Cornwall

To many contemporaries, England’s westernmost county seemed a wild and forbidding place. In the early fourteenth century an archdeacon of Cornwall had complained about the ‘marvellous’ people of the county, characterized by rebelliousness and resistance to reform and correction, calling it ‘nedum in mundi finibus, set ... in finium finibus’;2 Reg. Grandisson ed. Hingeston-Randolph, i. 97. in 1506 a Venetian visitor wrote disparagingly of ‘a very wild place, where no human being ever arrives, in the midst of a most barbarous race, so different in language and customs from the inhabitants of London and the rest of England that they understand each other as little as we do’; and even in the mid sixteenth century the polemicist Andrew Boorde ridiculed the quality of Cornish ale and the litigiousness of those who drank it.3 H. Kleineke, ‘Why the West was Wild’, The Fifteenth Cent. III ed. Clark, 78-79; Introduction of Knowledge by Andrew Boorde ed. Furnivall (EETS, extra ser. x, 1870), 122.

In many respects, Cornwall was indeed distinct from the rest of England. Although the greater gentry and mercantile elites of the county could of necessity be expected to have a command of English (however heavily accented), in the far west Cornish was still widely spoken in the fifteenth century.4 Cornish Lands of the Arundells (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc. n.s. xli), p. cxxix; Reg. Grandisson, i. 97. The estate management practices of the Cornish gentry were conservative. The process of demesne leasing appears to have begun late, and numerous lawsuits over the manumission of villein tenants bear witness to the widespread survival of customary tenure into the reign of Henry VI and beyond. In addition, many tenements were held not in outright villeinage but in a form of tenure peculiar to the county know as tenure ‘by convention’, which survived into the early modern period.5 J. Hatcher, Rural Economy Duchy of Cornw. 52; idem, ‘Non-Manorialism in Med. Cornw.’, Agric. Hist. Review, xviii. 2-5.

As in many other coastal counties, shipping played an important part in the local economy, but legitimate trade aside, the rough Cornish coastline with its numerous creeks, bays and natural havens particularly lent itself to harbouring the vessels of pirates, and many otherwise legitimate mariners were not above occasional acts of privateering when an opportunity presented itself. Alongside shipping, the tin industry represented the other main pillar of the medieval Cornish economy. Cornish tin had been used throughout Europe since the days of the Romans, and in the fifteenth century provided an important part of the county’s wealth. By custom, the miners enjoyed considerable privileges and royal protection, and were allowed their own assemblies and law courts – the stannary courts presided over by the King’s bailiffs. The local gentry had a stake in both main branches of the Cornish economy. Many knights and esquires owned ships and engaged in acts of privateering. Among the more notorious were the earl of Devon’s cousin Sir Hugh Courtenay of Boconnoc and the courtier John Trevelyan, as well as the latter’s associates Thomas Tregarthen* and Thomas Penarth*, but other prominent members of the county community such as the Arundells, Sir John Colshull and many of those charged with investigating and redressing acts of piracy, like the lawyers Richard Penpons* and Richard Joce*, were also not above profiting from the spoils others had taken at sea.6 C.L. Kingsford, Prejudice and Promise, 95-105. Similarly, although most of the gentry did not directly engage in the mining of tin, the lord of the land on which a mine was situated took his share in ‘toll tin’, sold turves as fuel for the smelting of the ore, and often owned the blowing mills required to refine it, and thus indirectly profited from the labours of the tinners.7 Hatcher, Rural Economy, 186-9.

Nevertheless, Cornwall was not a wealthy county. In 1451 the collective annual revenues of all those of its inhabitants with incomes of 40s. and more was assessed as £1,660 (less than 10% of the assessment of the city of London and just one fifth of the wealth assessed in neighbouring Devon), placing Cornwall in the bottom third of English counties, roughly on a par with Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Berkshire and Derbyshire.8 R. Virgoe, ‘Parlty. Subsidy of 1450’, Bull. IHR, lv. 138. Yet the county’s limited wealth was spread comparatively widely. Thus, the tax assessors found that apart from John Arundell of Lanherne, whose annual income amounted to £200, and Sir John Colshull and Thomas Bonville, who respectively drew £120 and £66 p.a., there were three landowners with incomes of £40 p.a., and eight worth £20 p.a. Twenty-five men received between £10 and £13 each, 40 were assessed at between £5 and £9, and 60 had incomes of £3 or £4. Finally, there were 158 individuals with the minimum taxable income of 40s., while 38 others failed to meet the commissioners to be assessed. Moreover, the total taxed income of the county community probably represented something of an underestimate of the resources really at the disposal of those assessed.9 E179/87/92.

