FYNDERNE, Sir Thomas

The son of a successful lawyer, Fynderne inherited a tradition of loyalty to the Lancastrian monarchy in whose cause he was to meet his death. His father was originally from Derbyshire but established himself in southern England.7 For the Derbyshire Fyndernes: M. Jurkowski, ‘Fynderne Fam.’ in Texts and Their Contexts ed. Scattergood and Boffey, 196-222. Through purchase and marriage, William Fynderne acquired estates in Berkshire, Dorset and Essex as well as in Cambridgeshire where his son later settled, and enjoyed highly important connexions. A feoffee for Henry V’s grandmother and a councillor of the duke of Bedford, William also took part in government affairs during the minority of Henry VI, and his standing enabled him to secure a highly advantageous match for his son. In 1430 Joan, widow of Sir Robert Swinburne, consented that the youth should marry her grand-daughter and coheir, Katherine Berners. Katherine’s father, Nicholas, was primarily an Essex landowner, although he also held lands in Cambridgeshire, and had acted as a feoffee for the Fyndernes since at least 1417.8 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 154; A.F. Bottomley, ‘Admin. Cambs.’ (London Univ. M.A. thesis, 1952), 193; CP25(1)/30/95/9.

The marriage is likely to have occurred around May 1431, when a formal quitclaim of lands in Weston, Cambridgeshire, was made to Thomas, along with his parents and his new wife, and two distinguished feoffees, the duke of Bedford and William Allington I*.9 CCR, 1429-35, p. 185. Thomas was probably little more than 13 years old at this date – some three years younger than Katherine – so he was still a minor when Joan Swinburne died in March 1433. Later that year Joan’s lands were partitioned between her daughter Alice, wife of the Essex esquire, John Helion, and her other coheir, Katherine, whose share included manors in Weston Colville and Duxford, Cambridgeshire, and Gestingthorpe, Essex. Nicholas Berners died in 1441, and Katherine and her husband succeeded to his manor in Depden in accordance with a settlement of 1436.10 CIPM, xxiv. 90-91; CFR, xvi. 163-4, 213-14; Morant, ii. 234, 564; CCR, 1435-41, p. 98. Already a knight when he succeeded his father in 1445, Fynderne must have inherited extensive flocks of sheep, since the bailiff of his manor at Carlton, one of his father’s purchases and situated in a sheep-farming area, had delivered over 1,000 fleeces to a London draper by August that year.11 CAD, i. C1675; VCH Cambs. vi. 126.

The circumstances of Fynderne’s knighthood are unknown but he had probably earned it by serving in France, possibly under Humphrey, duke of Buckingham, at Calais. Surviving indentures show that the duke retained him, with a fee of £10 p.a. from his Suffolk estates, in 1447, but these are likely to refer to service in England, and do not prove that they were unconnected before this date.12 NLW, Peniarth mss, 280, p. 46. It is unclear whether Fynderne’s connexion with Buckingham played a part in his election to any of his three Parliaments. While the duke did have a landed presence in Essex, Fynderne’s first constituency, there is very little to suggest that Buckingham actively engaged himself with elections in any part of the country during his career.13 C. Rawcliffe, Staffords, 81-84, 193. In any case, as a knight with a landed income of at least 100 marks p.a.,14 E179/81/103. Fynderne probably needed no patrons to assist his candidacy.

As far as Essex was concerned, Fynderne’s chief link with the county was his wife’s inheritance, although he never held any office there. His first known involvement in local politics was the Berkshire election to the Parliament of 1435. In spite of not having attained his majority, he was one of 30 named attestors who witnessed the return to the Commons of his father and William Perkins* as that county’s knights of the shire. So far as is known, Fynderne’s Membership of the Parliament of 1447 was his first public office. If resident in Essex at the time of his election, he had become primarily identified with Cambridgeshire before the end of the decade, as represented by his appointment to an ad hoc commission there in September 1449, to his return as a knight of the shire for that county in the consecutive Parliaments of 1449 and 1449-50 and his appointment as a feoffee by one of its most prominent esquires, Laurence Cheyne*.15 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 258-9.

