Farnefold came from an ancient, but obscure, Sussex family, which represented Steyning as early as 1399. By the 1540s they had settled at Gatewick House, just outside the town. The family owned burgage property in the borough and Farnefold’s father voted there in the 1604 parliamentary election.
On the death of his elder brother in 1611, Farnefold inherited the family estate, but aged only 12 he became a ward of the Crown. His father’s friend and executor, Sir Thomas Leedes, the father of Sir John*, acquired his wardship. However, in 1613 Leedes converted to Catholicism and moved to the Spanish Netherlands. Farnefold was transferred first to the care of (Sir) Edward Sackville*, and then, presumably by sale, to Bartholomew Rogers, usher of the Court of Wards. Rogers married him to his eldest daughter and, on the excuse of repurchasing land left to Farnefold’s sister, obtained permission from William, 1st Viscount Wallingford (William Knollys†), the master of the Wards, to cut down woods on the Farnefold estate to the value of £1,400. Petitioning the Commons in 1621, Farnefold, now no longer a minor, complained that Rogers, by now dead, had left the property completely bare of timber and embezzled £3,000 from the proceeds.
Farnefold was returned for Steyning in 1624 and 1625 on his own interest, but left no mark on the records of either Parliament. By early 1626 he seems to have aroused the enmity of the electors, for at the beginning of January the Sussex steward of the earl of Middlesex (Sir Lionel Cranfield*) predicted that he would be ‘denied for himself’ in the forthcoming election for the second Caroline Parliament.
Although unsuccessful at the polls, Farnefold secured Court office in June 1626. Moreover, the following year his long running disputed with Rogers’ heirs bore fruit. Rogers had acquired the next reversion to his office of usher for his eldest son, said to be worth £400 a year. Farnefold alleged that it had been purchased with the proceeds from the timber sales and in 1627 secured a judgment in the Court of Wards transferring the ushership to himself. According to a subsequent Chancery suit, Farnefold had Rogers’ son, a youth ‘of weak capacity’, sent abroad as a soldier, where he died. It may have been the financial strain of the suit in the Court of Wards that obliged him to mortgage his Sussex lands. In 1628 he was elected for the third time after Bishopp’s conviction for manslaughter. He again left no trace in the parliamentary records.
In 1637 Farnefold sold his office in the Court of Wards and was removed from the Sussex bench for non-attendance. Early in the following year he suffered a further term of imprisonment, for an unknown cause, on the orders of the Privy Council.