The political community of mid fifteenth-century Cornwall differed from those of other counties owing to the absence of a dominant resident magnate. Although several lords, including the Lords Botreaux of Boscastle, the Courtenay earls of Devon and (as a result of Richard II’s patronage) the Holand earls of Huntingdon and dukes of Exeter had estates in the county, none of them controlled sufficient land to be able to exercise an over-riding influence for any length of time. Equally, Cornwall differed from other shires in being the location of religious houses of only modest size and local, rather than even regional, importance. The greatest lay landowner in the shire was technically the duke of Cornwall, but from the accession of Henry V the duchy was almost permanently vested in the Crown, and the boundaries between its administration in the county and that of the King thus became blurred. At the head of the duchy administration stood the chief steward, whose office was for much of the century split into separate stewardships for Devon and Cornwall, while the chief financial officer was the receiver-general. The shrievalty of Cornwall was normally held in fee by the duke, but except during Prince Edward’s tenure of the duchy from 1457 to 1460, the Crown pricked the county’s sheriffs in the normal fashion. The escheatorship of Cornwall was shared with neighbouring Devon, but much of the escheator’s work in the county fell into the remit of the separate feodary and escheator of the duchy. The duchy’s central administration was completed by its bailiff itinerant and auditors. Nominally, the duchy controlled the eight Cornish hundreds, but in reality it appointed bailiffs only for the hundred of Powder, while the bailiwicks of the remaining hundreds were respectively held in fee by the priors of Bodmin, abbots of Newenham (in Devon) and a range of gentry families. The senior duchy officer in the administration of the stannaries in Devon and Cornwall was the warden of the stannaries, under whom duchy bailiffs presided over each of the four Cornish stannary districts of Tywarnhaile, Penwith and Kirrier, and Foweymore and Blackmore. The lesser offices in the duchy’s gift included parkerships of the four parks of Keribollok, Restormel, Liskeard and Helsbury and Lanteglos, constabularies of the castles of Launceston, Trematon, Tintagel, Lydford and Restormel, foresterships of the four parts of the forest of Dartmoor, and the posts of reeve, portreeve or bailiff of the various duchy manors and boroughs.

The absence of an adult duke of Cornwall or other resident magnate did nevertheless not preclude the sort of conflict generally associated with noble rivalries. In Cornwall, the duke’s authority was exercised by his steward in the county, and in 1402 Prince Henry had granted the office to Sir John Arundell I, who continued in post until 1430. By this date, the eclipse of the Holands as a result of their opposition to Henry IV’s usurpation, and the minority of Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, had left the government of the south-west dominated by the treasurer of England, Walter, Lord Hungerford†, and his associates, and it was to one of them, Hungerford’s son-in-law (Sir) Philip Courtenay* of Powderham, that the stewardship now passed. Courtenay’s replacement by his close friend Sir William Bonville*, later Lord Bonville, in 1437 heralded a crisis in the office’s authority, as just four years later an administrative error by Henry VI’s government caused the stewardship to be contested between Bonville and the earl of Devon for almost a decade, before the dispute was decided in Bonville’s favour by the Parliament of 1453. With the authority of the duchy steward diminished, the road was open for others to assert their influence by the exercise of patronage, and it was William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, who filled the power vacuum most effectively. De la Pole’s acquisition in 1442 of the wardship not only of the Arundell heir, but also of that of the young Henry Bodrugan†, heir to another of the greatest patrimonies in Cornwall, gave him an important foothold in the shire, and in subsequent years he not only succeeded in retaining the Arundell heir in his circle, but made use of the popularity both about the King and in the locality of the Cornish-born courtier John Trevelyan to broaden the base of his influence in the far south-west. By the mid 1440s Suffolk’s supporters in the region included the notorious Richard Tregoose, his brother-in-law Richard Penpons, and Thomas Sage I*.10 Cornw. RO, Arundell mss, AR19/5-7. Yet in the absence of any estates of his own in the county, and having only fleeting control of the Arundell and Bodrugan inheritances, Suffolk never established the degree of personal control in Cornwall that he secured in regions where the other royal duchy, that of Lancaster, was the dominant landowner. In the south-west, his influence was further tempered by the range of duchy of Cornwall offices acquired by courtiers who were natives of the region, such as Trevelyan and Thomas Bodulgate, and the disorder into which the duchy administration was thrown by the unseemly squabble between Bonville and the earl of Devon, as well as the natural truculence of the local gentry. Trevelyan and Bodulgate survived Suffolk’s fall, losing their duchy offices only for a brief period under the terms of the Act of Resumption of 1450.

