The Battle Abbey Roll. Vol. II.
by
The Duchess of Cleveland.

Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Finere : According to Sir William Pole, Sir Gilbert Finemer or Finemore held half a knight's fee in Devonshire of the Honour of Clare, temp. Henry II.; and bore the red chevrons of his suzerain on a field ermine. The name is also found at Hinksey in Berkshire; and in the church of St. Lawrence at Reading there is a monument to the memory of one of this family, with the following quaint inscription: "Under thy feet, reader, lie the remains of Richard Fynemore, his father's Benjamin, and his brother's Joseph; who, coming from Oxon to the burial of a friend, found here his own grave, 1664." The manor of Tingewick in Buckinghamshire was given in 1210 by this family to the monastery de Monte Rothomago in Normandy.—Lysons. It had passed to them from the Lacys before the reign of Henry III.—Lipscomb's Bucks. They probably gave their name to the neighbouring village of Finmore in Oxfordshire. Hugh de Finemer was Vicar of Shabbington, Bucks, in 1348. They had been seated in that county from very early times; for Gilbert de Finemere is mentioned there in 1207.—Hunter's Fines. William de Finnore served as knight of the shire for Middlesex in 1322.—Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs. William Fimner gave some land at Esthorpe, in the East Riding, to Walton Priory.—Burton's Mon. Ebor. Richard and Roger de Vinemer, Kent, c. 1272.—Rotuli Hundredorum. According to Foxe, the Church historian, Henry Finmore, Filmer, or Finnemore—for he spells the name in each way—was Churchwarden of Windsor, and burnt to death under the Act of the Six Articles on July 3rd, 1543. At about the same date some Fynemores were seated at Cam in Gloucestershire, where they are first mentioned in a Crown lease of 1522, and many of their tombstones remain in the church and church-yard. The name constantly occurs in the parish register between the years 1571 and 1825, variously spelt Fynamore, Fynymore, Fynemore, Phinnymore, Fyllimore, and Fylymore. "It is first spelt Phillimore in 1640, and from that time both forms of the name occur during thirty or forty years, the later one alone being used after about 1680 in the Cam register, though the early one is still common in Gloucestershire and elsewhere."—Blunt's Dursley. At one of their former residences in the neighbourhood, Nash Hall, now called The Knapp, "there is a grim tradition that a body lies buried under the stone steps which lead down from the hall to the cellar, and that the spirit of the deceased rises whenever grass grows on the steps. Boiling water used to be poured upon them to prevent the grass from growing."—Ibid. The last of the family that remained in the old locality died in 1826. One of the younger brothers, early in the preceding century, migrated to London, where his son Robert married the heiress of Kendalls in Hertfordshire, and was the ancestor of "the Phillimores of Kendalls, the eminent ecclesiastical judges, Dr. Joseph Phillimore and his son Sir Robert Joseph Phillimore, and Sir John Phillimore, a naval officer of high repute in the last century."—Ibid. An anecdote of this family is preserved in the Berkeley MSS. Among the "Proverbs peculiar to the Hundred" is this: He hath offered his candle to the divell. "It thus arose: Old ffilimore of Cam, going in Anno 1584 to p'sent Sr Tho. Throgm. of Tortworth with a sugar lofe, met by the way with his neighbour S. M. who demanded whither and upon what busines hee was goinge, answered, 'To offer my candle to the Divill;' which cominge to the eares of Sr Tho. at the next muster he sent two of ffilimores sonnes soldiers into the Low countries, where the one was slayne and the other at a deere rate redeemed his return."

The ancient Kentish family of Filmer is clearly of the same stock: for their coat of arms is almost identical. They bear Sable three bars and in chief as many trefoils Or; and the only difference perceptible in the Phillimore coat is that their bars and cinquefoils are Argent. Most probably the Filmers are descended either from Roger or Richard de Vinemer of Kent, living in 1272 (see p. 59); but Wotton only begins their pedigree in the following century, temp. Edward III., when they "wrote their name Finmere, Fylmere, Filmour, and Filmer, and were seated at Ottringden, at a place called Finmore." Robert Filmer, in the time of Elizabeth, purchased their present seat, East Sutton 3 and another Robert, his descendant, received a baronetcy in 1674 from Charles II.