CLINTON alias FINES, Francis (1611-82), of Little Sturton, Baumber, Lincs.

Fines was descended from a cadet branch of Lincolnshire’s leading noble family, the Clinton-Fiennes, earls of Lincoln.26Sig.: SP28/1A, f. 9; Lincs. Peds. 380. In July 1635, he was sworn a gentleman of the privy chamber, extraordinary – a court office that he probably owed to the dowager duchess of Buckingham (the widow of the former royal favourite the duke of Buckingham), who was a kinswoman and patron of his then or soon-to-be wife Priscilla, one of the queen’s maids of honour. As a result of this Buckingham connection, Priscilla’s sisters had secured high-ranking husbands – namely, Arthur Chichester, 1st earl of Donegal, Edward Montagu† (the future parliamentarian peer, the 2nd earl of Manchester) and Sir William Killigrew†.27LC5/134, f. 17; HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Edward Montagu’; ‘Sir William Killigrew’. In 1639, during the first bishops’ war, Fines was listed among the king’s servants who had promised to attend him in the field against the Scottish Covenanters but had failed to do so.28SP16/427/38, f. 74v. This lapse of duty notwithstanding, Fines retained his office in the privy chamber.29LC3/1, f. 25.

With civil war looming by the summer of 1642, Fines opted to side with Parliament and was a leading signatory to the Lincolnshire declaration of June ‘against all such as shall attempt to separate his majesty from his great and faithful council of Parliament’.30PA, Main Pprs. 4 July 1642. By late July, had been commissioned as a captain of horse in the parliamentarian field army under Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex.31SP28/143, pt. 6, ff. 4v, 16; A Catalogue of the Lords...that have Absented Themselves from the Parliament (1642), 14 (E.64.4). It is not clear what inspired Fines to take up arms against the king, although it may have been linked to his religious views, for his later career suggests that he was a man of godly convictions. His military career is likewise largely obscure. He continued to draw pay for his troop of horse until mid-December 1642, but the extent of his military service thereafter is not known.32SP28/4, f. 276; SP28/143, pt. 6, f. 45. Nevertheless, he was evidently regarded as a leading figure among the Lincolnshire parliamentarians, for in April 1643 he was among those indicted for high treason by the royalists at the Grantham quarter sessions.33A Declaration of the Commons Assembled in Parliament upon Two Letters Sent by Sir John Brooks (1643), 10 (E.101.13).

Fines was involved during the civil war in the work of removing ‘idle, ill-affected, scandalous and insolent [i.e. royalist] clergy’ in Lincolnshire and elsewhere in the Eastern Association and settling godly ministers in their place.34Plundered Ministers of Lincs. ed. W. E. Foster, 109; ‘The royalist clergy of Lincs.’ ed. Hill, 116-17. He was also one of numerous Lincolnshire Parliamentarians who petitioned the earl of Manchester in 1643 against the deployment of Colonel Edward King and his troops outside the county.35Hunts. RO, Manchester mss (Lincs. petitions to the earl of Manchester against the removal of Colonel King, 1643), unfol. However, when King began to castigate the Lincolnshire county committee (of which Fines was an active member) in the mid-1640s for its willingness to put the collection of assessments for the New Model before local people’s liberties, Fines was a signatory to several of the committee’s letters to Parliament denouncing King as a delinquent.36SP28/161, unfol.; SP28/211, f. 514; Bodl. Nalson VI, f. 72; Tanner 58, f. 39; Tanner 50, f. 478; E. King, A Discovery of the Arbitrary, Tyrannical and Illegal Actions of Some of the Committee of the County of Lincoln (1647, E.373.3); C. Holmes, ‘Col. King and Lincs. politics, 1642-6’, HJ, xvi. 451-84.