Owing to his service in France, Fynderne’s career at a local level was curtailed for much of the 1450s. In the summer of 1451 he crossed the Channel with 200 men provided by the city of London for the defence of the pale of Calais, threatened by a French invasion,16 PPC, vi. 112-13; C.M. Barron, ‘Govt. of London’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1970), 462. and at the end of the same year he was chosen to succeed William Pyrton as lieutenant of Guînes castle, the English fortress in Picardy. According to the terms of his appointment, which began early the next year, he was ordinarily expected to supply 100 men – 50 men-at-arms and 50 archers – although in time of war he was to provide an extra 30 men-at-arms. In the following February the Exchequer was instructed to provide sufficient shipping for his passage, and in the same month he obtained letters of protection prior to crossing the Channel with (Sir) Gervase Clifton*, treasurer of Calais.17 E101/71/4/930; E404/68/80; DKR, xlviii. 390. Exactly when he arrived at Guînes is unclear, since it is possible that his soldiers were diverted to join the King’s forces confronting Richard, duke of York, at Dartford at the end of the same month.18 P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 111. His lieutenancy was a difficult one; from the start some of his men delayed in making their way to Guînes, also a problem as far as later reinforcements were concerned.19 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 525, 543, 549; 1452-61, pp. 22, 141, 142, 145, 151, 156, 158, 160, 205, 235, 246, 275, 276, 282-3, 355, 391, 429. A major reason for disgruntlement among the men was the non-payment of their wages, which fell greatly into arrears (despite contributions from the city of London, which also paid Fynderne a ‘regard’ of £10 in connexion with the defence of Calais in 1453), and around the end of the decade they wrote to their lieutenant appealing for payment.20 Corp. London RO, jnl. 5, ff. 105v, 121v; SC1/44/32. By May 1457 the Exchequer owed him and his soldiers 2,000 marks, so the Crown licensed him to recover the debt by exporting wool to Italy while simultaneously securing a recognizance for £1,600 from him and several associates to guarantee that they would adhere to the terms of the licence. Later in the decade it began proceedings against them on the strength of this bond, indicating that they had in some way failed to meet this commitment.21 C76/139, m. 17; DKR, xlviii. 418; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 210-11; E159/235, recorda Mich. rot. 47. The Crown also began proceedings against the MP and the Herefs. esquire, Edmund de Lavare, on the strength of a bond for £50 that they had entered into in Nov. 1457, but the purpose of this latter security is unknown and it may have arisen from a completely unrelated matter: E159/235, recorda Hil. rot. 20. Fynderne received similar licences in August 1457 and July 1458.22 C76/139, m. 11; 140, m. 10; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 245-6.

As letters of protection he received prior to crossing from England to France in mid 1453 and again in the following year indicate,23 DKR, xlviii. 396, 402. Sir Thomas did not remain continuously at Guînes after becoming its lieutenant. On the other hand, he spent enough time in Picardy to make it worth her while for his wife to join him there, and in late 1454 they received a papal indult permitting them to keep a portable altar in the diocese of Terouane.24 CPL, x. 630. In the following spring, however, Fynderne was certainly in England, for he was with the King at the battle of St. Albans, fought on 22 May 1455. He acted as one of the duke of Buckingham’s messengers just before the battle, riding out with the steward of Buckingham’s household to receive a demand from the duke of York. After returning to report the conversation they had held with York’s envoy they were sent back with a clear refusal, apparently because York had made the unacceptable demand that the King should hand over the duke of Somerset.25 C.A.J. Armstrong, ‘Politics and the Battle of St. Albans’, Bull. IHR, xxxiii. 31-32. Politically speaking, little was resolved by the resulting battle, and the defeat of the royal forces did not affect Fynderne, who retained his post at Guînes.

