FIENNES, James (c.1603-74), of Broughton, Oxon.

As his father’s heir, and with experience of three previous parliaments, Fiennes might have been expected to be the chief representative of the Saye interest in the Commons. He had, after all, shared with the viscount in October 1636 omission from the Oxfordshire commission of the peace, the punishment for determined opposition to the collection of Ship Money.24C231/5, pp. 219; CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 122; N.P. Bard, ‘The Ship Money Case’, BIHR l. 179n. In the aftermath of his father’s refusal to take the military oath of support for the crown at York in April 1639, Fiennes’s election for the third time for the county in March 1640 might have signalled an intention to play a leading role in registering discontent about royal policy.25M.L. Schwarz, ‘Viscount Saye and Sele, Lord Brooke and aristocratic protest in the first Bishops’ War’, Canadian Jnl. of Hist. vii (1972), 17-36. However, while he proved capable of speaking up for reform and showed characteristic family piety and scrupulosity (or recalcitrance), in the long run his career at Westminster was completely overshadowed by that of his hitherto unknown younger brother Nathaniel Fiennes I*, just as his profile in public life was overtaken by that of his third brother John Fiennes*. His stance was consistently more conservative than any in the family.

James Fiennes’s contribution to 1620s parliaments had been relatively modest, but since then he had served as a justice of the peace and a commissioner for sewers, and acted with Nathaniel and family friend John Crewe I* as a trustee for lands in county Wicklow.26HP Commons 1604-1629; C231/5, pp. 75, 219; C181/4, f. 179; Add. 46921, f. 144b; CSP Dom. 1637-8, p. 164. His marriage to a co-heiress of Edward Cecil, Viscount Wimbledon, had brought a welcome dowry in 1629 and ten years later a share in the proceedings of the sale of his father-in-law’s estate, as well as brothers in law (Sir Christopher Wray* and Francis Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham) to add to connections in both Houses through his sisters’ marriages.27Bodl. Rawl. D.892, ff. 270-5; CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 106; 1639-40, p. 157.

Fiennes’s sole committee appointment in the Short Parliament was on 19 April 1640 to that to confer with the Lords about a fast day.28CJ ii. 4a. It was probably he who spoke on 24 April to a petition from Oxfordshire constables about local prisons. Four other references in Sir Thomas Aston’s diary to ‘Mr Fines’ contributing to debates on, among other things, paying for an as yet insufficiently justified war in Scotland (2 May), may equally be ascribed to Nathaniel.29Aston’s Diary, 45, 48, 102, 124, 138.

A similar ambiguity attends James’s activity in the opening months of the Long Parliament, to which he was again returned for the county. It was specifically he who was named to committees to examine witnesses testifying against Thomas Wentworth†, 1st earl of Strafford (30 Nov.), settle St Leonard’s hospital, Newark, on the countess dowager of Exeter (a connection of his wife; 12 Mar. 1641), investigate the ‘popish hierarchy’ (16 Mar.) and revise subsidy assessments (30 Apr.).30CJ ii. 39b, 102b, 105b, 130b. He was plausibly the Mr Fiennes delegated to discuss a fast day with the Lords (9 Nov. 1640) and, given his superior experience, the intended member of the committee of privileges (6 Nov.), although on 18 December it was Nathaniel who was included among those chosen to investigate alleged breaches in recent parliaments.31CJ ii. 21a, 23b, 53b. Conceivably James was the Fiennes placed on at least some of 11 other committees between 3 December and 26 March 1641: a majority related to religion, an issue on which he was as engaged as his brother.32CJ ii. 44a, 44b, 49b, 50a, 60a, 75a, 81b, 84b, 99a, 101a, 113b. However, the impression is that he took a back seat from the first and was perhaps an intermittent attender in the House. In February 1641 the king had restored him to the Oxfordshire commission of the peace, a move which, whether interpreted as approving or conciliatory, might indicate perceived political significance.33C231/5, p. 431. But it is clear that before 14 December, when Nathaniel received the first of a rapid succession of unequivocal committee nominations, the younger brother had emerged as the more prominent figure in the House; even where diary entries recording debates in these months are unspecific as to the Fiennes addressing Members, the context suggests strongly that Nathaniel was meant.34CJ ii. 50b seq.; s.v. ‘Nathaniel Fiennes I’.

