FYNCH, William (d.1443), of Netherfield and Icklesham, Suss.

William was a younger son of Vincent Fynch, who having represented the Cinque Port of Winchelsea in three Parliaments at the turn of the century, had emerged as a leading member of the gentry of east Sussex, and officiated as escheator and sheriff in the county. Vincent’s manors of Icklesham and Netherfield near Battle were assessed for the purposes of taxation at £30 a year, but it seems likely that his total income well exceeded this amount. When he died, at an unknown date in or shortly after 1415, not all of this passed to his elder son and namesake; some of his landed holdings had already been settled on our MP. The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 150-2. Indeed, even before his father’s death William possessed property of his own. While living at the family home at Netherfield in 1412, he leased out land in Catsfield, Ashburnham and Penhurst, and he and his brother were later recorded among those holding seven fragmented knights’ fees in the neighbourhood. Add. Ch. 20064; Feudal Aids, v. 150-1. As barons of the Cinque Ports, the Fynch brothers were exempt from parliamentary fifteenths and tenths charged on their moveable goods outside the Ports’ liberties. In William’s case this applied to his property at Icklesham and Fairlight in Guestling in assessments made in the reigns of Henry IV and Henry V, and extended to several other places after he inherited the principal family estates following his brother Vincent’s death. Archaeologia Cantiana, xiii. 321; E179/225/38, 40, 41, 50. He continued to make claims for exemption until the 1440s. E179/226/69, 71; 227/94; 228/107, 118. Vincent had pursued a vendetta against Henry Dobyll of Wittersham, Kent, and the arrangement made in 1428 whereby Dobyll and his wife relinquished some 160 acres of land in Peasmarsh, Playden, Iden and Icklesham to William and his wife may well have had something to do with a final settlement of the quarrel. CP25(1)/241/86/2.

After Vincent died, in about 1430, William took over the family seat at Netherfield, and a year or so later his kinsman Herbert Fynch conveyed to him all his property in Battle. By the time he entered the Commons our MP also occupied the town house at Battle that traditionally went with the local manor of Beche. A contemporary rental notes that the holder of this burgage was obliged to serve the abbot of Battle as his ceremonial cup-bearer, so Fynch would have been responsible for carrying the abbot’s cup to Parliament, and attending on him at Westminster when required. E315/56, f. 10; VCH Suss. ix. 106-7; Add. Ch. 20043. Over the years William, who was usually called ‘gentleman’ or ‘esquire’, added to this considerable estate. Add. Chs. 20041, 20062, 20020. The fact that he was fined for failing to take up knighthood indicates that he had land worth at least £40 a year, while the provisions of his will assumed a guaranteed annual income of well in excess of 100 marks, arising from a number of manorial holdings and some 900 acres of land in different parts of east Sussex. Archaeologia Cantiana, xiii. 233-4; C1/17/155; Add. 39376, ff. 56, 57. To his inheritance Fynch probably added more property by marriage to the widowed Agnes Horsham. Her former husband had possessed property in north Kent at Horsham, Upchurch, Halstow and Newington, as well as in the city of London. Yet it remains unclear precisely what Agnes kept as her dower, for she and William made quitclaims of these holdings to Horsham’s sisters and coheirs and their husbands (the London grocers Robert Otley and Sayer Acre), in 1425. Corp. London RO, hr 154/11; Cat. Archs. All Souls Coll. 57-59.

Not only was Fynch well endowed with land, he could also boast important connexions among the gentry of east Sussex. Probably related by marriage to John Ashburnham†, the former shire knight, on the day after Ashburnham’s death, on 23 Nov. 1417, he allegedly assisted the deceased’s son to enter the manor of Scotney by force, and make off with boxes of title deeds and goods worth £40, thus provoking the anger of John’s executors. C1/69/289. Ashburnham’s wife is said to have been a Fynch: Vis. Suss. (Harl. Soc. liii), 17. The same year another relation, Sir William Etchingham’s widow Elizabeth, named him as her attorney to act in all her legal affairs. Add. Ch. 20205. Furthermore, in the 1420s, together with their brother-in-law Adam Iwode, the Fynch brothers served as feoffees of the estates in Sussex and elsewhere belonging to their kinsman, the wealthy and influential Sir Roger Fiennes*. Battle Abbey mss, deed 521; CCR, 1429-35, pp. 45, 69. As befitted his standing, William began to be appointed to ad hoc royal commissions in the south-east in 1428, and two years later he was made sheriff of Surrey and Sussex. As sheriff, he conducted the parliamentary elections at Chichester on 28 Dec. 1430, when Iwode was one of those returned as a knight of the shire. C219/14/2. The Exchequer later acquitted him of £40 due on his shrieval account, owing to the excessive costs he had met while in office. E159/208, brevia Trin. rot. 8.

