RAWLYN, Peter

No details of this MP’s career have been discovered, but he may have been a local man, for a John Rawlyn† had represented Truro in Parliament in 1373, 1377, 1382 and 1384, and either the same man or a namesake had sat for Lostwithiel in 1381. The Rawlyns were closely connected with the great Arundells of Lanherne, from whom they held lands in the parishes of St. Erwan, St. Merryn, Lanivet and St. Enoder in western Cornwall.1 Cornish Lands of the Arundells ed. Fox and Padel, 55, 57, 95, 139. Through their ties with the Arundells, members of the family entered the service of the duchy of Cornwall: a John Rawlyn served as sub bailiff of the hundred of Penwith to Sir John Arundell I* between 1407 and 1411, either the same man or a namesake was reeve of the duchy manor of Tybesta in 1418-19 and 1432-3, and a Thomas Rawlyn held the same office in 1433-4, as well as serving as reeve in the manor of Penmayn in 1434-4, 1441-2, and 1448-9, an office in which several younger kinsmen followed him over the course of the later fifteenth century.2 SC6/815/1, m. 1; 820/2, m. 8; 3, rot. 5; 9, rot. 3; 821/3, rot. 4; 4, rot. 5d; 6, rot. 5d; 11, m. 14; 822/2, m. 9; SC6/HenVII/1079, rot. 8; 1084, m. 1. It was probably a yr. John Rawlyn who served a surety for the Bodmin MPs in 1447: C219/15/4.

It is possible that Peter Rawlyn’s election in 1442 also owed something to the local influence of the Arundells, for his colleague in the Commons, Nicholas Roche*, was an Arundell client from the parish of St. Merryn.