Hi pantsdown and welcome to Rootschat
You don’t say who your ancestor was that went to America.
There is a famous Samuel Finney who went to America with William Penn in 1701, who by 1703 “had been appointed a member of Penn's Council in Pennsylvania. He built a house about 20 miles from Philadelphia and died there in 1711.”
See this short bio for a bit more information about him.
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/c270aedc-ffcc-4440-bf87-9f9db321a529I see you are interested in the colours of the Finney crest.
I’m not sure the photo of the Fynney Brass is going to help you much!
There are no colours on the actual brass itself of course.
There are a couple of oval ‘shields’ on either side of the actual brass plaque on the monument, that have smaller crests on, (plus some writing which is now impossible to read). These crests look as if they were coloured, but now are very difficult to make out.
They are a little different to the crest on the actual brass.
They look as if they are a version of the “3 martlets with a chevron in the centre”. (A martlet was a bird like a swallow evidently, often used in heraldry). This shield is typically coloured red with a gold chevron and gold birds if you Google ‘Finney crest”. However, it is very difficult to say if these were the colours used on the Finney monument. Possibly the birds, (can’t even be sure they are the same birds), and chevron were gold, but the background now is just black.
As you know, the crest on the actual brass is split. The left hand side has the 3 birds and chevron, (look like different sort of birds - not martlets), and the right hand side has possibly two different motifs. Possibly the arms of his mother? or wife?
If you are really interested in this you could contact the College of Arms - they hold all the information about coats of arms, heraldry etc.
www.college-of-arms.gov.uk/As to the Phinney/Fynney/Finney debate, you’re quite right in saying diferent clerks would have spelt the name differently.
This is from a search at The National Archives Discovery site.
The clerk has written ‘Phinney’ and ‘Finney’ even just within the same document.
Hope this has been of some interest.