John Fenton

Date of Brass:

1566

Place:

Coleshill

County:

Warwickshire

Country:

Number:

III

Style:

London

Description

June 2026

Here lieth the body of syr John Fenton prest

Bachelar of law sumtyme vicar of this church and

Offishall of Coventree, who Deceassed the xvij daye

of Maye. 1566. whose soule Jesus pardon Amen

John Fenton’s inscription seems to give us a reasonable account of himself but it is not quite as straightforward as it seems. His brass at Coleshill, north-west of Birmingham, is an example of an early post-Reformation clergyman. He died in 1566, having been perpetual vicar of Coleshill since November 1538. He was appointed following the surrender in 1536-7 of Markyate Priory which had formerly provided the parish of Coleshill with its clergy. He concurrently held the post as the official of the Archdeacon of Coventry, enforcing ecclesiastical discipline and carrying out annual visitations among other duties. The black stone that this London-made brass is laid in suggests it may have been relaid at some time.

He was the subject of an article by Kirsteen Harvey and Andrew Watkins that drew much of its material from his will and referred to a few events during his incumbency but uncovered nothing about his life before his arrival in Coleshill except that he was probably the man who was making his way into to the priesthood in the mid-1510s and that his yeoman family was from Derbyshire. A search of sources other than those used by Harvey and Watkins reveals little else. He was likely the John Fenton, chaplain, who, as the administrator of the will of Richard Fenton, was pusuing a debt in the Court of Common Pleas in 1528. The action was brought in Staffordshire and may indicate that he was the man engaged in 1533 by the mayor of Newcastle-under-Lyme and brothers to celebrate at the altar of St Katherine in the parish church of St Giles. John Fenton occupied this post until the dissolution of the chantries in 1548 and thereafter received a pension of 71s 4d until 1561. If he was the same John Fenton who was vicar of Coleshill, his position as perpetual vicar of Coleshill from 1538 meant that he should have been residing permanently in Coleshill from that date. If the post in Newcastle involved him teaching, as the dedication to St Katherine, the patron saint of philosophers, preachers and students, may imply, it would explain why a university graduate took this post. He may have had to employ a deputy to take over that role for the last ten years of his appointment. It would also explain the problem that he had with some of his parishioners in his first few years at Coleshill, who had been used to the Prioress of Markyate supplying a second priest for the parish, whose specific duty was to celebrate a mass at dawn for labourers before they started work. Robert Whitworth and others complained to the Court of Augmentations that Fenton did not supply such a priest and had absented himself from the parish. If Fenton was already working as the archdeacon’s official, absences would be explicable; if not, perhaps he was fulfilling duties elsewhere.

Later in his time at Coleshill, Fenton had a much better relationship with his parishioners, writing wills for them and acting as a witness, overseer or executor. He was one of the executors of the will of the widow Eleanor Bellars in 1547. He was named as one of the recipients of a grant made by Robert Whitworth of Lands and tenements in Coleshill in 1546. His own will showed him as a farmer with extensive stock. He had also been looking after his elder brother William’s daughter and heir Margaret, an ‘idiot’, since William’s death in 1559 and was keen to ensure continued support for her.

Copyright: Jon Bayliss, text and photographs

Reference:

Kirsteen Harvey & Andrew Watkins, ‘John Fenton: a sixteenth-century vicar of Coleshill’, Midland History, 44:1, 3-20, available for download from: https://www.academia.edu/82175406/John_Fenton_a_sixteenth_century_vicar_of_Coleshill

The review of this article in the MBS Bulletin 142 in October 2019 includes detail from the article.