John Fineux

He was appointed in 1474 one of the commissioners for administering the marsh lands lying between Tenterden and Lydd, and in 1476 seneschal of the manors of the prior and chapter of Christ Church, Canterbury.

This is probably the origin of David Lloyd's statement that he 'was steward of 129 manors at once' (Christ Church Letters, Camden Soc.

This act, though its duration was limited to a single year, was vehemently denounced by Richard Kidderminster, abbot of Winchcombe, in a sermon preached at Paul's Cross in 1505, as altogether contrary to the law of God and the liberties of the church.

The ferment of the public mind being general and extreme, the judges and the council were assembled by order of the king first at Blackfriars and subsequently at Baynard's Castle, for a solemn conference upon the entire question.

Towards the close of the debate the Archbishop of Canterbury cited the authority of 'divers holy fathers' against the pretensions of the temporal courts to try clerical offenders; to which Fineux replied that 'the arraignment of clerks had been maintained by divers holy kings, and sundry good holy fathers of the church had been obedient and content with the practice of the law on this point; which it was not to be presumed they would have been if they had believed or supposed that it was altogether contrary to the law of God; on the other hand they [the clergy] had no authority by their law to arraign any one of felony.'

The archbishop having interposed that they had sufficient authority, but without saying when or whence they derived it, Fineux continued that 'in the event of a clerk being arrested by the secular power and then committed to the spiritual court at the instance of the clergy, the spiritual court had no jurisdiction to decide the case, but had only power to do with him according to the intention and purpose for which he had been remitted to them.'

we intend to maintain the right of our crown, and of our temporal jurisdiction, as well in this point as in all other points, in as ample a manner as any of our progenitors have done before our time; and as for your decrees, we are well assured that you of the spirituality yourselves act expressly against the tenor of them, as has been well shown to you by some of our spiritual council, wherefore we will not comply with your desires more than our progenitors in times past have done.'

Fineux's statement of the law on this occasion was referred to by Lord Chancellor Ellesmere in the case of the Post nati in 1608 as a precedent in favour of the authority of the extrajudicial opinions of judges then beginning to be seriously impugned.