PENPONS, Richard

By the beginning of Henry IV’s reign members of the Penpons family were of some importance in western Cornwall, where they are documented from at least the 1340s. Thomas Penpons served as deputy to the duchy of Cornwall’s bailiffs of the stannary of Penwith and Kirrier from 1404 to 1410, and a probable kinsman, William Penpons†, represented the duchy borough of Helston in Parliament in December 1421.14 CAD, v. A10717; SC6/813/23; 819/15; 820/2; Duchy of Cornw. Off., enrolled manorial accts. 36, 37, 40; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 49. Little is known of Richard Penpons’s early life and education, but he seems to have received some training in the law, for by Henry IV’s later years he was standing bail for defendants in the court of common pleas and by the early 1420s he was practicing as an attorney in the courts of Chancery and King’s bench.15 CP40/635, rot. 327; C1/4/57; 5/37; KB27/648, rot. 58. It may have been this activity which brought him into contact with the busy lawyer Robert Treage*, with whom he shared a grant of the manor and borough of Helston-in-Kirrier in 1424.16 CFR, xv. 72. Their possession of the property was not to go unchallenged, for Helston had previously been granted by Richard II to his standard-bearer Sir Nicholas Sarnesfield and his wife, Margaret, in survivorship, and Margaret’s title had most recently been confirmed by Henry V in 1415.17 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 300. Margaret began legal proceedings to recover her valuable property, and claimed that the grant to Penpons and Treage had been made possible only by the fraudulent arraignment of a jury by Treage’s brother-in-law, Sir John Arundell II* of Trerice (whose younger son would later marry Penpons’s daughter).18 C254/138/141; Vivian, 11. In 1429 Margaret Sarnesfield brought her claim before the Commons, and secured a writ of nisi prius. When this proved ineffective, she returned to Westminster to present a fresh petition to the new Parliament assembled there. This time, Treage and Penpons were prepared. With the aid of their associate Arundell, who was present alongside Penpons at the parliamentary elections in the shire court at Lostwithiel in January 1431, they had secured the return of Arundell’s elder son Nicholas* and Penpons himself for two Cornish boroughs – in Penpons’s case the disputed borough of Helston itself.19 RP, iv. 384; C219/14/2. Yet, despite their best efforts, less than four months after the dissolution the manor and borough were returned to Margaret, and to add insult to injury a few weeks later commissioners were appointed to investigate any wastes of which Treage and Penpons had been guilty during their tenure.20 CPR, 1429-36, pp. 107, 133, 275; E207/14/8. Certainly, before withdrawing Penpons had stripped the manor of valuables, including some 6,000 lb. of unrefined tin, and he responded to Margaret’s claims in the court of common pleas by accusing her of invading the manor with armed might.21 CP40/685, rot. 437; 687, rots. 313, 478d; 691, rot. 129d; 692, rot. 445. The commissioners evidently took their task seriously, and before long proceedings against Treage and Penpons were pending in the court of the Exchequer, which only came to an end following the grant of a pardon to Penpons in July 1437: even 17 years later, however, he was still forced to sue out writs de non molestetis to fend off the Crown’s over-zealous servants.22 E159/209, recogniciones Mich. rot. 1; 210, recorda Hil. rots. 6d, 12; 220, brevia Hil. rot. 20d; C67/38, m. 9.

The extent of the Penpons’s hereditary lands – if any – is uncertain, and it seems that he himself acquired the bulk of the lands of which he was seised in the second half of his life by purchase or marriage. Thus, by two transactions of 1419 and 1427 he received from one John Trevaswethen over 700 acres in Treswithen, Tregear, Crane, Treskellard, Troon and Newton (in Camborne), and Rosecroggan, Mager and Tregajorran in Illogan.23 Cornw. Feet of Fines, ii. 980; CP40/703, rot. 138. By 1451 his landed holdings were thought to be worth some £20 p.a., while his kinsman John Penpons held more, worth a further £3.24 E179/87/92. This John Penpons was probably the man who served intermittently as dep. bailiff of the stannary of Penwith and Kirrier from 1425 to 1449, rather than the MP’s synonymous son: SC6/814/14, 21, 22; 815/1, 3, 7-9, 11-13, 15; 820/12-14; 821/1, 3, 4, 6; Duchy of Cornw. Off., enrolled manorial accts. 45, 46, 48, 49, 52, 53. Some 20 years earlier Penpons had grasped the opportunity for a profitable marriage which had presented itself in the person of Amy, daughter of John Tregoose, a fellow Cornish lawyer. Tregoose had been murdered in 1406, but before his death he had enfeoffed John Tresithney* of some of his landholdings with instructions that they should eventually fall to his son, Richard, but that any revenues arising from them while Richard was under age should serve as a dowry for the youngster’s sister. By the time of the marriage, Tresithney was said to have collected some 80 marks from the property, but proved reluctant to part with the money until Penpons petitioned the chancellor for redress.25 C1/20/150; C244/4/72. In the event, the marriage proved to be even more profitable than might have been expected, for the violent death of Amy’s brother Richard in the summer of 1452 left her sole heiress to the Tregoose estates, certainly worth £20 p.a., but possibly far more. It is not certain exactly when these holdings came into his hands, or whether they only fell to his heirs, for Tregoose left a widow, and neither the date of her death nor details of a possible jointure have been discovered.