The birth of Prince Edward in 1453 briefly offered the county the prospect of a future adult duke of Cornwall, and before long Parliament also settled the ongoing question of the duchy stewardship in favour of Bonville, by formally depriving the disgraced earl of Devon of his patent. In administrative terms at least, the far west remained relatively stable, as the earl faced down his rival in eastern Devon and Somerset. Bonville’s deft political realignment in the face of the King’s illness ensured that he remained at the head of the young prince’s administration until the end of the decade, although surrounded by other officers closely connected with the Court, including the experienced Trevelyan. It was the latter who in the aftermath of the Yorkist rout at Ludford Bridge in the autumn of 1459 was entrusted with the strategically important shrievalty of Cornwall. The region’s loyalties were divided in the months that followed, but after the Yorkist victory at Northampton in July 1460 the fate of the far west was decided by the recognition in Parliament of Richard, duke of York, as Henry VI’s heir, and the grant to him of the duchy of Cornwall along with the other estates and titles normally accorded to the heir apparent.11 PROME, xii. 526-9. A number of officials deemed too close to the Court, like Trevelyan and the duchy feodary Edward Ellesmere were replaced. The new appointees had little time to take up their posts before the duke of York’s death at Wakefield once more overturned the arrangements made just weeks earlier, and throughout the early months of 1461 Cornwall was once more in upheaval.

The elections of the knights of the shire were held in the county court, meeting either at Launceston or Lostwithiel. Election returns survive for 17 of the 22 Parliaments of the period; none are extant for the assemblies of 1439, 1445, 1450, 1459 and 1460. As a rule, the sheriffs’ indentures were counter-sealed by between 17 and 54 named men, figures which compare unfavourably with the 298 assessed for the income tax of 1451 as falling within the electoral franchise of the 40s. freehold, although the election returns of 1422, 1423, 1433, 1442, 1447 and 1455 all stated unequivocally that unspecified ‘others’ had also played a part in the election. The records of two elections stand out. The most strikingly unusual one is that of 1442, which was attested by no fewer than 196 men, and adopted a format different from that of earlier returns. Whereas previously the sheriffs of Cornwall had recorded the names of the burgesses elected by the boroughs in their county in the same indenture as those of the knights of the shire, and had then repeated this information in an accompanying schedule, the indenture of 1442 made no mention of the burgesses, and the list of names normally recorded in the separate schedule was on this occasion given on the indenture’s dorse. This change in practice cannot be blamed on lack of experience of the sheriff, Sir Thomas Whalesborough, for Whalesborough had presided over the Cornish elections as recently as December 1436 and had then recorded the result in the customary form. The number of attestors may suggest that the election of 1442 was contentious. While the attestors to Whalesborough’s indenture of 1436 had, unusually, been headed by Sir William Bonville, who within a year would be appointed to the duchy stewardship, they had also included Sir William Bodrugan, the two surviving sons of the recently deceased Sir John Arundell I of Lanherne (Sir Thomas and Sir Renfrew Arundell) and their kinsman Sir John Arundell II of Trerice.12 C219/15/1. In 1442 Bodrugan was recently dead, and the Arundell of Lanherne cadets were apparently absent (although Sir Renfrew was one of the successful candidates). To judge from the return, it was the influence of the Arundells of Trerice that carried the day: Sir John Arundell II and his son Nicholas* were prominent among the attestors, and the man returned along with Sir Renfrew was Sir John’s son-in-law, Bodulgate. Of the 196 named, three quarters are not known to have ever attested another election.

