PENROSE, John I

The family tree of the Penrose family in the fifteenth century is a complex one, and little is known of the numerous younger scions who led lives of comparative obscurity. It does, however, appear that there were at least four John Penroses of substance active in Henry VI’s reign. Two of these are unlikely to have represented Truro in the Parliament of 1435, for one was a London tailor, while the other, the son of a disgraced royal justice, was ‘fatuus a nativitate sua … et non sane mentis’.2 CPR, 1452-61, p. 379; C139/127/28. A tax assessment of 1451 records two further men, one of whom may be identified with some certainty with John Penrose II* of Methleigh, who represented Helston in the Commons in 1442.3 E179/87/92. The remaining man, who is likely to have been the Truro MP of 1435, was the son and heir of a substantial Cornish knight, Sir Vivian Penrose. He had succeeded to his father’s property before the autumn of 1435, when the London ironmonger John Hatherley* sued him for a debt of £23 6s. 8d.4 CP40/699, rot. 563d. In spite of John Penrose’s denial on this occasion that he had ever resided in Truro, or been known by this address (a common procedural ruse), he was probably the John Penrose ‘of Truro’ who served on a local jury in the summer of 1439,5 CP40/718, rot. 319d. and may also be identified with the John Penrose ‘of Truro, gentleman’, who was granted a royal pardon in 1446.6 C67/39, m. 14. Certainly, Penrose seems to have fulfilled the statutory requirement for residence in the borough he represented in the Commons at least in so far as he owned in house in St. Nicholas Street.7 Cornw. RO, Arundell mss, AR2/909-10.

Penrose had good reason to avail himself of the general pardon on offer in 1446, for some time previously he had been accused by Walter Wymond of Fowey of harbouring one Michael Route, ‘a commune Rover a ponne the see’ who had robbed Wymond of his goods and abducted his wife. When Route had been arrested by a j.p. in Penrose’s house at Truro, his host had evidently succeeded in giving an impression of respectability and innocence, despite having regularly taken his share of Route’s ill-gotten gains, but had nevertheless contrived to arrange for the pirate’s escape from prison and out of the county.8 C1/74/92. Despite such disreputable behaviour, Penrose may have been a more substantial man than his relative obscurity would suggest. It was as John Penrose ‘esquire’ that in June 1441 he headed the list of witnesses to a settlement by the wardens of the fraternity of St. Mary Portall of their property in Truro,9 Cornw. RO, Truro bor. recs., B/TRU/19. and – if he was indeed one of the two John Penroses recorded in the Cornish tax assessment of 1451 – his annual income clearly exceeded the sum of £4 given there.10 E179/87/92.

In the absence of any corporate records of the borough of Truro it is impossible to tell what, if any, part Penrose played in the life of the town. His career is likely to have been a local one, for he never held office either under the Crown or the duchy of Cornwall, and the man who attended the Cornish shire elections of 1431 and January 1449 is likely to have been his namesake of Methleigh.11 C219/14/2; 15/6. Nothing further is known of Penrose, who died in the first half of 1463. It is, however, possible that he was the John Penrose who was succeeded by his son William about this time.12 CFR, xx. 94; Arundell mss, AR3/32.