In the following autumn the duke of Buckingham’s friend and annuitant,26 C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 454, 700. Edward Grey, Lord Ferrers of Groby (d.1457), and his wife named Sir Thomas as a feoffee of estates set aside as jointure for Elizabeth Wydeville, daughter of Richard, Lord Rivers, and the future queen of Edward IV, on her marriage to their son, Sir John Grey.27 CP25(1)/293/72/398; C1/27/268. Fynderne also served Ferrers’s second son, Sir Edward Grey (later Lord Lisle), in the same capacity.28 CAD, i. B104; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 784; ii. 82. Evidently he was on close personal terms with Lord Ferrers, for there survives an letter of uncertain date that the peer, then in Calais, wrote to his ‘well beloved cousin Sir Thomas Fyndern’, to thank him for a letter he had received from him and to ask him to break in a couple of horses on his behalf.29 SC1/60/13. In due course, Sir John Grey would die for the Lancastrian cause, as would Fynderne and one of his co-feoffees, William Feldyng*. Another indication that Fynderne was increasingly associated with the Lancastrian cause in the wake of St. Albans was his readiness to stand bail at Westminster in November 1456 for Henry Curson, who stood indicted of murdering Roland Blount at Derby a few weeks before the battle.30 KB27/782, rex rot. 8. The crime had factional undertones, since Curson, a younger son of John Curson* of Derbyshire, was from a family linked with the House of Lancaster, while the victim was a kinsman of another Derbyshire landowner, Walter Blount*, a follower of the duke of York.

It was also in the autumn of 1456 that the King, having regained the political initiative against York and his allies, dispatched a privy seal letter to Fynderne, then in Suffolk, and appointed him a j.p. in Cambridgeshire for the first time. While the contents of this and two other such letters the MP received over the following two years are unknown, they are probably a sign of his growing identification with the Lancastrian Crown.31 E403/809, m. 2; 810, m. 3; 817, m. 3. He continued to divide his time between England and Guînes in the later 1450s, receiving letters of protection prior to embarking for France in both 1457 and the latter end of 1458.32 DKR, xlviii. 421, 430. The letters of 1457 referred to him as ‘captain’ of Guînes (as indeed, did his papal indult of 1454), but in those of 1458 he is ‘lieutenant’, as he is in letters close of the same year: CCR, 1454-61, pp. 245-6 As for his activities at home in the same period, Fynderne was appointed to two commissions of array although he stepped down as a j.p. in mid 1458. He also acted as a mainpernor for John Bourgchier, son of Henry, Viscount Bourgchier, in May 1457, presented a priest to the rectory of Weston Colville in February 1459 and attended the mass upon William Gray’s installation as bishop of Ely in the following month.33 CFR, xix. 174; Cambridge Univ. Lib., Ely Diocesan recs., G1/5 (Reg. Gray), ff. 39v-40v, 120v. Fynderne was still officially lieutenant of Guînes in mid 1459 but his successor, Nicholas Hussey, had taken over by the following April.34 DKR, xlviii. 435, 437, 440.

During 1459 political tensions in England increased, reaching a height when York and his allies were excluded from a great council called to Coventry that summer. When fighting finally broke out, Fynderne, a soldier and a ‘King’s knight’,35 CPR, 1446-52, p. 525. if never formally of the Household, remained loyal to the Lancastrian dynasty. It is possibly that he fought at Blore Heath on 23 Sept. that year and, given his links with Buckingham, he may have been a member of the duke’s retinue at Ludford Bridge on the following 12 Oct.36 J. de Waurin, Chrons. ed. Hardy, iv. 269; Rawcliffe, 26. In early 1460, while York and his allies were in exile, Fynderne was appointed to several commissions to inquire into the lands and goods of the attainted Sir William Oldhall (whose Hertfordshire and Essex estates were awarded to Buckingham), and his loyalty to the King doubtless ensured his appointment as sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire during that critical year. Although reported killed at the battle of Northampton in July, he survived to fight at Wakefield the following December and at the battle of Towton on 29 Mar. 1461. After Towton, Fynderne fled with Queen Margaret into Scotland.37 Waurin, 300; PROME, xiii. 42-44, 46-51; Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, iii. 307.

