Association. In 1839 he became junior partner in the publishing and bookselling firm known after 1846 as Ticknor & Fields, and after 1868 as Fields, Osgood & Company. He was the publisher of the foremost contemporary American writers, with whom he was on terms of close personal friendship, and he was the American publisher of some of the best-known British writers of his time, some of whom, also, he knew intimately. The first collected edition of De Quincey’s works (20 vols., 1850–1855) was published by his firm. As a publisher he was characterized by a somewhat rare combination of keen business acumen and sound, discriminating literary taste, and as a man he was known for his geniality and charm of manner. In 1862–1870, as the successor of James Russell Lowell, he edited the Atlantic Monthly. In 1871 Fields retired from business and from his editorial duties, and devoted himself to lecturing and to writing. Of his books the chief were the collection of sketches and essays entitled Underbrush (1877) and the chapters of reminiscence composing Yesterdays with Authors (1871), in which he recorded his personal friendship with Wordsworth, Thackeray, Dickens, Hawthorne and others. He died in Boston on the 24th of April 1881.
His second wife, Annie Adams Fields (b. 1834), whom he married in 1854, published Under the Olive (1880), a book of verses; James T. Fields: Biographical Notes and Personal Sketches (1882); Authors and Friends (1896); The Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe (1897); and Orpheus (1900).
FIENNES, NATHANIEL (c. 1608–1669) English politician,
second son of William, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, by Elizabeth,
daughter of John Temple, of Stow in Buckinghamshire, was born
in 1607 or 1608, and educated at Winchester and at New College,
Oxford, where as founder’s kin he was admitted a perpetual
fellow in 1624. After about five years’ residence he left without
taking a degree, travelled abroad, and in Switzerland imbibed or
strengthened those religious principles and that hostility to the
Laudian church which were to be the chief motive in his future
political career. He returned to Scotland in 1639, and established
communications with the Covenanters and the Opposition in
England, and as member for Banbury in both the Short and
Long Parliaments he took a prominent part in the attacks upon
the church. He spoke against the illegal canons on the 14th of
December 1640, and again on the 9th of February 1641 on the
occasion of the reception of the London petition, when he argued
against episcopacy as constituting a political as well as a religious
danger and made a great impression on the House, his name being
added immediately to the committee appointed to deal with
church affairs. He took a leading part in the examination into
the army plot; was one of the commissioners appointed to attend
the king to Scotland in August 1641; and was nominated one
of the committee of safety in July 1642. On the outbreak of
hostilities he took arms immediately, commanded a troop of
horse in the army of Lord Essex, was present at the relief of
Coventry in August, and at the fight at Worcester in September,
where he distinguished himself, and subsequently at Edgehill.
Of the last two engagements he wrote accounts, viz. True and
Exact Relation of both the Battles fought by . . . Earl of Essex . . .
against the Bloudy Cavaliers (1642). (See also A Narrative of the
Late Battle before Worcester taken by a Gentleman of the Inns of
Court from the mouth of Master Fiennes, 1642). In February
1643 Fiennes was sent down to Bristol, arrested Colonel Essex
the governor, executed the two leaders of a plot to deliver up the
city, and received a commission himself as governor on the 1st
of May 1643. On the arrival, however, of Prince Rupert on the
22nd of July the place was in no condition to resist an attack,
and Fiennes capitulated. He addressed to Essex a letter in his
defence (Thomason Tracts E. 65, 26), drew up for the parliament
a Relation concerning the Surrender . . . (1643), answered by
Prynne and Clement Walker accusing him of treachery and
cowardice, to which he opposed Col. Fiennes his Reply. . . . He
was tried at St Albans by the council of war in December, was
pronounced guilty of having surrendered the place improperly,
and sentenced to death. He was, however, pardoned, and the
facility with which Bristol subsequently capitulated to the
parliamentary army induced Cromwell and the generals to
exonerate him completely. His military career nevertheless now
came to an end. He went abroad, and it was some time before he
reappeared on the political scene. In September 1647 he was
included in the army committee, and on the 3rd of January 1648
he became a member of the committee of safety. He was,
however, in favour of accepting the king’s terms at Newport in
December, and in consequence was excluded from the House by
Pride’s Purge. An opponent of church government in any form,
he was no friend to the rigid and tyrannical Presbyterianism of
the day, and inclined to Independency and Cromwell’s party.
He was a member of the council of state in 1654, and in June
1655 he received the strange appointment of commissioner for
the custody of the great seal, for which he was certainly in no way
fitted. In the parliament of 1654 he was returned for Oxford
county and in that of 1656 for the university, while in January
1658 he was included in Cromwell’s House of Lords. He was in
favour of the Protector’s assumption of the royal title and urged
his acceptance of it on several occasions. His public career
closes with addresses delivered in his capacity as chief commissioner
of the great seal at the beginning of the sessions of
January 20, 1658, and January 2, 1659, in which the religious
basis of Cromwell’s government is especially insisted upon, the
feature to which Fiennes throughout his career had attached most
value. On the reassembling of the Long Parliament he was
superseded; he took no part in the Restoration, and died at
Newton Tony in Wiltshire on the 16th of December 1669.
Fiennes married (1), Elizabeth, daughter of the famous parliamentarian
Sir John Eliot, by whom he had one son, afterwards
3rd Viscount Saye and Sele; and (2), Frances, daughter of
Richard Whitehead of Tuderley, Hants, by whom he had three
daughters.
Besides the pamphlets already cited, a number of his speeches and other political tracts were published (see Gen. Catalogue, British Museum). Wood also attributed to him Monarchy Asserted (1666) (reprinted in Somers Tracts, vi. 346 [ed. Scott]), but there seems no reason to ascribe to him with Clement Walker the authorship of Sprigge’s Anglia Rediviva.
FIERI FACIAS, usually abbreviated fi. fa. (Lat. “that you
cause to be made”), in English law, a writ of execution after
judgment obtained in action of debt or damages. It is addressed
to the sheriff, and commands him to make good the amount
out of the goods of the person against whom judgment has been
obtained. (See Execution.)
FIESCHI, GIUSEPPE MARCO (1790–1836), the chief conspirator
in the attempt on the life of Louis Philippe in July
1835, was a native of Murato in Corsica. He served under
Murat, then returned to Corsica, where he was condemned to
ten years’ imprisonment and perpetual surveillance by the
police for theft and forgery. After a period of vagabondage he
eluded the police and obtained a small post in Paris by means
of forged papers; but losing it on account of his suspicious
manner of living, he resolved to revenge himself on society.
He took lodgings on the Boulevard du Temple, and there, with
two members of the Société des Droits de l’Homme, Morey and
Pépin by name, contrived an “infernal machine,” constructed
with twenty gun barrels, to be fired simultaneously. On the
28th of July 1835, as Louis Philippe was passing along the boulevard
to the Bastille, accompanied by his three sons and a
numerous staff, the machine was exploded. A ball grazed the
king’s forehead, and his horse, with those of the duke of Nemours
and of the prince de Joinville, was shot; Marshal Mortier was
killed, with seventeen other persons, and many were wounded;
but the king and the princes escaped as if by miracle. Fieschi
himself was severely wounded by the discharge of his machine,
and vainly attempted to escape. The attentions of the most
skilful physicians were lavished upon him, and his life was saved
for the stroke of justice. On his trial he named his accomplices,
displayed much bravado, and expected or pretended to expect
ultimate pardon. He was condemned to death, and was guillotined
on the 19th of February 1836. Morey and Pépin were
also executed, another accomplice was sentenced to twenty
years’ imprisonment and one was acquitted. No less than
seven plots against the life of Louis Philippe had been discovered