The dispute over Helston was not to be the only occasion on which Penpons’s acquisitions aroused controversy. In July 1433 the elderly Isabel Trelyver had settled certain parts of her Cornish estates on Richard Gilly, a kinsman of the local lawyer Henry Gilly. Within the next decade, however, a dispute arose over the property, and Isabel, by then 90 years old, blind and bedridden, petitioned the chancellor, claiming that two local men, Roger Kelwa (an associate of the notorious pirate Thomas Beville†) and Thomas Raulyn had forged a deed settling her lands on Raulyn. An inquiry in the locality had found her claims to be true, and she had sued out a writ of forgery against them. At this point, the two forgers had turned to Penpons for assistance, probably in the first instance in his professional capacity. Penpons had advised them to enfeoff his own wife, Amy, and two associates of the property, and this they had done. Penpons’s interest in the lands, which he may have hoped to retain for himself, was now no longer impersonal, and before long he and his associates were themselves accusing the two Gillys of seeking to gain the disputed holdings by forged deeds. The outcome of this dispute, which was ongoing in the 1450s, is unknown.26 C1/16/536; KB27/737, rot. 89; 739, rots. 87d; CP40/739, rot. 510; 752, rot. 434; 754, rot. 470; 782, rot. 434d.

In spite of Penpons’s failure to defend his possession of Helston from Margaret Sarnesfield’s claims he was nevertheless able to secure re-election to the Commons for the borough in 1432, and twice more in 1437 and 1442. It is possible that he owed these returns – as well as an isolated one for Lostwithiel in 1435 – to his family’s connexions within the administration of the duchy of Cornwall: kinsmen of his intermittently served as deputy bailiffs of the stannary of Penwith and Kirrier from the early years of the fifteenth century to the end of the 1440s. Penpons himself was rather slower to attract Crown office: he was appointed to an isolated commission of inquiry in 1435, and thereafter did not secure similar employment until the final days of his last Parliament. Instead, he was active in the service of private patrons, most notably the earl of Warwick’s retainer, John Nanfan*, whom he served as under sheriff of Cornwall in both 1428-30 and 1439-40, and subsequently the young John Arundell of Lanherne, for whom he acted during his shrievalty in 1443-4. At other times, he also played his part in Nanfan’s and Arundell’s property transactions.27 JUST1/1540, rots. 90d, 94; KB27/736, rot. 26d; C1/28/1A; Arundell mss, AR1/924, 995/1; AR7/7; AR19/4-6, 17/1. By contrast, his service to lesser clients was more limited: only occasionally is he found serving his Cornish neighbours or others further afield as a feoffee, executor, trustee or witness to deeds, while on a few other occasions he stood bail for them in the Westminster courts.28 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 248, 251; C1/6/111; CAD, v. A12012; Cornw. Feet of Fines, ii. 1082; C254/147/51; Reg. Lacy ed. Hingeston-Randolph, i. 225; KB27/687, rot. 52; 735, rot. 89; KB146/6/22/1; Arundell mss, AR1/392. When he accepted such employment, the fees he could command were substantial: thus, in 1440 he was retained as legal counsel by a clerk from St. Erme for an annual payment of no less than 33s. 4d.29 CP40/784, rot. 325.

A man whom he did serve was his wife’s brother, the brutal Richard Tregoose. Penpons was on more than one occasion called upon to come to his brother-in-law’s aid. After Tregoose’s arrest in early 1435 Penpons stood bail to secure his release from the Marshalsea, and it is probable that his return for Lostwithiel in that year, at the height of the legal campaign of Tregoose’s numerous enemies against him (and when Tregoose himself sat for Bodmin), was also secured in order to pre-empt any parliamentary steps against the latter. In May 1436 Tregoose procured royal licence to go to France, and Penpons was among the attorneys charged with overseeing his affairs in England during his absence, while a few years later he also found bail for one of Tregoose’s associates, John Vincent.30 KB27/695, rex rot. 3d; 696, rex rot. 5d; 714, rex rot. 20; E159/213, recorda Mich. rot. 3d. Moreover, Penpons had a personal interest in Tregoose’s battle with his principal enemy Robert Borlas, since Borlas and his brothers were pursuing him in the law courts for a debt purportedly owing to their deceased father’s estate.31 C1/10/160; CP40/694, rot. 456d.

