John Fineux

Sir John Fineux (or Fyneux) (c. 1441 – 1526) was an English judge and Chief Justice of the King’s Bench.

Fineux was the son of William Fyneux of Swingfield, Kent, his mother's name being Monyngs. The family of Fyneux or Fineux (sometimes also written Finiox or Fineaux) was of great antiquity in Kent. The judge is said by Fuller, on the authority of one of his descendants, a certain Thomas Fyneux, to have begun the study of law at the age of twenty-eight, to have practised at the bar for twenty-eight years, and to have sat on the bench for the same period. As he died not earlier than 1526, he must, if Fuller's statements are correct, have been born about 1441. He was a member of Gray's Inn and a reader there, though the dates of his admission, call, and reading are alike uncertain. 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. p. 95). On 20 November 1485 he was called to the degree of serjeant-at-law, his motto for the occasion being "Quisque suae fortunae faber". This is the earliest recorded instance of a motto being assumed by a serjeant on occasion of his call. In 1486 he was sworn of the council. On 18 May 1488 he was appointed steward of Dover Castle, on 10 May 1489 he received a commission of justice of assize for Norfolk, and on 14 August following he was appointed king’s serjeant. Lloyd says that he opposed the subsidy of a tithe of rents and goods demanded for the expenses of the war in Brittany. This must have been in 1488-9.

On 11 February 1493-4 he was raised to the bench as a puisne judge of the common pleas, when on 24 Nov. 1495 he was transferred to the chief-justiceship of the king's bench. He was one of the triers of petitions in the parliament of 1496, and the same year was joined with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of York and certain other peers as feoffee of certain manors in Staffordshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Kent, and Leicestershire to the use of the king. He was one of the executors of the will of Cardinal Morton, who died in 1500. In 1503 he was again a trier of petitions in parliament, and was enfeoffed of certain other manors to the uses of the king's will. In the act of parliament declaring the feoffment he is for the first time designated 'knight.' In 1509 he was appointed one of the executors of the king's will. He was also a trier of petitions in the parliament of 1515.

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