Albeit members of the gentry, the Fynches always maintained their close connexion with Winchelsea, where their family had first emerged as successful merchants. William witnessed important transactions completed there in 1432, finally fulfilling the testamentary provisions of John Salerne† (d.1410), Cott. Julius BIV, ff. 46-47. and the following year he took on a more prominent role in the government of the Port. The mayoral elections conducted at Easter 1433 were disrupted by so much discord among the inhabitants that the outgoing mayor, John Godfrey*, was forced to remain in office until, on 11 June, Fynch was elected in his place. Ibid. f. 51v. This was swiftly followed by his return to the Parliament which assembled on 8 July, along with the Crown’s appointee as bailiff of Winchelsea, William Pope*. During one or other of the two parliamentary sessions Fynch was the subject of a petition sent to the chancellor from one William atte Down, who asserted that he had wrongfully entered on property at Westham and Pevensey, claiming the estate of the lessee, John Kechynham of Ashburnham, and had paid no rent for the years 1430-2. Furthermore, after the petitioner re-entered the land, on 18 June 1433, Fynch had not only come with 60 armed men to arrest him, but had also brought 16 carts to take away his crops. Atte Down made a point of noting Fynch’s status as a baron in the Parliament, no doubt because this accorded his opponent freedom from arrest until the dissolution. C1/10/20. This was not the only legal action brought against Fynch. In the same year John atte Downe (a kinsman of the petitioner) sued him for wrongful seizure of his lands, and the abbot of Robertsbridge brought an action against him in the court of common pleas for a debt of £40. Cott. Julius BIV, f. 60; CP40/691, rot. 279d; 699, rot. 240. During his mayoralty of Winchelsea Fynch was sent as a deputy to the Brodhull, on 11 Jan. 1434, White and Black Bks. 3. and he was re-elected mayor for a further term at the following Easter. However, after that second term ended he became less interested in the Port’s affairs. When, in July 1435, he was chosen at Winchelsea to be one of the bailiffs the Cinque Ports would send to the annual herring fair at Yarmouth, he persuaded William Worth* to perform the office in his place. Cott. Julius BIV, ff. 50v, 59.

On 10 Oct. 1440 Fynch made an enfeoffment of his lands in Sussex, Kent and the liberty of the Cinque Ports, naming among the feoffees the then sheriff of Kent Gervase Clifton* (who was married to his sister Isabel), the lawyer William Sydney* and his kinsman Richard Lewknor*. When he came to make his will, on 10 Sept. 1443, he instructed them to settle all of his real estate on his widow Agnes for term of her life, and stipulated that provided she remained single their children should be left under her governance; Agnes was to take responsibility for educating them until they reached the age of 20. Then, his eldest son, John, was to receive 20 marks, and the younger ones (William, Henry and Vincent), annuities of ten marks each, while 200 marks should be set aside for the marriage of his daughter, Isabel. If Isabel died unmarried, her portion was to be divided so that one Joan atte Rede would have ten marks and the balance would be split between the testator’s unmarried sisters, Denise and Parnel Fynch. If his widow remarried she was to be assured of an income of 100 marks p.a. for the rest of her life. After her death the bulk of the Fynch estates, including the manor of Netherfield, were to pass to John, while the younger boys were assured of specified lands to hold in fee simple. Archaeologia Cantiana, xiii. 322-4. But matters did not fall out as Fynch intended, and litigation over his estate divided his family for at least 30 years after his death. The first lawsuits concerned the wardship of the heir, which was claimed in 1444 by Sir John Pelham as lord of the honour, barony and rape of Hastings, from which he alleged Fynch had held three of his manors. Pelham claimed damages of £200 against Fynch’s relations and feoffees. CP40/732, rot. 484d, 738, rot. 258d. By then the heir was no longer in the care of his mother Agnes, but had been placed in the custody of friends and relatives including his aunt Denise, since Agnes had remarried almost immediately after our MP’s death, her new husband being a member of the royal Household, Babylon Grantford*. In May 1449 the couple prosecuted their writ of dower against Fynch’s feoffees, and obtained judgement in the Michaelmas term, six years after his death, CP40/754, rot. 276d; 755, rot. 173; 806, rot. 310. but this was not the end of their difficulties, for suits between them and John Fynch, after he came of age, and with other interested parties over wastes on the inheritance carried on into the 1460s. Fynch’s sisters, Isabel Clifton, Denise and Parnel, sued the Grantfords for the sum of £43 6s. 8d., which they said had been unjustly withheld by Agnes as executrix of their brother’s will. CP40/766, rot. 40d. Then, as Fynch’s daughter Isabel did die unmarried, her aunts Denise and Parnel claimed their entitlement of 100 marks each from revenues of the land held by the feoffees, but they refused to comply, even after a judgement in a chancery suit found against them in 1455. The two women were forced to pursue their nephew John for their legacies after he came of age, and even though John was bound over in December 1457 to pay them £140, he failed to do so. In 1469 the sheriff of Sussex was ordered to arrest him and confiscate his goods until his aunts were satisfied of the debt, and when this failed in 1470 the bailiff of the rape of Hastings was ordered to deliver Netherfield and two other manors, valued at £25 p.a., to them to keep until they received payment. C1/17/155, 26/12-15; C131/76/2; CCR, 1468-76, no. 560. Denise obtained a papal dispensation to marry John Warner* in 1451 (CPL, x. 532-3), but despite this marriage she continued to use her maiden name. John had been forced to take legal action against the feoffees to gain seisin of his inheritance in the mid 1450s, CP40/770, rot. 223; C1/25/182. but despite the way he had been treated he himself dealt less than fairly with his younger brother Henry, refusing to relinquish to him the portion of the estates left him by their father. C1/47/44, 48/312, 529. John died childless in 1477, leaving Henry as his heir. C140/61/32 gives his date of death as 20 Apr. 1477, but Reg. Bourgchier (Canterbury and York Soc. liv), 214 shows that he died intestate bef. 17 Mar. Netherfield long remained in the family. Notable among its subsequent owners was Sir Moyle Finch† (d.1614), whose wife Elizabeth, ‘the richest widow in England’ was created viscountess of Maidstone and then countess of Winchilsea. VCH Suss. ix. 106-7; The Commons 1558-1603, ii. 118-19.