FENTON, SIR GEOFFREY (c. 1539–1608), English writer and politician, was the son of Henry Fenton, of Nottinghamshire. He was brother of Edward Fenton the navigator. He is said to have visited Spain and Italy in his youth; possibly he went to Paris in Sir Thomas Hoby’s train in 1566, for he was living there in 1567, when he wrote Certaine tragicall discourses written oute of Frenche and Latin. This book is a free translation of François de Belleforest’s French rendering of Matteo Bandello’s Novelle. Till 1579 Fenton continued his literary labours, publishing Monophylo in 1572, Golden epistles gathered out of Guevarae’s workes as other authors . . . 1575, and various religious tracts of strong protestant tendencies. In 1579 appeared the Historie of Guicciardini, translated out of French by G. F. and dedicated to Elizabeth. Through Lord Burghley he obtained, in 1580, the post of secretary to the new lord deputy of Ireland, Lord Grey de Wilton, and thus became a fellow worker with the poet, Edmund Spenser. From this time Fenton abandoned literature and became a faithful if somewhat unscrupulous servant of the crown. He was a bigoted protestant, longing to use the rack against “the diabolicall secte of Rome,” and even advocating the assassination of the queen’s most dangerous subjects. He won Elizabeth’s confidence, and the hatred of all his fellow-workers, by keeping her informed of every one’s doings in Ireland. In 1587 Sir John Perrot arrested Fenton, but the queen instantly ordered his release. Fenton was knighted in 1589, and in 1590–1591 he was in London as commissioner on the impeachment of Perrot. Full of dislike of the Scots and of James VI. (which he did not scruple to utter), on the latter’s accession Fenton’s post of secretary was in danger, but Burghley exerted himself in his favour, and in 1604 it was confirmed to him for life, though he had to share it with Sir Richard Coke. Fenton died in Dublin on the 19th of October 1608, and was buried in St Patrick’s cathedral. He married in June 1585, Alice, daughter of Dr Robert Weston, formerly lord chancellor of Ireland, and widow of Dr Hugh Brady, bishop of Meath, by whom he had two children, a son, Sir William Fenton, and a daughter, Catherine, who in 1603 married Richard Boyle, 1st earl of Cork.
Bibliography.—Harl. Soc. publications, vol. iv., Visitation of Nottinghamshire, 1871; Roy. Hist. MSS. Comm. (particularly Hatfield collection); Calendar of State papers, Ireland (very full), domestic, Carew papers; Lismore papers, ed. A. B. Grosart (1886–1888); Certaine tragicall Discourses, ed. R. L. Douglas (2 vols., 1898), Tudor Translation series, vols. xix., xx. (introd.).
FENTON, LAVINIA (1708–1760), English actress, was probably
the daughter of a naval lieutenant named Beswick, but
she bore the name of her mother’s husband. Her first appearance
was as Monimia in Otway’s Orphans, in 1726 at the Haymarket.
She then joined the company of players at the theatre
in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where her success and beauty made her
the toast of the beaux. It was in Gay’s Beggar’s Opera, as Polly
Peachum, that Miss Fenton made her greatest success. Her
pictures were in great demand, verses were written to her and
books published about her, and she was the most talked-of person
in London. Hogarth’s picture shows her in one of the scenes,
with the duke of Bolton in a box. After appearing in several
comedies, and then in numerous repetitions of the Beggar’s Opera,
she ran away with her lover Charles Paulet, 3rd duke of Bolton,
a man much older than herself, who, after the death of his wife
in 1751, married her. Their three children all died young. The
duchess survived her husband and died on the 24th of January
1760.
FENTON, a town of Staffordshire, England, on the North
Staffordshire railway, adjoining the east side of Stoke-on-Trent,
in which parliamentary and municipal borough it is included.
Pop. (1891) 16,998; (1901) 22,742. The manufacture of earthenware
common to the district (the Potteries) employs the bulk
of the large industrial population.
