A One-Name Study for the BARNUM/BARNHAM Surname
Thomas Fiennes, ninth Lord Dacre (1517-1541), was son of Sir Thomas Fiennes, by Joan, daughter of Edward Sutton and sister of John Sutton, Lord Dudley. Sir Thomas died in the lifetime of his father, Thomas, eighth lord Dacre of the South. Thomas had succeeded his grandfather in 1534-5, having then barely completed his seventeenth year. With the Duke of Norfolk and Lord Mountjoy he headed the cavalcade of knights and esquires who met Anne of Cleves on Rainham Down on New Year's eve 1539-40.
Thomas was so eminent a Henrician courtier that he helped bear the canopy over Jane Seymour's funeral bier and, with the third Duke of Norfolk, accompanied Anne of Cleves on her nuptial journey through Kent.
However, on the night of 30 April 1541 Lord Dacre and a party of youths left his castle of Herstmonceaux for a poaching frolic in the park of Mr. Nicholas Pelham at Laughton. On their way thither the company got divided. One party, not that, it would appear, to which Lord Dacre belonged, fell in with some persons, perhaps some of Pelham's servants, one of whom was mortally wounded in a scuffle. The whole company was indicted on the charge of murder. The innocence of the other party was so clear that the privy council hesitated long before ordering a prosecution, and then probably under pressure from the king. Henry, now nearing his worst, 'cruelly, royally vindictive', was resolved that the young man should die, and his 'surpassing self-wilfullness' drove his councilors to a decision, though not without a long and stormy debate.
The case was tried in the court of king's bench on 27 June, before the lord chancellor (Lord Audley of Walden), 'sitting that day as high steward of England.' Lord Dacre at first pleaded 'not guilty;' but, 'overpersuaded by the courtiers, who gaped after his estate, to confess the fact', he pleaded guilty, and 'cast himself on the king's mercy, as the only way to save his own and his servant's life.'
A capital conviction necessarily followed. The judges thereupon used their influence with the king to obtain mercy. The king, however, was determined, and Dacre was ordered to be executed next day, 29 June, 1541, at 11 a.m., on Tower Hill. The execution was stayed by an order from the king, but carried out the same afternoon at Tyburn. Dacre was buried in St. Sepulchre's Church on Snow Hill. The popular compassion was deeply moved. Seven of his companions besides himself were indicted. Four of them were acquitted, and three shared his fate. The case has ever since been referred to as a notable precedent.
Lord Dacre, by his wife Mary, daughter of George Neville, Lord Abergavenny, left two sons, Thomas, who died, aged 15, in 1553, and Gregory, who was restored to his honours in 1558, and a daughter, Margaret, who married Sampson Lennard, esq., of Chevening, Kent, and on the death of her brother without issue inherited his entailed estates, and was declared Baroness Dacre in 1604.
A Research Guide to the Genealogy of the Barnum/Barnam/Barnham Family Worldwide
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