FIENNES, John (aft. 1608-c.1692), of Broughton Castle, Broughton, Oxon.

Like his elder brothers James and Nathaniel, Fiennes studied under the English puritan divine William Ames at Franeker University in the United Provinces.25Sprunger, William Ames, 80. At some point in the 1640s, he married the only surviving daughter and heir of a pious and wealthy Gray’s Inn barrister, who had counted among his friends the renowned puritan ministers Richard Sibbes and William Gouge.26PROB11/162, ff. 86-90. Given Fiennes’s own godly upbringing and his father’s long career of opposition to the policies and person of the king, it was perhaps inevitable that he would side with Parliament at the outbreak of civil war. He and Nathaniel were commissioned as captains of horse in the army of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, in the summer of 1642 (Fiennes’s cornet was the future major-general, Edward Whalley*) and had their first taste of combat at Powick Bridge in September.27SP28/147, ff. 242, 249; A Catalogue of the Names of Dukes, Marquesses, Earles, and Lords That Have Absented Themselves from the Parliament (1642), 14 (E.83.9); Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 23. He was late in bringing up his troop to the battle of Edgehill in October, but did good service rallying those parliamentarian soldiers who had fled the field.28A Most True and Exact Relation of Both the Battels Fought by His Excellency (1642), 2-3 (E.126.38).

In February 1643, Fiennes was sent with Nathaniel to garrison Bristol, and by April he was serving with Sir William Waller* around the Forest of Dean.29SP28/147, f. 242; A Full Declaration of All Particulers Concerning the March of the Forces under Collonell Fiennes to Bristoll (1643), 1 (E.97.6); Luke Jnl. 54, 55; A. Turton, S. Peachey, War in the West (Bristol, 1993-4), vi. 703-4. With the royalist war effort in the west gathering momentum, Fiennes returned to London in mid-1643 to help raise supplies for his brother, who had been made governor of Bristol. On 13 June, he wrote to Nathaniel from Arundel House, Lord Saye’s London residence, informing him that munitions were on their way and that he had engaged their ‘cousin’, Gabriel Becke*, ‘to follow business for you here, for unless somebody do follow it, nothing will be done’.30Bodl. Clarendon 22, ff. 80, 83. During the royalist siege of Bristol that July, Nathaniel gave command of one of the town’s forts to John and also placed him in charge of the ammunition store.31W. Prynne, C. Walker, A True and Full Relation (1644), 25, 32 (E.255.1). A week or so after the royalists had stormed and taken the town late in July 1643, Fiennes resigned his commissions as a captain of horse and colonel of foot.32SP28/147, f. 242. At Nathaniel’s subsequent court-martial for supposedly surrendering Bristol prematurely, it was alleged by the prosecuting lawyers William Prynne* and Clement Walker* that John had concealed the existence of a reserve store of ammunition.

This is a very probable story, which manifests both himself and his brother to be negligent, indiscreet, unskillful governors, not fit for such a charge; or rather, shows that they concealed their stores from the council of war [at Bristol] to induce them to surrender the town upon this misinformation.33Prynne, Walker, True and Full Relation, 25.

It was further alleged that Fiennes had assaulted and suborned prosecution witnesses.34Prynne, Walker, True and Full Relation [depositions], 12, 16. Although there was little substance to the charges against Nathaniel, he was found guilty, and John inevitably partook of his disgrace.

Fiennes returned to active service with the formation of the Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire military association in the summer of 1644. His father’s influence in the Lords and on the Committee of Both Kingdoms* (CBK) ensured that the regiment of 500 horse that Fiennes raised in Oxfordshire was probably the best supplied unit in the county, receiving numerous payments from the Committee for Advance of Money* and out of the excise receipts.35SP28/139, pt. 19, f. 204; CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 304-5; 1644-5, pp. 100, 101, 609, 615; CJ iii. 690b; LJ vii. 58b, 61a, 98a, 218a, 374b, 376b, 476b; Luke Letter Bks. 385, 389. In an era when success on the battlefield translated directly into political influence, Nathaniel’s court-martial had severely undermined Lord Saye’s standing at Westminster – as his enemies had intended – and he was determined that John should redeem the family’s reputation by a successful campaign. In one of his letters to John in 1644, he referred to ‘that prejudice which lies upon yourself and brother’ and reminded him that having ‘come upon the stage now again’ he must at all costs acquit himself well, ‘else better never enter upon the work’.36Mercurius Aulicus no. 43 (20-6 Oct. 1644), 1224, 1225 (E.17.10). Unfortunately for both men, Fiennes’s military comeback was marked initially by disaster when the siege of Banbury he was commanding was lifted by a reportedly inferior royalist force in October 1644 and his troops put to flight.37Mercurius Aulicus no. 39 (22-8 Sept. 1644), 1179-82 (E.13.14); no. 43 (20-6 Oct. 1644), 1220-7. This setback could not have come at a worse time for Saye and his allies, who were busy exploiting the earl of Essex’s military shortcomings in an effort to new model the parliamentarian armies. When the Commons received a recommendation from the CBK on 8 November that Fiennes be paid his arrears, Saye’s enemies observed ‘what great sums they had in that family already and desired before more was granted there might be an examination of the carriage of the business at Banbury, for they heard they at Banbury had 300 horse and 400 foot more than the enemy’.38CJ iii. 690b; Luke Letter Bks. 389. The Commons ordered the committee for the reformation of the armies, chaired by Zouche Tate, to investigate the ‘miscarriages’ of the siege at Banbury.39CJ iii. 690b. Tate was an ally of Saye’s, however, and any investigation of Fiennes’s command at Banbury was conveniently forgotten in the drive towards new modelling.

