Henry Finch

, second Son of Sir Thom. Finch of East well in Kent, was born in that County, and for a time educated in this University, particularly, as I conceive, in Oriel coll. wherein several of his sirname and Family studied in the time of Q. Elizabeth. From Oxon he was translated to Greys Inn, wherein making great proficiency in the Municipal Laws, became a Councellour of note, Autumn or Summer-Reader of that house, 2. Jac. 1. Serjeant at Law 1614. and one of the Kings Serjeants, and a Knight, two years after, being then in great esteem for his knowledge in his profession. He hath written,

Nomotexnia; cestascavoir, un description del common Leys d’ Angleterre solonique les rules del Art, &c. Lond. 1613. fol. in 4 books. Done into English by the same author, under this title, Of Law; or a discourse thereof, in 4 books. Lond. 1627. 36. 61. &c. oct. From the said book is mostly extracted another, intit. A summary of the Common Law of England. Lond. 1654. oct. done by another hand. Our author Finch also wrote,

Of the calling of the Jews.—By which book it appears, that the studies of the author, were not altogether confin’d to the Common Law. But his judgment therein, as to the subject matter, dissenting from the opinions of ingenious persons, yet they cannot otherwise but allow him to have learnedly maintained an Errour. He departed this life on the eleventh day of Octob. in sixteen hundred twenty and five, 1625 and was buried, as I conceive, in St. Martins Church near Canterbury, leaving then behind him a Son, begotten on the body of his Wife Vrsula, Daughter and Heir of Will. Thwayts, called John Finch, born the 17. Sept. 1584. educated in the Common Law in Greys Inn, afterwards a Knight, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, and Lord Finch of Fordwyche, forced out of England by the severity of the Members of the Long Parliament, an. 1640. had leave afterwards to return, and lived privately at the Mote near Canterbury, and dying the 20. Nov. an. 1660. was buried in the Church of S. Martin before-mentioned. This John Lord Finch (who had a younger Brother called Henry) seems to have had some considerable knowledge in Mathematicks and Astronomy, as it appears by a Manuale Mathematicum, curiously written on Velom with his own hand, preserved to this day as a rarity in Dugdale’s Press, among the MSS in the Ashmolean Musaeum.