Within weeks of Edward IV’s accession, the authorities began the process of taking action against Fynderne on account of several bonds in statute staple to which he had put his name at Westminster. The circumstances in which he had entered these securities are unknown. One of these was a bond for 50 marks that he and others had entered into with John Lok† of London in March 1460. Two others, bearing the like penalty, were far less recent. Both dated 27 Jan. 1452, these were securities that Fynderne and several associates acting on his behalf, Lawrence Cheyne, William Allington II* and John Ansty*, had given to Ansty’s son-in-law, the late Henry Langley (nephew of the former bishop of Durham, Thomas Langley, and lord of the manor of Lolworth in Cambridgeshire) and the Londoner, John Bedham. They had been intended to guarantee that they would pay Langley and Bedham 50 marks at Christmas 1452 and the same amount a year later, but in November 1461 the Chancery ordered the sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, John Styuecle*, to take action for the non-payment of the 100 marks in question. Early in the following year, by which stage Fynderne had been attainted in Edward IV’s first Parliament, Styuecle seized the Fynderne manors at Weston Colville and Willingham for the King, who soon afterwards granted the MP’s estates in Cambridgeshire to Thomas St. Leger†.38 C241/246/58, 65, 98; C131/71/3; 237/11; PROME, xiii. 46-51; E153/587; CPR, 1461-7, pp. 77, 521.

In April 1462 the exiled Fynderne accompanied Queen Margaret to France, advising her as one of her councillors on the treaty she signed with Louis XI at Tours on 28 June.39 Mems. Philippe de Comines ed. M. l’Abbe Lenglet du Fresnoy, ii. 367-73. He returned to England with her in the following October. Margaret landed at Bamburgh on the Northumberland coast with perhaps as many as 2,000 French soldiers and she was joined by Henry VI and the duke of Somerset with forces from Scotland. The Lancastrian army captured several northern castles, leaving them garrisoned when they retreated north over the border in mid November. An army led by the earl of Warwick laid siege to the castles, of which Dunstanburgh, defended by 100 men under the command of Fynderne and Sir Richard Tunstall†, held out until 27 Dec.40 C.L. Scofield, Edw. IV, 252; A. Goodman, Wars of the Roses, 60-61. But another acct. says that Fynderne was with Lord Hungerford and (Sir) Robert Whittingham II* at Alnwick castle, which surrendered the following Jan.: Excerpta Historica ed. Bentley, 365. Fynderne’s immediate whereabouts after the sieges are uncertain. As most of the gentry in the castle garrisons received safe conducts to leave the realm, he may at that stage have returned to the continent. Alternatively, if he had managed to rejoin the queen, he could either have accompanied her when she withdrew to Flanders in the summer of 1463 or remained at large with Henry VI in Scotland. In the meantime his aged mother Elizabeth had accepted Edward IV as King, since in her will of October 1463 she made her bequest of various household goods and jewelry to her son conditional upon his submission to him.41 Goodman, 61, 63; PCC 2 Godyn (PROB11/5, ff. 12v-13).

By the following spring Fynderne was back in northern England, for he was one of the leaders of the Lancastrian force that attempted to ambush John, Marquess Montagu, at Hedgeley Moor on 25 Apr. 1464. On 15 May, however, it was Montagu’s turn to launch a surprise attack and he overwhelmed a smaller Lancastrian force at Hexham. Fynderne and two fellow diehards with whom he had shared exile in France, the Lords Roos and Hungerford, managed to escape the battlefield but two days later they were caught hiding in a wood, taken to Newcastle and executed.42 Goodman, 63-64; Three 15th Cent. Chrons. (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, xxviii), 80, 178-9; Historical Collns. Citizen London (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, xvii), 225. Fynderne’s body was brought south and buried in the parish church of Little Horkesley, Essex, where his widow’s Swinburne ancestors lay.43 Bottomley, 195; Morant, ii. 234. His attainder was reversed in 1478, in response to a petition that his son and heir William presented to the Parliament of that year.44 CPR, 1476-85, p. 191.