen Seydlitz, as her successor, and he was elected by acclamation. She stayed on the National Executive Committee under his leadership, and served in the cabinet he formed six years later.
Legislative record
Fitzwater moved the first Address in Reply to the speech from the throne and authored the Legislative Committee Act, the National Road Infrastructure Act, and the Economy Act among the first Parliament's early measures, the last of these accompanied by a public consultation. Later came the Neutrality Act of 1658 AN, which wrote into law the armed neutrality first proclaimed by the Crown under the Landry government; the National Holidays Act of 1661 AN, under which the anniversary of the Declaration of Zalae was kept as Declaration of Zalae Day; the Judicial Proceedings Act and the State Party Contracts Act of 1663 AN; and the Government Formation and Transition Act of 1665 AN. The measures of 1661 AN and 1663 AN passed under the Merrick coalition, in which her party governed alongside the National Salvation Party. Her Acts were gazetted in the Zalae Gazette, the official journal of record of the Caputian Crown.
Her last and largest measure was the National Social Grant Act of 1665 AN, which created the National Social Transfer, a block grant paid to the states and dependencies to fund social security, welfare, and health programs. The transfer was set at ₺10 billion in Caputian laurels in its first year and ₺20 billion in 1666 AN, with an annual escalator of 1.03, and the Act created alongside it a separate Wait Times Reduction Transfer for the health system. It was written to sunset on 3.VI.1667 AN.
Minister for Women
When Seydlitz formed the First Seydlitz Government, proclaimed at Bellesea Palace on 12.XIII.1665 AN, Fitzwater joined his ministry of nineteen as Minister for Women and Lord Great Chamberlain, the first holder of the portfolio in the kingdom's history, and led the Ministry for Women from 1666 AN to 1670 AN.
At the ministry she set out a program directed at the economic standing of Caputian women: technical support and resources for small and mid-size businesses owned or started by women, a simpler process for starting a business, equal pay legislation, paternity leave, and tax exemptions for child care expenses. Its centerpiece was a staged quota requiring 40 percent female directorship of companies in Caputia by 1680 AN, under which public companies were to reach 20 percent within three years and 40 percent within six, private companies were given ten years, and industries the government considered essential to the national interest twelve, with fines, possible nationalization, or closure for failure to comply. The quota never took full effect.
Later life and death
Fitzwater remained at her post beyond the fall of the Seydlitz government in 1668 AN, leading the ministry as the White Plague spread through the kingdom, and left office in 1670 AN. In the collapse of Caputia she oversaw the removal of the Treasury's records and the archives of the National Credit System from Zalae, and carried them into exile with the Royal Caputian Government in Exile, established at Nivardom in Constancia under the charter called the Declaration of Nivardom.
At Nivardom she served as keeper of the exiled government's financial records under its prime minister, Royston Merrick, holding the accounts of the National Credit System in trust for the scattered Caputian diaspora. The state corporations she had headed passed in the dissolution to the holdings of the ESB Group. She never married and left no children, and she died at Nivardom in 1687 AN, at the age of 69.