At the other end of the spectrum, just 14 named individuals were said to have been responsible for the choice of the shire knights in the Parliament of 1449 (Nov.).13 While 17 did so in 1419, 1421 (Dec.) and 1455. In view of the tense political situation which would eventually lead to the impeachment by the Commons of William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, it is tempting to suspect foul play, but beyond the unusually low number of attestors recorded on the election indenture and the difficulties subsequently encountered by one of the MPs in securing his parliamentary wages there is little evidence to support such a hypothesis. The sheriff was the courtier Trevelyan, who had already presided over the parliamentary elections of that spring, and who might have been expected to favour candidates supportive of Suffolk, but the two men elected do not seem to have been partisan. Both were still young, but not excessively so: John Trenewith was just 23, while his colleague Sir Hugh Courtenay was not much over 30. Trenewith had no previous parliamentary experience, but Courtenay had represented Cornwall in the Commons in the contentious Parliament at Bury St. Edmunds in 1447. At the time of his election, Trenewith had only recently come into his inheritance, which had previously been controlled by his kinsman, the Household esquire John Nanfan*. If Trenewith’s ties with Nanfan brought him in any sense into the orbit of the Household, the same could hardly be said of Courtenay, who was a cousin and close associate of the earl of Devon, whose disappointment over the duchy stewardship had put him in firm opposition to the Court. Nor does the composition of the recorded electorate of October 1449 necessarily point to any irregularity. Among the attestors were the four county coroners (William Bere, John Palmer*, Roger Treouran* and William Trethewy*), who were required to attend the county court ex officio, the mayor of Launceston, where the shire court met, and one of his predecessors (Thomas Lannoy II* and John Mayowe), and the mayor of Bodmin (Otto Nicoll*). The remainder were substantial men with incomes of between £3 and £20 p.a., most of whom regularly attended parliamentary elections: John Pentyre had previously witnessed six elections between 1420 and 1442, Thomas Uppeton had been present at those of 1432, 1442 and 1447, and Edward Coryton had sealed the indentures of 1432, 1433 and 1442. John Skenock, William Devyok and John Langedon had all attended an election on at least one other occasion, and only the last attestor, John Trecarell, had never done so. Perhaps more striking is the absence from the list of any knights and of representatives of the greater families in the shire who normally set their seals to the indentures: the Arundells, Carminowes and Bodrugans. If Trevelyan had in any way attempted to influence the elections, it seems that he failed to do so, and was at best able to procure the return of his follower Thomas Penarth* for the borough of Helston and that of the Northamptonshire lawyer Richard Pyttes* for Lostwithiel.14 The names of Penarth and Pyttes appear in the schedule accompanying the election indenture over erasures. Indeed, the availability of a surfeit of parliamentary seats in the county’s six boroughs normally rendered attempts at subverting the will of the shire electorate obsolete, and by the 1440s Membership of the Commons as a parliamentary burgess had become socially acceptable to the greater men of England. It had indeed been a Cornish borough that had begun the process of gaining acceptance for this practice, when in 1402 Sir Henry Ilcombe† had been elected by the burgesses of Lostwithiel, the first time a belted knight had entered the Commons as a representative of a borough.15 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 472-3.

