Sir Henry Finch

Sir Henry Finch (died 1625) was an English lawyer and politician, created serjeant-at-law and knighted, and remembered as a legal writer.

He was born the son of Sir Thomas Finch of Eastwell and the brother of Moyle Finch. He was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, under Lawrence Chadderton, graduating BA, and was admitted of Gray's Inn in 1577, and called to the bar there in 1585.

In February 1593 he was elected to parliament for Canterbury, and he retained the seat at the election of 1597. He became an ancient of his inn in 1593, and the same year was appointed counsel to the Cinque ports. He was reader at his inn in the autumn of 1604.

In 1613 he was appointed recorder of Sandwich, on 11 June 1616 he was called to the degree of serjeant-at-law, and nine days later he was knighted at Whitehall Palace. At this time he was engaged, in conjunction with Francis Bacon, William Noy, and others, in an abortive attempt to codify the statute law. He was elected to Parliament for St Albans in 1614.

He died in October 1625, and was buried in the parish church of Boxley, Kent. He had married Ursula, the daughter and heiress of John Thwaites of Kent, with whom he had two sons.

In 1621 he published a work entitled The World's Great Restauration, or Calling of the Jews, and with them of all Nations and Kingdoms of the Earth to the Faith of Christ. In it he seems to have predicted, in the near future, the restoration of temporal dominion to the Jews and the establishment by them of a worldwide empire. This caused James I to treat the work as a libel, and accordingly Finch was arrested in April 1621. He obtained his liberty by disavowing all such portions of the work as might be construed as derogatory to the sovereign and apologising for having written unadvisedly. William Laud, in a sermon preached in July 1621, referred to the book, and it was suppressed. Judaic scholar Mel Scult sees Finch’s work as calling for the conversion of the Jews, and containing many of the key themes found throughout subsequent conversionist literature (the Jews being especially favoured, being repositories of the word of God, and a great glory being due a converted Israel). However, the work also shows a new development in the way Christians saw the bible. By ascribing the sayings of the prophets refer to the Jews themselves rather than the Christian Church in general, The World's Great Restauration marks the start of the process of restoring the Old Testament to the Jews themselves.

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