Background Information
Constituency business
County
Date Candidate Votes
1558/59 WILLIAM CARNSEW I 1E371/402(1).
JOHN GAYER 2Ibid.
13 Dec. 1562 JOHN COSWORTH
JOHN BOWER 3alias BOWYER
1571 JOHN KILLIGREW I
WILLIAM DODINGTON
17 Apr. 1572 JOHN KILLIGREW I
ROBERT PETRE
14 Nov. 1584 JOHN KILLIGREW II
WILLIAM KILLIGREW
1586 JOHN KILLIGREW II
WILLIAM ONSLOW
31 Oct. 1588 NICHOLAS SAUNDERS I
ANTHONY DILLON 4CSP Dom. Add. 1566-79, pp. 509-10.
1593 JOHN OSBORNE
EDWARD PHELIPS
10 Oct. 1597 JOHN KILLIGREW II
EDWARD JONES
1 Oct. 1601 EDWARD SEYMOUR II
8 Oct. 1601 RICHARD MASSINGER
Main Article

The borough of Penryn, together with the manor of Penryn Foreign, belonged to the bishops of Exeter. The leading family of the district, the Killigrews of Arwennack, had a lease of Penryn Foreign and a disputed lease of the fee farm of the borough. There was a portreeve and burgesses, but the borough was not incorporated until the reign of James I. Judging by the surviving Elizabethan returns, elections were conducted by the portreeve, in the presence of up to a dozen burgesses. Towards the end of the period, probably in 1588-9, the borough began to make separate returns for each of its Members. The returns for the 1601 Parliament are dated a week apart.

The representation of Penryn during this period was dominated by the Killigrew family, to whom, directly or indirectly, all the MPs owed their seats with the possible exceptions of Richard Massinger, an Exchequer official, and Edward Jones, a London lawyer about whom nothing further is known.

Author
Notes
  • 1. E371/402(1).
  • 2. Ibid.
  • 3. alias BOWYER
  • 4. CSP Dom. Add. 1566-79, pp. 509-10.