There is no reference to James Fiennes in the Commons Journal from 3 May 1641, when he took the Protestation, to May 1643. None the less, at least at first he was neither absent nor totally inactive.35CJ ii. 133b. On 17 May 1641 he moved unsuccessfully for the revival of the Ship Money committee, ‘denied in respect of the great affairs of the kingdom’, while on 28 June he spoke, ‘not … in respect of himself but of others’ that since many eldest sons of noblemen ‘had nothing but small pensions from their fathers’ they should be exempt from taxation.36Harl. 163, ff. 191a, 359; Procs. LP iv. 413, 420a; v. 384. On 27 July D’Ewes records that James delivered to the House the Oxfordshire petition against episcopacy, noting immediately afterwards Nathaniel’s motion for a bill against the ecclesiastical Canons.37Harl. 163, f. 413a. The possibility of partnership between the brothers is raised again by the likelihood that on 10 August they co-operated in carrying messages to the Lords relating to discussions with the king.38Harl. 479, f. 141a; CJ ii. 249a. The same month James was made a commissioner in the ordinance for disarming popish recusants.39An ordinance made and agreed by Parliament (1641), 7.

Fiennes was absent from Broughton when protestation returns and taxation assessments were made early in 1642, his name being inserted later.40Oxon. and North Berks. Protestation Returns ed. J. Gibson (Oxon. Rec. Soc. lix), 71. It was probably he, rather than ‘John Fiennes’ who was intended to be confirmed on the Oxfordshire commission of the peace that April only to be omitted again in June.41C231/5, pp. 517, 528. Unlike his brothers, he did not serve in the parliamentarian forces once civil war broke out, but when he resurfaced in the Commons he was named to committees addressing peripheral military matters (26 May and 22 June 1643).42CJ iii. 101a, 140a. Possible disenchantment with the terms of the prospective alliance with the Scots may have resulted in spasmodic attendance (a pattern that was to become increasingly characteristic). In June he was noted among those arriving late to take the new protestation and oath of the Covenant which was an element of that alliance, and when he next appeared in the Journal after a three-month interval on 30 September, he was recorded as desiring further time to take the Solemn League and Covenant.43CJ iii. 118b, 119a, 259b. There was a mistaken report that he had then subscribed, but in company with others he continued to drag his feet.44Mems. of the Verney Fam. ii. 168. Nomination to one committee (30 Oct.) was his sole visible contribution to business in an autumn where the whole family were suffering from the increasingly damaging fall-out from Nathaniel’s surrender of the key parliamentarian garrison at Bristol.45CJ iii. 294b. After a series of postponements, on 2 November he, Sir Norton Knatchbull* and Sir Philip Parker* declared ‘that some scruples stuck with them, insomuch, that, as yet, they cannot take this Covenant’, their objection being specified by one diarist as a refusal to ‘swear to extirpate bishops’; time for reflection effected no change and on the 6th they were suspended.46CJ iii. 362a, 297b, 299a, 302b; Add. 18778, f. 81.

Given leave to return to Parliament on 22 January 1644 (by which time Nathaniel had gained a reprieve from the death sentence passed by court martial in December), James appeared on 5 February to take the Covenant.47CJ iii. 374a, 389a. The fact that he did so in company with Oliver Cromwell* may have eased a conscience for which the sticking point in this case (if he shared his father’s and brother’s views) had probably been fear of intolerant clericalism. His profile in the Commons remained rather low. Among those delegated to organise with the militia committee the sending of forces to engage the enemy in Oxfordshire and Berkshire (8 June) and to prepare an ordinance for expanding that committee’s powers (13 June), on the 17th he was given leave of absence for up to a month to take the waters for recovery of his health.48CJ iii. 523a, 527b, 532b. Placed (25 June) on the Oxfordshire county committee (at this date operating perforce mainly in the familiar north of the county), he was made an assessment commissioner in October, and two of his three committee nominations in the rest of the year (5 Aug. and 12 Oct.) related to the war effort in western counties.49A. and O.; CJ iii. 579b, 661a On 3 October he was among those given the housekeeping task of rationalising petitions pending before the House – in which he could conceivably have rendered assistance to his father in the Lords – but otherwise his acknowledged primary interests appear to be local.50CJ iii. 649b. Indeed, in the middle of the month he was added to the committee for Gloucestershire and Herefordshire.51PA, Main Pprs. 14 Oct. 1644; CJ iii. 661a; LJ vii. 24a.