Throughout Henry VI’s reign Cornwall’s knights of the shire were paid parliamentary wages at the customary rate of 4s. per day. In the early years of the century MPs from Cornwall had normally been allowed eight days for travel to Westminster, but from 1406 this allowance was reduced to seven days for each journey, probably in order to limit the financial burden on the county community.16 CCR, 1399-1402, pp. 107-8, 329-31; 1402-5, pp. 124-6, 366-7; 1405-9, pp. 281-3; 1413-19, pp. 102-3. Later in the century, eight days were allowed once more, but, in contrast to previous practice, MPs were no longer paid for more than a single journey to and from the meeting place of Parliament. Thus, in 1472 the county’s knights received a writ de expensis allowing them a total of 16 days’ travel, even though the Parliament met for seven sessions at widely spaced intervals,17 E13/164, rot. 37d. while the more complex allocation of 176 days for the 150-day Parliament of 1449 (Nov.) points to an allowance of 16 days for travel to and from London and Westminster, where the first two sessions were held, and an additional ten days for the third and final session at Leicester (which corresponded to the ten days permitted to the county’s representatives in the Leicester Parliament of April 1414).18 CCR, 1413-19, pp. 183-5. There is no suggestion that the knights normally experienced much difficulty in securing payment of what was owing to them, the sole documented exception being the troubled aftermath of the assembly of 1449 (Nov.), when John Trenewith complained that the sheriff, John Basset, had failed to pay him more than £31 6s. 8d. of the £35 4s. owing to him, an omission which may have owed more to the unrest which caused the Parliament to disband in some haste, and to the Parliament’s longevity than to any questions over Trenewith’s entitlement.19 E13/145A, rots. 1, 52d, 60d.

The names of Cornwall’s MPs are known for 19 out of the 22 Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign. Just 22 men divided these 38 seats up between them. In terms of the county’s parliamentary personnel two phases of roughly equal length may be distinguished. From 1422 to 1442 Cornwall’s representation was dominated by the ‘Great Arundells’ of Lanherne and their cadets, much as it had been in the reigns of Henry IV and Henry V. No fewer than eight of the 26 seats available during this period were taken by Sir John Arundell I ‘the magnificent’ and his three sons, and a further two were filled by their more distant kinsman Sir John Arundell II of Trerice. The remaining 16 seats were taken by other representatives of ancient Cornish gentry families, for the most part of knightly rank. Thus, Sir Ralph Botreaux, uncle of William, Lord Botreaux, sat in three Parliaments, Sir William Bodrugan took up a seat on four occasions, and Thomas Carminowe, from an old Cornish line (although normally resident in Devon), did so twice. Of the rest, the eminent lawyer and future judge Nicholas Aysshton took two seats, and members of the Herle, Fulford, Tretherf and Bonville families were each returned once. The first appearance of Thomas Bodulgate in the Commons in 1442 heralded the transition to a pattern of representation that was to become common for the remainder of the reign, although on this occasion Bodulgate seems to have been returned as a representative of the established Arundell of Trerice interest. Thereafter, it became common for at least one, and sometimes two of Cornwall’s MPs to possess strong ties with the royal household. Of the 12 seats for which the names of the MPs occupying them are known between 1445 and 1455, seven were claimed by the prominent courtiers Bodulgate, Daniell and Trevelyan and by the earl of Devon’s cousin Sir Hugh Courtenay, at one time one of the esquires of the Household. Furthermore, by the time of his return in February 1449 Tregoose was part of the duke of Suffolk’s circle in the county, and the election in 1453 of Sir John Colshull, who two years later was also the only Cornish representative to be summoned to the abortive great council at Leicester, may equally have owed as much to the favour he enjoyed at Court as to his wealth and standing in Cornwall.

Throughout the period, even during this second phase of the reign, the electors of Cornwall normally chose representatives who met the now statutory requirement for residence within the shire, at least in so far as they owned Cornish estates, even if they did not normally live there. Thus, John Arundell, Bonville, Carminowe and Fulford had their main seats in neighbouring Devon, while the courtiers Trevelyan and Bodulgate and the lawyer Aysshton spent large parts of the year in the south-east. Alone of Cornwall’s MPs, Daniell was a complete outsider without an acre of Cornish land to his name, and his return in 1445 was probably symptomatic of the hold over Cornish affairs that the King’s chief minister, the marquess of Suffolk, had established by that date.

