FENN, JAMES (d. 1584), catholic priest, born at Montacute, near Wells, Somersetshire, became a chorister of New College, Oxford, and afterwards was elected a scholar of Corpus Christi College 31 July 1554, and a fellow of that society 26 Nov. 1558. He was admitted B.A. 22 Nov. 1559, but was ‘put aside’ from that degree and from his place in the college on account of his refusal to take the oath of supremacy (Boase, Register of the Univ. of Oxford, p. 240). Then he settled in Gloucester Hall, where he had several pupils. On being forced to leave Oxford he acted as tutor to the sons of a gentleman in his native county, where he married and had two children. After the death of his wife he became steward to Sir Nicholas Pointz, a catholic gentleman. He arrived at the English College at Rheims on 5 June 1579, was ordained priest at Châlons-sur-Marne on 1 April 1580, and was sent back to labour on the mission in Somersetshire. He was soon apprehended, and although not yet known to be a priest he was loaded with irons. The council ordered him to be brought to London, and after being examined by Secretary Walsingham he was committed to the Marshalsea, where he remained in captivity for two years. His sacerdotal character having been at last discovered, he was brought to trial, and condemned to death on account of his priesthood. He was executed at Tyburn on 12 Feb. 1583–4, together with four other priests.
Two of his brothers were priests, viz. Robert Fenn, B.C.L., who was ejected from his fellowship at New College, Oxford, in 1562, and of whom Bridgewater says that ‘ob Catholicæ veritatis testimonium, exilium, carceres, vincula, et cruciatus immanes constantissimè perpessus est,’ and John Fenn [q. v.]
[Bridgewater's Concertatio Ecclesiæ Catholicæ, pp. 143, 410; Challoner's Missionary Priests (1741), i. 144; Dodd's Church Hist. ii. 98; Douay Diaries, pp. 9, 27, 153, 161–4, 261, 291, 422; Historia del glorioso Martirio di diciotto Sacerdoti (Macerata), 1585, p. 208; Oliver's Catholic Religion in Cornwall, p. 301; Sanders's Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism (Lewis), pp. 319, 371; Stow's Annales (1615), p. 698; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), ii. 113; Yepes, Historia de la Persecucion en Inglaterra, p. 498.]
FENN, JOHN (d. 1615), catholic divine, brother of James Fenn [q. v.], was a native of Montacute, near Wells, Somersetshire. After being educated in the rudiments of grammar and music as a chorister of Wells Cathedral, he was sent to Winchester School in 1547 (Kirby, Winchester Scholars, p. 127; Addit. MS. 22136, f. 21). He was elected probationer of New College, Oxford, in 1550, and two years later, after being made perpetual fellow, he was appointed to study the civil law. It does not appear whether he took a degree in that faculty. In Queen Mary's reign he became schoolmaster at Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, but upon the alteration of religion soon after Elizabeth's accession ‘he was forced thence by the giddy zeal of two Scots, that were then settled in those parts’ (Wood, Athenæ Oxon., ed. Bliss, ii. 111). Subsequently he went to the Low Countries, and afterwards studied for four years in Italy, and was ordained priest. Dodd's statement that he was admitted into the English College at Rome is not confirmed by the ‘Diary’ of the college. After his return to Flanders he became confessor to the English Augustinian nuns at Louvain. There and in the neighbouring cities he spent about forty years ‘as an exiled person, doing extraordinary benefit in the way he professed’ (ib. p. 113). He died at Louvain on 27 Dec. 1615.
His works are:
- ‘A learned and very eloquent Treatie, written in Latin by Hieronymous Osorius, Bishop of Sylua in Portugal, wherein he confuteth a certayne Aunswere made by M. Walter Haddon against the Epistle of the said Bishoppe vnto the Queenes Maiestie. Translated into English,’ Louvain, 1568, 16mo. The Bishop of Silva's book was entitled ‘Epistola ad Elizabetham Angliæ Reginam de Religione,’ Paris, 1563, and was translated into English by Richard Shacklock, Antwerp, 1565. Dr. Walter Haddon, master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, wrote a reply to it in Latin, which was translated into English by Abraham Hartwell, London, 1565.
- ‘Vitæ quorundam Martyrum in Anglia,’ printed in ‘Concertatio Ecclesiæ Catholicæ in Anglia,’ Trèves, 1583, which work was edited by Fenn in conjunction with Father John Gibbons [see Bridgewater, John].
- ‘John Fisher his Sermon upon this Sentence of the Prophet Ezechiel, “Lamentationes, Carmen et Væ,” very aptly applyed to the Passion of Christ,’ translated from English into Latin.
- ‘Sermo de Justitia Pharisæorum et Christianorum,’ translated from Bishop Fisher's ‘Sermon concerning the Righteousness of the Pharisees and Christians,’ printed in Fisher's ‘Opera Omnia.’