FENUGREEK, in botany, Trigonella Foenum-graecum (so
called from the name given to it by the ancients, who used it as
fodder for cattle), a member of a genus of leguminous herbs very
similar in habit and in most of their characters to the species of
the genus Medicago. The leaves are formed of three obovate
leaflets, the middle one of which is stalked; the flowers are
solitary, or in clusters of two or three, and have a campanulate,
5-cleft calyx; and the pods are many-seeded, cylindrical or
flattened, and straight or only slightly curved. The genus is
widely diffused over the south of Europe, West and Central
Asia, and the north of Africa, and is represented by several
species in Australia. Fenugreek is indigenous to south-eastern
Europe and western Asia, and is cultivated in the Mediterranean
region, parts of central Europe, and in Morocco, and largely
in Egypt and in India. It bears a sickle-shaped pod, containing
from 10 to 20 seeds, from which 6% of a fetid, fatty and bitter
oil can be extracted by ether. In India the fresh plant is employed
as an esculent. The seed is an ingredient in curry
powders, and is used for flavouring cattle foods. It was formerly
much esteemed as a medicine, and is still in repute in veterinary
practice.
FENWICK, SIR JOHN (c. 1645–1697), English conspirator,
was the eldest son of Sir William Fenwick, or Fenwicke, a
member of an old Northumberland family. He entered the army,
becoming major-general in 1688, but before this date he had been
returned in succession to his father as one of the members of
parliament for Northumberland, which county he represented
from 1677 to 1687. He was a strong partisan of King James II.,
and in 1685 was one of the principal supporters of the act of
attainder against the duke of Monmouth; but he remained in
England when William III. ascended the throne three years
later. He began at once to plot against the new king, for which
he underwent a short imprisonment in 1689. Renewing his
plots on his release, he publicly insulted Queen Mary in 1691,
and it is practically certain that he was implicated in the schemes
for assassinating William which came to light in 1695 and 1696.
After the seizure of his fellow-conspirators, Robert Charnock
and others, he remained in hiding until the imprudent conduct
of his friends in attempting to induce one of the witnesses against
him to leave the country led to his arrest in June in 1696. To
save himself he offered to reveal all he knew about the Jacobite
conspiracies; but his confession was a farce, being confined to
charges against some of the leading Whig noblemen, which were
damaging, but not conclusive. By this time his friends had
succeeded in removing one of the two witnesses, and in these
circumstances it was thought that the charge of treason must
fail. The government, however, overcame this difficulty by
introducing a bill of attainder, which after a long and acrimonious
discussion passed through both Houses of Parliament. His wife
persevered in her attempts to save his life, but her efforts were
fruitless, and Fenwick was beheaded in London on the 28th of
January 1697, with the same formalities as were usually observed
at the execution of a peer. By his wife, Mary (d. 1708), daughter
of Charles Howard, 1st earl of Carlisle, he had three sons and one
daughter. Macaulay says that “of all the Jacobites, the most
desperate characters not excepted, he (Fenwick) was the only
one for whom William felt an intense personal aversion”; and
it is interesting to note that Fenwick’s hatred of the king is said
to date from the time when he was serving in Holland, and was
reprimanded by William, then prince of Orange.
FEOFFMENT, in English law, during the feudal period, the
usual method of granting or conveying a freehold or fee. For the
derivation of the word see Fief and Fee. The essential elements
were livery of seisin (delivery of possession), which consisted in
formally giving to the feoffee on the land a clod or turf, or a
growing twig, as a symbol of the transfer of the land, and words by
the feoffor declaratory of his intent to deliver possession to the
feoffee with a “limitation” of the estate intended to be transferred.
This was called livery in deed. Livery in law was made
not on but in sight of this land, the feoffor saying to the feoffee,
“I give you that land; enter and take possession.” Livery in
law, in order to pass the estate, had to be perfected by entry by
the feoffee during the joint lives of himself and the feoffor. It
was usual to evidence the feoffment by writing in a charter or
deed of feoffment; but writing was not essential until the
Statute of Frauds; now, by the Real Property Act 1845, a
conveyance of real property is void unless evidenced by deed, and
