FIENNES, Sir Roger

More can be added to the earlier biography. The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 70-73.

Robes were made in the royal wardrobe for Fiennes to wear at the coronation of Katherine de Valois in 1421. E101/407/4, f. 35. He was twice nominated by his friends in the Household, Lords Sudeley and Beauchamp of Powick, to be a Knight of the Garter, but on both occasions (in 1446 and 1447) proved unsuccessful. Reg. Order of the Garter ed. Anstis, i. 127-8, 133. Fiennes was clearly ailing by December 1447. As noted in the earlier biography, he was then removed from the office of chief steward of the duchy of Lancaster in the south, being replaced by the marquess of Suffolk and (Sir) Thomas Stanley II*, yet as a mark of special favour he was permitted to retain the salary until his death. Two petitions from Fiennes to Henry VI reveal more about his resignation from the treasurership of the Household. In November 1448 he excused his failure to complete his accounts ‘for the longe continued sikenes whiche he afore this time fulle grevously hathe hadde’, and asked the King to instruct the Exchequer to cease its process against him. Then at Winchester in June 1449 the King, in consideration of Fiennes’s long service, ‘gret age and dayly infirmite’, ordered that he be allowed to appear at the Exchequer by attorney in response to the various attachments it had issued. CPR, 1446-52, p. 123; E28/78, nos. 18, 124. On 16 Oct. following, shortly before he died, Sir Roger was pardoned all debts and accounts still due to the Crown; on 20 Jan. 1450 the Exchequer was ordered not to trouble his executors (his sons Richard and Robert) in this regard. No doubt his brother, Lord Saye, the new treasurer of England, was instrumental in easing their burden. E159/226, brevia Hil. rots. 2, 12.

Fiennes’s widow, Elizabeth, was still living in August 1454, when her son-in-law Nicholas Carew* entrusted her and his daughter Emmeline with his moveable goods. CP40/784, cart. rot. 513.