John Clench

John Clench (c. 1535 - 1607) was an English judge, a Serjeant-at-Law, Baron of the Exchequer and Justice of the Queen's Bench, of the late Tudor period.

[5] Walter Copinger relates that, when young, Clench was steward of the manors of Henry Crane (died 1586, of Chilton, near Sudbury, Suffolk).

John Clench, Reader at Furnival's Inn in 1566, was continued to 1568 to supply the invalid election of his successor: his readings concerning testamentary matters survive in manuscript.

In August 1588 he and Francis Rodes, as justices of assize at Carlisle, set down orders for the maintenance of peace in disputes arising from the estates of the late Lord Dacre.

[27] A letter from the same judges dated 1588/89 instructs the deputy lieutenants of Lancashire to investigate and suppress the surplus alehouses of Manchester.

The unknown writer of a letter preserved in Strype's Annals observed: "The demeanour of him (Anderson, a zealous high churchman) and the other judge, as they sit by turns upon the gaol (with reverence I speak it) in these matters is flat opposite; and they which are maliciously affected, when Mr. Justice Clinch sitteth upon the gaol, do labour to adjourn their complaints (though they be before upon the file) to the next assize; and the gentlemen in the several shires are endangered by this means to be cast into a faction.

[32] In 1600, while retaining the emoluments of his juridical office, he was released from daily attendance at court on account of age and infirmities,[33] and three years later he was pensioned.

John Clench died on 19 August 1607 at his seat at Holbrook, Suffolk and was buried in Holbrook Church, where his extensive monument with life-sized recumbent effigies is inscribed to his memory:"In obitum Colendissimi sviq[u]e temporis antiquissimi Ivdicis Iohannes Clenche, qvi obiit xix die Avgvsti Anno Salvtis 1607Ecce iacet secto venerandus Marmore ivdexTerram terra petit, puluere corpus inestAst anima ad superos sum[m]iq[ue] palatia caeliFertum et æterni viuit in arce Dei.

"("A memorial of the most worshipful and (in his time) the most Auncient[11] Judge, John Clenche, who died on the 19th day of August in the year of Salvation 1607.See, carved in marble lies the reverend judge:Earth turns to earth, and flesh is cased in dust,But, borne aloft to halls of highest heavenThe soul lives ever in God's citadel.

")[34][22] The figure of the judge in scarlet robe and ermine-lined mantle supports himself as if in life, with open eyes, on his left elbow.

In front of the tomb-chest, at a lower level, reposes the figure of Katheryn Clench, the judge's wife, in a similar position to her husband, her elbow on an embroidered cushion to support her head, and a book in the right hand.

An engraved portrait of Clench is one of the composite panel of images forming the frontispiece of The Conveyancers Light, a seventeenth-century book of precedents.