Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Fiennes, Gregory
FIENNES or FIENES, GREGORY, tenth Lord Dacre of the South (1539–1594), the younger son of the unfortunate Thomas Fiennes, lord Dacre [q. v.], executed at Tyburn 1541, and his wife Mary, daughter of George Nevill, lord Abergavenny, was baptised in the parish church of Hurstmonceux, Sussex, 5 June 1539. The death of his elder brother Thomas in 1553 left him heir to his father's honours, to which he and his sister Margaret were restored by act of parliament in 1558, the strictness of the entail having rescued the estates from the courtiers, whose ‘greedy gaping after them’ was, according to Camden, a chief cause of their father's judicial murder (Camden, Eliz. ap. Kennett, ii. 580). In February 1553 the lad, then in his fourteenth year, was a royal ward (Cal. State Papers, Edward VI, Dom. sub ann.). He married Anne, daughter of Sir Richard Sackville, but had no children by her. She complained that he was kept in undue subjection by his mother (ib. Dom. xxvi. 573). In 1572 Lord Dacre formed one of a great train of noblemen who accompanied Lord Lincoln to the court of Charles IX to ratify the confederacy of Blois, only a few months before the massacre of St. Bartholomew. He is described by Camden as ‘a little crack-brained.’ He died 25 Sept. 1594, at his wife's house at Chelsea, in the church of which place he was buried beneath a sumptuous monument. His title and entailed estates were successfully claimed by his sister Margaret, the wife of Sampson Lennard, esq., of Chevening, Kent. His wife is noticed above.
[Camden's Eliz. ap. Kennett, ii. 444, 580; Collins's Peerage.]