Fiennes took to the field again early in 1645, and his conduct in harrying the country around Oxford was such as to win praise from Oliver Cromwell* himself.40Abbott, Letters and Speeches, i. 333, 337, 347. Cromwell’s commendation of Fiennes to the CBK in April must have been music to Saye’s ears:

Truly his diligence was great, and this I must testify, that I find no man more ready to all services than he himself. I would [not] say so if I did not find it. If his men were at all considered, I should hope you might expect very real service from them. I speak this the rather, because I find him a gentleman of that fidelity to you and so conscientious, that he would all his troops were as religious and civil as any and make[s] it a great par[t] of his care to get them so.41Abbott, Letters and Speeches, i. 343.

Fiennes and his regiment did ‘very good service’ at the battle of Naseby and campaigned with the New Model army in the west country in June and July 1645.42CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 609, 610, 611, 615; 1645-7, pp. 6, 7; Abbott, Letters and Speeches, i. 369. After the victory at Langport, his regiment was surplus to requirements, and in August it was disbanded.43CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 62. The CBK recommended that debentures be issued for the regiment’s arrears of pay, but Fiennes and his officers were still owed several thousand pounds as late as 1657.44CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 82; 1654, p. 45; 1656-7, p. 329; 1657-8, p. 134. Fiennes’s regimental chaplain in 1644-5 was the Independent minister and future Baptist evangelist Robert Bacon.45SP28/139, pt. 19, f. 205; A. Laurence, Parliamentary Army Chaplains (Woodbridge, 1990), 94.

Fiennes was returned as a ‘recruiter’ for the Northumberland borough of Morpeth in October 1645. He was clearly a carpetbagger and probably owed his election to the future major-general Charles Howard*. The Howards were lords of the manor of Morpeth, and Charles was a ward of Henry Darley*, who was an intimate friend of Saye.46Supra, ‘Morpeth’; ‘Henry Darley’. Saye’s close ally in the Lords, Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland, may also have used his considerable influence in the Morpeth area on Fiennes’s behalf. Fiennes’s career at Westminster had none of the drama of his military exploits. Though he apparently had no qualms about taking the Solemn League and Covenant (as his brother James had), he was named to just five committees, all of them between November 1645 and December 1646.47CJ iv. 351a, 393a, 550b, 694b; v. 11a, 35a. One reason for his apparent inactivity at Westminster may have been ill health – on 28 July 1646 he was given leave of absence to take the waters.48CJ iv. 629a.

Fiennes and his brother Nathaniel were among those Parliament-men who fled to the army after the July 1647 Presbyterian ‘riots’, but there is no evidence to indicate that he resumed his seat when the fugitive Members returned in August.49Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 755. In November, it was reported that Saye had bespoken a place on the Committee for Revenue* for either John or Nathaniel: ‘no matter which of them it is, for both may do well enough with their father’s bags [of money] and be able to defy all the world with them and his spiritual armour, upon condition they be not put upon that ungodly work of taking and keeping garrisons’.50Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 9 (9-16 Nov. 1647), 71 (E.414.15). Although Fiennes was not among those Members excluded at Pride’s Purge, he seems to have followed his father’s example and retired from public life under the commonwealth. In the month that the Rump was dissolved (April 1653), he purchased from William Jephson* the manor and rectory of Froyle, in Hampshire, for £15,600.51C54/3735/11; C6/119/62. This sum was probably put up by Saye, who in that same year settled land in Oxfordshire upon Fiennes and his wife.52VCH Oxon. ix. 106.

Fiennes’s public career revived with the establishment of the protectorate late in 1653. He was appointed to the Hertfordshire and Hampshire benches in the mid-1650s, and late in 1655 the council of state added him to the Hampshire commission to assist the work of the major-generals.53C231/6, pp. 293, 314; TSP iv. 363. Summoned to the Cromwellian Other House late in 1657 and given the title John Lord Fiennes, he attended this body regularly from its first day of sitting, on 20 January 1658, until Parliament was dissolved the following month.54Sl. 3246; C181/6, pp. 274, 307; HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 504-23. The author of the Second Narrative of the Late Parliament, in reviewing the membership of the Other House, described him as ‘a sectary, but no great stickler’, and claimed that he would follow the lead of his brother Nathaniel (a protectoral commissioner of the great seat) in serving the ‘new court’.55[G. Wharton], A Second Narrative of the Late Parliament (1659), 31 (E.977.3). Fiennes was again among the more regular attenders of the Other House in Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659.56HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 525-39, 547-52, 556-67.

Shortly after the fall of the protectorate that April, he was omitted from the commission of oyer and terminer, and in March 1660 he lost his place on the Hertfordshire and Hampshire benches. A report that he was among those Members sitting in the House in mid-March when the Long Parliament finally dissolved is almost certainly unfounded.57Grand Memorandum or a True and Perfect Catalogue of the Secluded Members of the House of Commons (1660, 669 f.24.37). He apparently emerged from the Restoration unscathed, although possibly in need of money, for by 1663 he had resolved to sell his estate at Froyle.58Whitelocke, Diary, 669. By 1660, he was a friend or patron of the Polish Reformed minister Samuel Wartensius, who would be ordained into the Church of England in the early 1660s.59Sheffield Univ. Lib. Hartlib Pprs. 29/8/15B.

Fiennes seems to have lived in quiet retirement from 1659 until his death in about 1692.60E134/3and4Anne/Hil4. No will is recorded, and his place of burial is not known, although it was probably at Broughton. His eldest brother James was the last member of the family to sit in the Commons when he represented Oxfordshire in the 1660 Convention.61Supra, ‘James Fiennes’. Fiennes’s fifth son Lawrence succeeded as 5th Viscount Saye and Sele in 1710.62CP.