Penpons’s three daughters all married into Cornish gentry families. Marina married Richard Arundell of Trerice, her sister Joan wed Richard Kendale* of Treworgy, who represented Lostwithiel in their father’s last Parliament, and Elizabeth became the wife of Stephen Boswydell.32 Vivian, 11, 258; Cornw. Feet of Fines, ii. 1060. Yet, relations with his sons-in-law were not always cordial. At some point Arundell and Boswydell in conjunction with Arundell’s father, Sir John (who was prominent among Richard Tregoose’s adversaries and may have taken a dim view of Penpons’s support of his brother-in-law), took the opportunity of Penpons’s absence in London to invade his manor of Treswithian with an armed force, and purportedly expelled his children and servants, as well as his wife, then pregnant with yet another child. Whether the fear of the birth of a further potential heir had prompted their actions or not, the rioters then proceeded to consume what they could in the house, before removing what was left. Penpons sought redress in Chancery, and the matter was eventually settled in October 1442 in favour of him and his heirs.33 C1/43/44; Cornw. Feet of Fines, ii. 1060.

There were also conflicts with other neighbours. During one of Henry V’s absences in Normandy in the latter part of his reign Penpons had been reduced to petitioning the chancellor for redress against one John Trewike who – he claimed – had invaded his property at Redruth, expelled him and stolen his goods.34 C1/5/56. On another occasion, in 1427, he clashed with the wealthy John Tretherf* (who would later, in 1437, sit in the Commons as a knight for Cornwall, while Penpons once again represented Helston) over the question whether Tretherf owed Penpons homage, fealty and scutage for certain property he held from him. The dispute was submitted to the arbitration of the lawyers Robert Treage and William Trethake*, but their award failed to satisfy the parties and litigation continued. A fresh attempt at a settlement by the mediation of Sir William Bodrugan* in 1435 likewise came to nothing.35 CP40/677, rot. 138; 684, rot. 121; 687, rot. 329; 691, rot. 331; 700, rot. 105; 703, rot. 574; 706, rot. 461. Not long after the initial dispute with Tretherf, Penpons also came into conflict with another local esquire of considerable standing, Thomas Carminowe* over property in western Cornwall. In this instance a settlement was found, and by May 1435 Penpons was finding sureties of the peace for his former adversary.36 KB27/696, rex rot. 8d; JUST1/1540, rots. 85, 90. By the following year, though, Penpons was embroiled in a fresh quarrel with a powerful opponent, Renfrew Arundell* of Tremodret, over his property at Treswithian.37 CP40/701, rot. 324; 703, rot. 138; SC2/157/6, rot. 18d.

