Author: Clinton, Henry Fynes
Biography:
CLINTON, Henry Fynes, formerly Fynes (1781-1852: ODNB)
He was the eldest of three sons born to the Rev. Charles Fynes (1747?-1827) and his wife Emma Brough (1760-1831). (Clinton was added to the family name in 1821 in acknowledgement of descent from Henry Clinton of Lincoln.) Henry was born at Gamston, Nottinghamshire, on 14 Jan. and baptised on 12 Feb. 1781. In 1788 his father became prebendary of St. Peter’s, Westminster, and minister of St. Margaret’s church and the family moved to London where they lived in Dean’s Yard. He attended Southwell grammar school before entering Westminster school in 1796. He matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, on 11 Apr. 1799 (BA 1803, MA 1805) but he later recorded his dismay at the poor quality of classical teaching in the university. Through a connection of his father’s he became MP for Aldborough, Yorkshire, in 1806 and, despite being on record as speaking in debates just once, he retained his seat until 1826. On 19 Nov. 1808 he was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn although he was not called to the bar. He married Harriott Wylde in Nottingham on 22 June 1809; she may have been a cousin through her mother whose name was Esther Brough. Harriott and her infant son died during her premature labour on 2 Feb. 1810. He married Katherine Majendie, the daughter of the bishop of Bangor, on 6 Jan. 1812; they had two sons and nine daughters of whom the sons and two of the daughters predeceased their father. In 1812 he purchased Welwyn House in Hertfordshire. He became absorbed by his literary interests and, in particular, by classical chronology. He published Fasti Hellenici (1824, 1830, 1834), Fasti Romani (1845, 1850), and Epitome of the Civil and Literary Chronology of Greece (1851). His Epitome of the Civil and Literary Chronology of Rome and Constantinople was left unfinished at his death on 24 Oct. 1852. It was completed and published by his brother, the Rev. Charles John Fynes Clinton, who also edited Literary Remains of Henry Fynes Clinton (1854). An autobiographical fragment printed in Literary Remains records without rancour that his tragedy, Solyman, written at Oxford, “had no sale; scarcely fifty copies of it seem to have been called for.” His surname is sometimes given as Fynes-Clinton. (ODNB 19 Dec. 2023; ancestry.co.uk 19 Dec. 2023; C. J. F. Clinton, ed. Literary Remains of Henry Fynes Clinton [1854]; Westminster School Archives) SR