Page:Men of Kent and Kentishmen.djvu/61

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
AND KENTISHMEN.
47

Recorder of London in the reign of James I, and an Edward Finch, his brother, an eminent clergyman, Vicar of Christ Church, London, who died in 1642.]


Sir John Fineau,

JUDGE,

Was born "by all probablity" (Fuller says) at Swingfield, a place said to have been bestowed on one of his ancestors by Nicholas Criol, for saving his life at the Battle of Poictiers. He was twenty-eight years old, the same authority adds, when he took to the study of the law; he followed the profession another twenty-eight years before he became a judge, and he continued a judge the same number of years, so that he must have lived eighty-four years. He owed his elevation to the bench to his bold opposition to the payment of tenths to the Pope. He was a great benefactor of the Church of St. Augustine's, Canterbury, and according to Fuller, deserves all the praise bestowed upon him by the monks. He had a house at Canterbury and at Heme, where he died in 1525,

[See Fuller's Worthies," "Foss's Lives of the Judges."]


Sir John Finet

COURTIER AND WIT,

Was born at Soulton, near Dover, in 1571. He was a gentleman of wit and ingenuity among the courtiers of James I., and Charles I., and wrote a work on the precedency, treatment, audience, and punctilios to be