Fines was still part of Lincolnshire’s ruling clique in June 1648, when he was commissioned by Colonel Edward Rosseter* and the county committee to secure Tattershall Castle against surprisal by the royalists.37HMC Portland, i. 467; LJ x. 445b, 541. His governorship of the castle was highly resented by its owner (and Fines’s cousin), Theophilus 4th earl of Lincoln, and on 3 July the Lords ordered Fines to return the castle to the earl’s possession.38LJ x. 357a. But the Commons was adamant that Fines relinquish the castle to no one, least of all to a man such as Lincoln who had been threatened with impeachment for his part in the Presbyterian coup of July 1647.39CJ v. 655b. With the backing of the Commons and the county committee, Fines was able to defy the peers with impunity, declaring to one of their officers that ‘he could raise the whole county, when some lords could not raise three men’.40LJ x. 445b, 541b-542a. But his evident willingness to serve the Commons seems to have waned after the regicide and the establishment of the commonwealth, and in July 1650 he was removed from the Lindsey bench.41C231/6, p. 191. His name was also omitted from the assessment commissions of 1650, 1652 and 1653.

The establishment of the protectorate was probably welcomed by Fines. He certainly seems to have supported the Cromwellian drive towards godly reformation, being named as one of Lincolnshire’s ejectors and assisting the protectoral council in purging local gentlemen from the bench for frequenting and licensing ale-houses.42CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 144, 345, 398; 1655-6, p. 194. In the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654, he was returned for the fifth of Lincolnshire’s ten places.43Supra, ‘Lincolnshire’. Whether he was elected on his own interest as one of the county’s more prominent parliamentarians or through his connection with the earls of Lincoln is not known. He received no appointments in this Parliament and made no recorded contribution to debate. At local level, on the other hand, he was an enthusiastic servant of the Cromwellian regime. Commissioned by July 1655 as a captain in the Lincolnshire militia, he was among the most active of the county’s commissioners appointed that autumn to assist Major-general Edward Whalley*. The willingness shown by Fines and several other likely Presbyterians – notably, his brother-in-law Humphrey Walcott* – to work with Whalley in levying the decimation tax and purging local government of malignants can probably be attributed to their zeal for godly reformation.44TSP iv. 185, 212, 238, 337; CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 194.

Fines was returned for the county again in the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, coming fifth on a poll with 541 votes.45Supra, ‘Lincolnshire’. He was one of the four Lincolnshire MPs who were allowed to take their seats by the protectoral council; the remaining six were excluded as enemies of the government. On 22 September, he was among the 29 MPs who voted against a motion that the excluded Members apply to the council for approbation to sit, which was interpreted as support for ‘the bringing in of the excluded Members into the House’ and was comprehensively defeated.46Bodl. Tanner 52, f. 166; CJ vii. 426b. Most of these 29 MPs have been accounted Presbyterians.47M.J. Tibbetts, ‘Parliamentary Parties under Oliver Cromwell’ (Bryn Mawr Univ. PhD thesis, 1944), 127-9. Fines received seven appointments in this Parliament, including nomination to committees for preventing offences associated with alehouses, inns and gaming houses, and on a bill for the stricter observation of the Lord’s day.48CJ vii. 430a, 434b, 472b, 477a, 493b, 504a, 513b. His only recorded contribution to debate was on 20 December 1656, when he supported Colonel William Sydenham, Sir William Strickland, Thomas Clarges and other court party MPs in opposing calls to adjourn the House for Christmas until bills had been passed to provide money for the war against Spain.49Burton’s Diary, i. 190-1. He evidently supported the offer of the crown to Cromwell under the terms of the Humble Petition and Advice, for he was the only Lincolnshire MP listed among the ‘kinglings’ – the supporters at Westminster of a monarchical settlement.50Narrative of the Late Parliament, 22.

Fines’s subsequent career remains largely obscure. He seems to have been removed from his militia captaincy by the restored Rump in or about July 1659.51CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 38. Moreover, his omission from the Lindsey commission of peace in October 1660 and his subsequent failure to receive any further appointments suggests that he was regarded as disaffected by the crown. For his part, he seems to have retired from public affairs at the Restoration and would apparently spend the remainder of his life living quietly in Lincolnshire.

Fines died on 5 February 1682 and was buried at Baumber on 8 February.52Baumber bishop’s transcript; Lincs. Peds. 380. Although it is likely that he owned considerable property in and around Little Sturton, the fact that he does not appear to have left a will and that his father died intestate makes it impossible to assess the size or value of his estate. None of his immediate descendants sat in Parliament.