Perhaps by virtue of his ties with the Arundells of Lanherne, Penpons was drawn into the circle of William de la Pole, earl and later duke of Suffolk, who had gained an entry into Cornish affairs by securing the wardships not only of the Arundell heir, but also of the heir of another leading family in the county, the Bodrugans. Yet Penpons’s links with de la Pole seem to have been rather looser than those of the Arundells, or of his brother-in-law, Richard Tregoose. There is no indication that he drew any substantial profit from his association with the duke, and the offices to which he was appointed during de la Pole’s ascendancy in the second half of the 1440s were in keeping with his standing and professional qualifications. Moreover, it seems that he profited directly from the duke’s impeachment and murder in 1450. In November he was granted custody of some 600 acres in the Redruth region for a year, and the grant was subsequently renewed in the two following years.38 CFR, xvi. 189, 240; xvii. 15. The same period saw him engaged in the kind of activity which had given notoriety to some of Suffolk’s more reviled associates, such as John Trevelyan* or Thomas Bodulgate*, and had indirectly contributed to the duke’s fall. Like many Cornishmen, Penpons had interests outside the law courts. He was joint owner of a ship, the Katherine of St. Ives, a vessel which was on more than one occasion implicated in acts of piracy. On Christmas Eve 1451 the Kateryn of Baion, sailing from Bordeaux with a cargo of iron, wine, saffron and ivory worth some £700 which belonged to the Bristol merchant William Joce was attacked and overcome by Penpons’s ship in spite of a royal safe conduct. Joce complained to the sheriff of Cornwall, the influential John Arundell of Lanherne, and succeeded in having his safe conduct read out aloud in the shire hall at Lostwithiel. Then, however, Penpons, who had in his possession a lion’s share of the stolen cargo, intervened and claimed that the ship and merchandise had been lawfully taken. On account of Penpons’s standing in Cornish society this was for the time being the end of the matter, and ten years elapsed before, after Edward IV had acceded to the throne, Joce resumed his battle for restitution. In March 1462 Bishop Neville of Exeter, then chancellor, appointed commissioners headed by the powerful Henry Bodrugan to arrest Penpons and bring him into Chancery. Joce himself accompanied Bodrugan’s men to St. Ives, but when Penpons got wind of his intentions he rallied some 80 armed men and sought to seize the merchant in his turn, with the intention – as Joce claimed – of killing him. In May 1463 a writ of subpoena under the vast penalty of £1,000 succeeded in bringing Penpons into Chancery, where he sought to defend himself by pleading a string of legal technicalities. It is unlikely that Joce ever recovered his goods, for in February 1464 Penpons was able to secure a renewed royal pardon.39 C1/27/412-13; C253/38/106; 39/98; C67/45, m. 11. Similarly, in February 1453 royal commissioners headed by William, Lord Bonville*, had been ordered to investigate an attack by the Katherine of St. Ives on the George of Dartmouth, a vessel which the influential royal servant Thomas Gille I* had sold to two Portuguese merchants, who had sought to bring its cargo to England from Lisbon. The commissioners speedily established the guilt of Penpons and his associates, yet over subsequent months at least two further commissions had to be issued, as the legal process for restitution ran its slow course.40 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 61, 165, 174.

By contrast, it seems that accusations brought against Penpons in Chancery in mid 1451 by the Cornish esquire John Bassett constituted an attempt to have him convicted on trumped-up charges of forgery. Bassett claimed that Penpons had assisted one Robert Byan and his wife Anne, Bassett’s daughter, in hiring a London craftsman, Robert Huchyn, to make an exact copy of his armorial seal, which they had then used to seal a forged deed by which Bassett had supposedly settled an annuity of £200 upon them. In October Bishop Lacy of Exeter and the royal justice Nicholas Aysshton* were ordered to investigate the complaint, and Penpons admitted having known both Bassett and the Byans for many years, but vehemently denied any knowledge of Huchyn or any involvement in the forgery. Moreoever, when Anne Byan was examined she stated that she had been taken and imprisoned by her father’s men, who sought to persuade her to abandon her husband and to agree to give false evidence against Penpons in court.41 Reg. Lacy (Canterbury and York Soc. lxii), iii. 125-9; Arundell mss, AR24/9. What was really at issue between the parties, though, may have been property rights at Redruth: in the spring of 1453 Bassett claimed that Penpons and a group of associates had in the autumn of 1452 damaged the banks of the canal that conducted water to his mill there.42 CP40/769, rot. 479d. A settlement was evidently reached before too long, for in the spring of 1457 Bassett included both Richard and his putative kinsman Martin Penpons among the feoffees of his estates, and employed another relative, Ralph Penpons, as attorney to deliver seisin, while in 1463, after Bassett’s death, Richard was among the witnesses who attested the settlement by the Byans of part of Anne’s inheritance on Sir John Arundell of Lanherne and his wife Katherine. 43 CCR, 1454-61, p. 226; J. Maclean, Trigg Minor, iii. 281; Arundell mss, AR2/740; AR7/7; AR24/9.

Despite his somewhat dubious role in these affairs, Penpons also secured office under the Crown. He was appointed to a number of royal commissions in the course of the 1450s, and from late 1451 served as a j.p. in his native Cornwall. He took his duties in the latter capacity seriously, and was one of the most regular attenders at the sessions throughout the decade. It may be suggestive of the respect he commanded that the sheriff’s indenture recording the Cornish shire elections of 1455 explicitly noted his attendance as a member of the county bench.44 E101/554/42/3-6; C219/16/3. In the south-west – a region already in turmoil on account of the exploits of Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, and an increasingly violent dispute between the burgesses of Bodmin and their lord, the local prior – the elections of 1455 were a particularly delicate affair, which might well warrant the formal attestation of the Cornish indenture by j.p.s. It is probable that it was the impartiality which was ascribed to Penpons on this occasion which also allowed for his service to both the administration dominated by Queen Margaret in 1458-9, and Richard, duke of York’s short-lived government in the closing months of 1460: although he was appointed to commissions of array by the queen’s party in February and December 1459, the Yorkists saw fit to commission him to investigate acts of piracy in the far south-west on at least two separate occasions in the second half of 1460, and following Edward IV’s accession he was once more appointed to the critical commission of array. In the summer of 1461 he was also added to the Devon bench, but as his services were needed in the far west this appointment was revoked just five months later. Further ad hoc commissions in Cornwall followed in subsequent months.

