TREMAYNE, Thomas I

Originally from Cornwall, by the later years of Edward III’s reign the Tremayne family had established a branch in Devon. Thomas Tremayne’s grandfather had married Isabel, one of the heiresses to some of the estates of the Trenchards of Collacombe, who survived him and as her second husband married Sir John Daumarle†. As a result of this relationship, Daumarle had enfeoffed his stepson, Nicholas Tremayne, of certain lands, with the intention that after his death Nicholas should settle them on his mother. However, following Sir John’s and Isabel’s deaths, Nicholas entered the estates and Daumarle’s rightful heirs, the descendants of his sister Clarissa, tried in vain to recover them.6 CIPM, xix. 452; CCR, 1405-9, pp. 301-2; C1/7/73; 68/69; C254/138/33; Feudal Aids, i. 395, 445, 493. The two lines would eventually be reunited by the marriage of Tremayne’s gds. Peter Edgcombe† to Joan, da. and h. of James Dernford of West Stonehouse (and wid. of Charles Dynham† of Thorne), a descendant of Clarissa Daumarle: The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 82; C1/7/73; 68/69.

Nicholas further augmented his landholdings by his marriage to one of the coheiresses of the Doddiscombe family, through whom he acquired a share in the manor of Doddiscombeleigh. The property which thus eventually passed to his son Thomas included the Devon manors of Rake, South Sydenham, Collacomb, North Huish, Whitchurch and Tedburn, as well as over 1,000 acres of land in the county, some years later altogether assessed at over £45 p.a.7 CIPM Henry VII, ii. 717; C140/80/34; Feudal Aids, i. 445, 446, 486, 493. Some of these estates were held from the abbot of Tavistock, lord of the borough of Tavistock, where the Tremaynes owned a house, and it is likely that it was this connexion which, along with the family’s wealth, secured Thomas’s return to Parliament for the borough in 1429, when his father was still alive.

By the end of the 1430s, Nicholas Tremayne had begun to put his affairs in order, and in March 1438 he settled his manor of North Huish on his son and heir in return for an annual rent of £20. Six months later, Nicholas was dead, and Thomas entered his full inheritance. In the first instance, however, he was forced to fend off a challenge by his younger brother William, who claimed that it was he, rather than Thomas, on whom their father had settled North Huish. William, a somewhat simple and malleable individual, had fallen in with two rather sharper operators, in the persons of the influential landowner Roger Champernowne* (who quite possibly sought to gain North Huish for himself) and the notable Devon lawyer Nicholas Radford*. Apparently by Radford’s agency, William procured a deed sealed with his father’s seal which supported his claim. Thomas Tremayne, for his part, called upon the support of another Lincoln’s Inn-trained lawyer, Sir John Speke*, whose investigations turned up an Exeter goldsmith prepared to testify that William Tremayne and Radford’s clerk Roger Castel had asked him to repair a badly made lead signet with an escallop similar to that of Nicholas Tremayne. From this point on, the original object of the dispute increasingly drifted into the background as the mutual recriminations and insults exchanged by Radford and Speke grew ever more acrimonious and damages of £4,000 were demanded by both parties.8 CP40/714, rot. 320; 715, rot. 247d; C1/39/142; C254/143/87; CPR, 1436-41, p. 273.

Ultimately, Thomas Tremayne retained North Huish, and settled it, along with his seat at Collacombe, on his wife, Elizabeth, a daughter of one of the most important landowners in the region, Sir Thomas Carew.9 C140/80/34. Although this marriage combined with his landed wealth significantly enhanced his standing in the county, throughout his life Tremayne successfully avoided Crown office, with the sole exception of a brief spell as a tax collector in 1445. Nor is there any evidence that he took an active interest in parliamentary matters, for despite his own early return he is not known ever to have attended another election.

It is thus possible that his second return to the Commons, some 20 years after his first, was directly connected with a brutal murder in which he had become implicated. Once again, it seems, it was his unstable brother William who drew him into the affair. On a Sunday night in July 1447, so the county bench heard not long after, William and a group of associates had broken into the house of Richard Maynard at Ottery, and had killed his servant Robert Lilea, a ‘harper’. It took ten further days for a coroner’s inquest to be held, which found that far from having been intentionally slain in his master’s house, Lilea had met his death by misadventure, when he had accidentally interposed himself between his master and one John Skynner of Lamerton, whom Maynard and Lilea had ambushed with murderous intent. Thomas Tremayne had no part in the incident, but was evidently aware of the death when he received his brother and his associates back into his house, and he repeatedly found sureties for them, as the process of law over the matter continued. For Lilea’s widow this was sufficient to appeal him as an accessory to murder, and it may have been to pre-empt a possible attempt at a petition to Parliament that Tremayne secured election by the burgesses of Tavstock around the same time.10 KB27/746, rex rots. 2d, 24, 28, 45d; 751, rots. 24, 35d; 752, rots. 30d, rex 8d.

There is no certain evidence of Tremayne’s attitude in the dynastic conflict of 1459-61, but he may have opportunistically used it to settle personal scores. Thus, in March 1461 he was said to have been one of the leaders of an armed band (the other principals being William Horde and William Antron† of Fowey and William Devyok of Ottery) who sacked the houses and property of Thomas Wyse* at Sydenham and Raddon.11 KB27/801, rot. 2; 807, rots. 31d, 35. In other respects, too, the 1460s were troubled times for Tremayne. Since at least the later 1450s, he had been pursued by Thomas Shepton, one of the executors of Sir John Speke, for a debt of £77 2s. 10d., probably dating back to the dispute over North Huish. In 1443, not long after Speke’s death, Tremayne had come to terms with Shepton’s co-executrix, Speke’s widow Joan, and her second husband, Hugh Champernowne alias Rowe, and secured an acquittance, but with Joan’s death in 1462 the road was clear for Shepton to renew his quest for the money.12 CP40/808, rot. 363; 818, rot. 346. A few years later, Tremayne’s title to some of his Cornish property was challenged by several members of a branch of the prolific Trenewith family, who claimed it as their own, while Tremayne maintained he had merely enfeoffed Nicholas Trenewith of the holding.13 CP40/826, rot. 324; C1/54/33.

Tremayne was able to contract profitable marriages for several of his children. His eldest son, Laurence, married a daughter of John Penrose II* of Methleigh, Cornwall,14 CAD, iv. A8840; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 50. while Laurence’s sister Joan became the wife of (Sir) Richard Edgcombe†, whose son for his part went on to marriy the heir of the Daumarles.15 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 82; C1/7/73; 68/69. By the date of Tremayne’s death on 1 Feb. 1481, Laurence was already dead, so his heir was his 30-year-old second son, John (d.1503).16 C140/80/34; CIPM Henry VII, ii. 717. Laurence is named as s. and h. in CAD, iv. A8840.