Another absence from the Journals, this time lasting five months, ended on 18 March 1645 with a division on whether Fiennes should be paid £500 for subsistence in addition to assignments already made on the revenue. Edward Bayntun, like his father and namesake a critic of the conduct of the war in the west, was a teller for the noes, but Fiennes’s brother-in-law Sir Christopher Wray and Sir Philip Stapilton* carried a small majority in Fiennes’s favour.52CJ iv. 82b. Following another interval after his sole committee nomination of the year – on 30 May to raise money for the siege of Oxford – it required an order on 18 October to confirm that he should have a £4 weekly allowance like other members.53CJ iv. 157a, 314a. By this time Nathaniel had been rehabilitated in the wake of Prince Rupert’s surrender of Bristol and recommenced intense activity in the Commons, but James retreated further into the background, with increasingly rare appearances in the record. His religious commitment was recognised on 3 June 1646 with his inclusion as a commissioner for exclusion from the sacrament, but on 4 July he had leave to go into the country and was not recorded again in the Journal until 31 December, when he was named with Nathaniel and their brother John, who had joined as a recruiter, to the committee to consider complaints before the House.54CJ iv. 562b, 603a; v. 35a. Three appearances in 1647 occurred when the Lords added him to the commissioners for the regulation of Oxford University (22 Mar.), when he was expressly sent to Oxfordshire with Thomas Wenman*, 2nd Viscount Wenman, as an assessment commissioner (22 Dec.), and on 3 November, when he and Charles Cecil*, Lord Cranborne, were tellers for the majority who dismissed a division on whether absent Members should forfeit £20.55CJ v. 121b, 348b, 400b. At a call of the House on 26 September 1648 – when his father was heavily engaged in the negotiations at Newport – he was excused for his absence, being sick.56CJ vi. 34a. His name appeared in a contemporary list of those purged by the army on 6 December, though he was spared the fate of his father, briefly imprisoned.57A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62).

Fiennes was nominated as a militia commissioner in May and December 1648, but did not serve again as an assessment commissioner until 1657, and he appears to have effectively withdrawn from public life until at least the recall of the Long Parliament. He apparently had domestic problems. When Henry Jessey, the general Baptist minister, celebrated the working of God in the life of Sarah Wright he mentioned among her visitors both ‘Mistress Fines, wife to my Lord Saye’s eldest son’ and Joshua Sprigge, Independent minister and apologist and son of Saye’s steward.58H. Jessey, The exceeding riches of grace advanced by the spirit of grace (1647), 8-9. Frances Fiennes was evidently even more deeply influenced by godly preachers than the rest of the family. Writing to her husband early in 1648 Mary Verney reported that ‘your cousin James Fiennes and his wife are parted; and they say the reason is because they cannot agree in disputes of conscience; and that she doth not think him holy enough’.59Mems. of the Verney Fam. ii. 315. In 1675 the widowed Viscountess Saye and Sele married Sprigge, lending circumstantial plausibility to Anthony Wood’s claim that the minister ‘had great familiarity’ with this ‘holy sister’, ‘to the jealousy of her husband, during the time of her first husband’.60Ath. Ox. iv. 136; CP. In this context, it is possible that the ‘Lady Frances Fiennes’ given a pass to go beyond the seas in July 1659 was this Frances rather than Nathaniel’s second wife.61CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 562.

In January 1660 Fiennes was restored as an Oxfordshire justice of the peace.62CJ vii. 821b. On 13 February he joined Henry Cary*, 4th Viscount Falkland, in presenting to General George Monck* the Oxfordshire petition for a new Parliament, but it is not clear whether later in the month he returned to the Commons with others from the Long Parliament.63CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 361. In March he was named as a militia commissioner in Gloucestershire.64CJ vii. 870. After the Restoration Fiennes and his father sued out their pardon and set about re-establishing their fortunes and their place at in Oxfordshire society.65Broughton Castle MSS, pardon 1661; Bodl. Rawl. D.892, f. 201; VCH Oxon. ix. 94; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 291. In the latter at least James succeeded moderately well. Elected again to Parliament for a county seat in 1660 (the last of his family to sit in the Commons), he was characteristically unobtrusive, but once in the Lords after his father’s death in 1662, he did take a stand against Edward Hyde*, 1st earl of Clarendon, whom he succeeded as lord lieutenant at the latter’s fall in 1668.66HP Commons 1660-1690. He died on 15 March 1674, leaving two daughters, and was succeeded as 3rd Viscount Saye and Sele by Nathaniel’s younger son, William.67CP.