Penpons had maintained his old ties with the Arundells of Lanherne, and he now served Sir John Arundell as steward of his own estates, as well as in the capacity of deputy steward of the hundred of Penwith which Arundell held in fee from the duchy of Cornwall.45 Arundell mss, AR1/358; C1/28/1A. In the latter capacity, however, Penpons now clashed violently with other local officers of the Crown and of the powerful earl of Warwick. On 1 Oct. 1462, when holding a hundred court at Redruth, he was assaulted ‘in riotouse and heynouse wyse’ by an armed gathering of 120 men led by two local landowners, John Trenewith* and Richard Joce†, who had earlier in the year been implicated in an attack on Penpons’s landholdings in the neighbourhood. Complaining to the chancellor, Penpons claimed that he had only barely escaped with his life by slipping away as best he could and abandoning the court’s proceedings. Trenewith and Joce by contrast claimed that on the day in question they had come to hold a lawcourt at ‘Trelegh Weles’, one of the earl of Warwick’s manors near Redruth, and had been accompanied by no more than 16 of their servants. Having gained knowledge of the planned court of the rival jurisdiction, which might well have drawn suitors away from his own court, Penpons had assembled some 120 armed men and drawn them up in battle order in a field nearby. He had then sent messengers to Trenewith and Joce and curtly informed them that they should desist from holding their court, for if they did ‘men should lye on the cresse’. Seeing the earl’s officers thus threatened, many of their friends and kinsfolk had intervened, ostensibly to keep the peace. All this Penpons denied and claimed that Trenewith and Joce in conjunction with the sheriff of Cornwall, Sir Renfrew Arundell†, had deprived him of his rightful property in the name of the powerful earl, and fearful of challenging the greatest noble in the land he had himself travelled to London to put his case to Warwick’s council learned in the law. There he had presented his grievances to the earl’s councillors Thomas Colt* and Henry Sotehill, and Colt had procured instructions to Joce and Trenewith from Earl Richard, who was said to be ‘not oonly wrothe but gretly displesed’ and had ordered them to leave Penpons alone. This notwithstanding, the two men had resolved to rid themselves once and for all of the noisome lawyer who had blackened their names with their master and let it be known that if he should chose to appear at Redruth to hold his lawcourt on the customary day, 1 Oct., he should be met and should not go home again with his ‘hele’. Yet, mindful of his standing as a j.p. in the county, Penpons had nevertheless determined to do his duty and hold the court, and had brought a large number of armed men with him for his protection.46 C1/28/1; C253/38/99, 116; 39/98-99. The dispute with Trenewith continued to simmer in subsequent years. In March 1464 Penpons was said to have damaged the ditch supplying his opponent’s water-mill at Baripper near Penpons (in Crowen) and in July he assaulted Trenewith’s servants there and carried off 30 feet of black tin.47 CP40/818, rots. 314, 437.

Although he continued to serve as a j.p. for much of the 1460s, Penpons’s final years were overshadowed by a dispute over a debt of £70 brought by the wealthy esquire John Broughton against him and his son-in-law, Richard Kendale. In February 1467 the sheriff of Cornwall was ordered to arrest Penpons and Kendale and keep them in prison until they had paid, and a few months later the seizure of Kendale’s estates was ordered.48 CP40/821, rot. 434; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 410, 443. It is not certain why no similar measures were taken against Penpons, and it is possible that he had died in the interim, for he had been omitted from the Cornish bench the previous summer and is not heard of subsequently. Penpons was survived by his wife, Amy, who by the end of Richard III’s reign had married Sir Emanuel Assanus, an alien knight of uncertain origins, and a son, John. Since 1454 John had been known as ‘of Tregoose’, and may therefore have been endowed with some of his murdered uncle’s estates. It was probably he who served as escheator of Devon and Cornwall in 1471-2 and as portreeve of Helston three years later. His son, also called John, was later forced to bring legal action against Sir Emanuel Assanus’s feoffees to recover his grandmother’s estates for the Penpons family.49 C1/53/168; 55/103-4; Genealogist, n.s. xxv. 42; CP40/925, rot. 323d; KB27/774, rot. 13; CFR, xxi. 83; SC6/822/2, m. 6.