Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Fiennes, James
FIENNES, JAMES, Lord Say (or Saye) and Sele (d. 1450), was the second son of Sir William de Fiennes and Elizabeth, daughter of William Batisford, a great Sussex heiress. His father died in 1405, and was buried in the parish church of Hurstmonceux, where a fine memorial brass remains bearing his effigies in full armour. Sir William was son of William de Fiennes, who married Joan, daughter and heiress of Lord Say, and died in 1361. Sir William's grandfather, John (d. 1351), had married Maud de Monceux, through whom the Hurstmonceux estates passed into the Fiennes family. The Fiennes had come to England with William I, and derived their name from a village in the Boulonnais district. James Fiennes's elder brother, Roger (d. 1445?), was treasurer to Henry VI.
James began military life at an early age. He was one of Henry V's captains in the French wars, and for his services obtained in 1418 grants of the lordship of De la Court le Comte in the bailiwick of Caux, part of the property of Lord Lymers, and land in the bailiwick of Rouen and Caux which had belonged to Roger Bloset and his wife. Next year he was made governor of Arques, being already bailiff of Caux. In 1430 he attended Henry VI into France on the occasion of his coronation at Paris. He was created sheriff of Kent in 1437 and sheriff of Surrey and Sussex two years later. In 1440 a grant of 100l. yearly pension was made him as esquire of the body to the king, to be paid by the prior of Lewes out of certain rents due to the exchequer, and in 1445 he received a grant of 20l. per annum from the Earl of Warwick (Henry Beauchamp) from the manor of Rotherfield, Sussex. On 24 Feb. 1446–7 he was made constable of Dover and warden of the Cinque ports by patent ‘to him and his heirs male,’ in like manner as his ancestor John de Fienes had received the offices in 1084 from William the Conqueror. This meant that he received the grant of castle-ward service of 200l. per annum out of the customs, and ‘all forfeitures and wreck of the sea from the east end of the Isle of Thanet to Beaucliffs in Sussex, and the office of admiral within the ports and their members’ (Hasted, Kent, iv. 60, n. i, 73). He succeeded Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, in these important and responsible offices. In 1449 he granted his rights to the Duke of Buckingham. In March 1446–7 he received a summons to the parliament held that year at St. Edmundsbury; and in consideration of his eminent services beyond seas and at home, and because his grandmother Joan was third sister of William de Say and his coheir, was advanced to the dignity of a baron, with the title of Lord Say and Sele. In the following November he received from John, lord Clinton, descendant of Idonea, eldest sister of the above-mentioned Joan and William de Say, a ‘full confirmation and quit-claimer’ of his title, together with the arms of Say. In June 1447, being lord chamberlain to the king and one of the council, he was granted a yearly pension of one hundred marks, payable from the customs of wool in the port of London, and in August was appointed constable of the Tower during the minority of Henry, son and heir of John, duke of Exeter. Meanwhile, as an adherent of the Duke of Suffolk and member of the court party, Say was becoming very unpopular. The list of his emoluments makes it probable that the charges of extortion and maladministration made against him were well grounded. In Cade's memorial, preserved by Stow, Say's son-in-law, William Crowmer, sheriff of Kent in 1450, is specially named among ‘great extortioners and false traitors.’ Reasons of another sort for his unpopularity may be gathered from the note of Dr. Gascoigne that ‘Lord Say with others would not suffer any one to preach before the king unless they saw his written sermon first, or unless he would swear not to preach against the actions or councils of the ministers of the king.’ He was generally accused of complicity in Duke Humphrey's supposed murder, and held mainly responsible for the surrender of Anjou and Maine. The king created him lord treasurer in October 1449, but the adjourned parliament which met the following Easter at Leicester insisted that Henry should punish those who consented to the surrender of the French provinces, and Lord Say was accordingly sequestered from his office of treasurer, but not committed to prison as Henry promised. Suffolk was banished at the same time and murdered while attempting to leave England. Cade's rebellion followed, and when Henry received the news of Sir Humphrey Stafford's defeat and death, he at last sent Lord Say to the Tower, but not till some of the lords had threatened to join Cade. Lord Scales was in charge of the Tower, and on 4 July 1450 handed over Say to Cade, who took him to the Guildhall, and compelled the mayor and judges to arraign him along with other obnoxious persons not in Cade's hands. Say claimed to be tried by his peers, with the only result that he was hurried by Cade's men to the Standard in Cheap (Stow, Survey, 1720, iii. 35), and beheaded ‘as he were halfe shriven.’ His son-in-law, William Crowmer, suffered on the same day in Mile End. Say's body was drawn naked at a horse's tail into Southwark to St. Thomas of Waterings, and there hanged and quartered. His head and Crowmer's were carried on poles through the city. His will bears the date 12 April 1449. His heir, William, by Emoline Cromer, was slain at the battle of Barnet in 1471.
Lord Say is claimed with pride as an ancestor by Gibbon (Miscellaneous Works, 1837, p. 4), who dignifies him with the title of ‘a patron and martyr of learning.’ This mistaken idea is found in Shakespeare's ‘Second Part of Henry VI,’ iv. 7, where Cade accuses Lord Say of erecting a grammar school, causing printing to be used, and building a papermill. Shakespeare's play closely follows the ‘First Part of the Contention;’ in this passage he adds the anachronism about printing.
[See Cade, John, the rebel; Dugdale's Baronage, ii. 245; Stow's Annales (1615), pp. 387, 390; Fabyan's Chronicle, pp. 622–4; Wyrcester's Annales (Hearne's Liber Niger), p. 471; Holinshed (1587), iii. 571; Sharon Turner's History of England, vi. 90; An English Chronicle (Camden Soc.), lxiv. 62–7, 197; Letters of Margaret of Anjou (Camden Soc.), lxxxvi. 73, 79, 80; Hazlitt's Shakespeare's Library, ii. 1, 500; T. P. Courtenay's Historical Plays of Shakespeare, pp. 285, 306; Doyle's Official Baronage.]