William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele
1582–1662
Patriarch of the Independent peers; Providence Island and Saybrook colony patron.
Departs from the Confession on Polity: Independent-Congregational not Presbyterian-Jure-Divino
Biography
Of New College Oxford and the Middle Temple, Saye and Sele was the senior aristocratic patron of the Independent cause. He was head of the Providence Island Company (1630-1641), which sponsored Puritan colonising in the Caribbean, and (with Lord Brooke) co-patron of the Saybrook Colony in Connecticut (1635). His Broughton Castle in Oxfordshire was the meeting-place of the gentry circle that planned much of the Long Parliament's opposition to Charles I in the late 1630s — Hampden, Pym, St John, the elder Vane. He sympathised with Independent ecclesiology but stopped short of the regicide and retired from politics in 1649. Restored to the Privy Council at the Restoration. Father of Nathaniel Fiennes. Died in 1662.
Lay Assessor — House of Lords
Parliament seated lay assessors from both Houses to sit with the divines and represent its interest. Ten peers were named from the House of Lords as lay assessors; like the Commons assessors they had voice in the Assembly but were not voting members, and they attended as their other duties allowed.
Ontology placement
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Cite this divine
Study Reformed, “William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele” (Divine), Westminster Standards Atlas, version 79a5f9880ac1, https://studyreformed.com/atlas/cite/persona/william-fiennes-saye-sele/.
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