FYNCH, Vincent

Further information may be added to the picture presented in the earlier biography of Fynch as a highly litigious individual.1 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 151-2. He appeared in the court of common pleas in the winter of 1423-4 not only to bring suits against his debtors but also to sue for a messuage and land in Catsfield, which had belonged to his late kinsman Henry Fynch.2 CP40/651, rots. 29, 129; 652, rot. 350. In another suit, brought at the Sussex assizes in July 1429, he was accused of wrongfully dispossessing another relative, Herbert Fynch, of four messuages and 13 acres of land at Battle. The abbot of Battle, with whom Vincent frequently quarreled, came to the court at East Grinstead to petition for the right to judge the case, and Vincent was bound over in £200 to keep the peace.3 C260/131/29. This formed just one chapter in the book of our MP’s clashes with the abbot, which engaged his energies in the late 1420s. The abbot alleged in the common pleas that on 3 June 1427 Fynch had broken the abbey’s closes at Battle, only for Fynch to respond that before that date one of the abbot’s servants had seized 40 cattle from his land at ‘Ityngton’; he had merely been recovering what rightfully belonged to him. However, when the plea went to the assizes at East Grinstead the abbot was awarded damages of £11, of which he pronounced himself satisfied in January 1430.4 CP40/671, rot. 328d. This suit coincided with, and was another aspect of Fynch’s dispute with the abbot over tithes payable from land at Netherfield, which had reached a climax in the previous month. The abbot’s case was that in August 1427, just after the incident of close-breaking, Fynch had impeded the collection of tithes, an offence against the Church which warranted excommunication. Depositions showed that he had prevented the abbot’s men from taking seven stacks of wheat, each composed of ten sheaves. Sentence of excommunication was passed against him by Archbishop Chichele on 13 Dec. 1429, and besides being required to pay his opponent £5 before 2 Feb. following, he was made to do penance at Battle parish church by going round the churchyard with bared head and feet at the head of the procession, and to offer a wax candle and the value of the tithes at the high altar, as well as handing over to the abbot the cart, four oxen and horse used to remove the wheat.5 Huntington Lib., San Marino, California, Battle Abbey mss, deed 1648. The humiliated Fynch could not let the matter rest there. In the following summer he brought pleas against a number of men of Battle for trespasses committed in association with the abbot.6 KB27/677, rot. 66d. It looks as if he died shortly afterwards.