corroborated by Turner's mother, who said that she had been sent for, and on arrival had found the prisoner very sick. The prisoner, in asseverating her innocence, tried to show that Mrs. Turner had a spite against her. Five witnesses were called, who gave Fenning a character of respectability and good nature. The recorder's summing-up was strongly against the prisoner, and the jury finding her guilty she was sentenced to death. On hearing sentence pronounced she fell in a fit, and was moved insensible from the dock. Popular opinion was largely in favour of Fenning's innocence, and every effort was made by her friends and others to procure a remission of the sentence. On the day preceding that fixed for the execution a meeting was held at the home office to consider the case. Lord Sidmouth, the home secretary, was out of town, but the lord chancellor (Eldon), the recorder, and Mr. Becket were present, and after a minute investigation of the facts came to a decided conclusion that there was no reason for interfering. Lord Eldon summoned another meeting in the evening, and the same result was arrived at. Accordingly on the following morning, 26 June, Fenning was hanged, in company with two other malefactors, Oldfield and Adams. Intense public interest was excited, it being still very generally believed that Fenning was innocent, a belief which was strengthened by her emphatic declaration on the scaffold: ‘Before the just and almighty God, and by the faith of the holy sacrament I have taken, I am innocent of the offence with which I am charged.’ At her funeral, which took place five days later at St. George the Martyr, Bloomsbury, the pall was carried by six girls dressed in white, and as many as ten thousand persons took part in the procession which was formed to the grave. The case of Elizabeth Fenning is remarkable as showing how powerful is a steady and consistent declaration of innocence on the part of a criminal to produce a general belief in it. Dr. Parr (see 'Parr' in Lowndes's Manual) and Dickens (Letters, iii. 240) believed in her innocence; but the evidence against her was very strong.
[Celebrated Trials, 1825, vi. 143; Ann. Reg. 1815; Times, March and April 1815.]
FENTON, EDWARD (d. 1603), captain and navigator, was son of Henry Fenton of Fenton, in the parish of Sturton (formerly Stretton-le-Steeple), Nottinghamshire, and of Cecily, daughter of John Beaumont of Coleorton, Leicestershire. Like his brother, Sir Geoffrey Fenton [q. v.], he sold his hereditary patrimony, preferring the life of a soldier of fortune to the prospect of ending his days in the ignominious ease of his ancestral home.
Fenton's first public service was in Ireland, where he appears to have held a command under Sir Henry Sidney in the successful repression of the rebellion under Shane O'Neil in 1566. He next appears as the author of ‘Certaine Secrete wonders of Nature … Gathered out of diuers learned authors, as welle Greeke as Latine, sacred as prophane,’ London, 1569, 4to (see Arber, i. 382). Fenton's authorship of this curious work has been doubted (see Biog. Brit. 3, 1919), but it is dedicated to Fenton's early patron, Lord Lumley, and contains a reference to a work by his brother Geoffrey (fol. 67). It has hitherto escaped notice that it is nothing more than a translation, with a few additions and interpolations, of ‘Histoires prodigievses extraictes de plusieurs fameux auteurs “Grecs et Latins” sacrez et prophanes; mises en notre langue par Pierre Boaisteau surnommé Launay,’ Paris, 1567, 8vo (Brunet, i. 983). In May 1577 Fenton sailed in charge of the Gabriel in Sir Martin Frobisher's second voyage for the discovery of the north-west passage to Cathay and Meta Incognita. Fenton's share in this not overwise transaction appears to have been confined to marching the soldiery under his charge up the hills and down again upon the high lands on either side of Frobisher's Bay. Upon the return of the expedition to England in the autumn, we find Fenton writing to Walsingham from Bristol 25 Nov. 1577 respecting the ‘unladyn of the oore in the Ayd and Gabriell, and how manie toones of the sayd oore is in either of the sayd vessels.’ And ‘to have order for the dischardge of the mariners and unrigging the sayd vessels’ (State Papers, Dom. Eliz. cxviii. 40). On 2 Jan. 1578 he reported to the privy council from Mount Edgcumbe ‘what successe he hath had in trauelling to get owre in the West Countrie,’ i.e. Cornwall (ib. cxxix. 2). On 31 May following he sailed in the Judith as lieutenant-general and second in command in Frobisher's third voyage to Meta Incognita, which he reached on 21 July, ten days earlier than Frobisher; while waiting for his chief ‘he spent good time in searchyng for mine (i.e. ore), and discovered about tenne miles up in the countrey, where he perceyved neyther town, village, nor likelyhood of habitation’ (Hakluyt, 1600, iii. 85). On 30 Aug. we read: ‘On this daye the masons finished a house whiche Captaine Fenton caused to be made of lyme and stone upon the Countess of Warwick's (Kod-lu-aru) Island, to the ende we mighte prove against the next yere whether the snowe could ouerwhelm it, the frosts breake uppe, or the people dismẽber it’ (ib.