It appears that when choosing their representatives the men of Cornwall attached some degree of importance to prior parliamentary experience. In seven of Henry VI’s Parliaments both Cornish Members had previously sat in the Commons, while in a further 11 at least one of them had done so. On no fewer than six occasions one of the MPs in the previous Parliament was directly re-elected. It is thus indicative of the unusual circumstances of the Parliament of 1447 (meeting at Bury St. Edmunds) that in this assembly alone both knights of the shire are known to have been complete novices. Most of Cornwall’s MPs elected in Henry VI’s reign had gathered their previous parliamentary experience in the service of their native county: the sole exceptions were Aysshton, who had sat in eight Parliaments as a burgess for one or other of the Cornish boroughs before first being returned by the county, and Tregoose, who had been a burgess for Bodmin some years prior to his election as a knight of the shire. The courtier Trevelyan alone had cut his parliamentary teeth outside the south-west, serving as a burgess for Huntingdon before seeking election in his native region.

It is in keeping with the electorate’s requirement for previous parliamentary experience that at least two of the MPs may be regarded as being among the foremost parliamentarians of the age: between 1397 and 1423 Sir John Arundell I of Lanherne sat in no fewer than 12 Parliaments under four successive monarchs, while the lawyer Aysshton was returned to the Commons on ten occasions between 1421 and 1439, before being summoned to attend the Lords as a justice of common pleas a further 11 times from 1445 to 1463. Several other Cornish Members also made their mark in successive Parliaments: Bodrugan, Botreaux and Daniell each sat five times and Sir Thomas Arundell, his brother John and Bodulgate four times, while Renfrew Arundell, Carminowe and Trevelyan were each Members of three Parliaments, while Sir John Arundell II, Courtenay, Tregoose and Tretherf of two.

Similarly appropriate to this pattern was the dominance in the county’s representation of successive generations of a small number of closely inter-related families. Of the few MPs not directly connected by ties of marriage and kinship, Aysshton owed his advancement to his professional skills as a lawyer, while the lack of social connexions possessed by the insubstantial gentlemen Bere and Nanskelly serves to emphasize the unusual political circumstances that allowed for their elections. The same absence of family ties illustrates the degree to which the courtier Trevelyan was an intruder into the political society of Cornwall. The importance which the Cornish electorate attached to the local standing of its MPs is further demonstrated by the often considerable experience of office-holding in the county that they could boast. Eight of the 22 MPs,20 John Arundell, Sir John Arundell I, Sir John Arundell II, Sir Thomas Arundell, Bonville, Carminowe, Colshull and Trevelyan. had held the shrievalty before their first return during Henry VI’s reign, and a further six went on to do so later in life.21 Renfrew Arundell, Bere, Bodrugan, Fulford, Herle and Daniell – the last in his native E. Anglia. Similarly, eight of Cornwall’s MPs had served on the county bench prior to their first election for Cornwall during this period,22 Sir John Arundell I, Sir John Arundell II, Sir Thomas Arundell, Aysshton, Bodulgate, Botreaux, Colshull and Herle. Botreaux was no longer a serving j.p. at the time of his return. Bere and Bonville were added to it while serving in the Commons, and five others joined them later. Just eight of the knights of the shire, more than half of whom were first elected in 1442 or later, never served as sheriff, while only John Arundell, Bodrugan, Carminowe, Nanskelly, Tregoose and Tretherf never joined the ranks of the Cornish j.p.s.23 Bodrugan was appointed in Nov. 1438, but his appointment was erased from the patent roll on the chancellor’s orders for reasons not recorded: CPR, 1436-41, p. 580.

Of the lesser offices under the Crown, Tretherf and Trevelyan had held the escheatorship before they first entered the Commons in this period, and Bere was a serving coroner at the time of his election. Thirteen of the 22 shire knights had been appointed to royal commissions before their first return, and Daniell, Tregoose and Trevelyan all received their first commissions as a direct result of their Membership of the Parliaments of 1445, 1449 (Feb.) and 1453 respectively, being instructed to distribute in the shire a rebate from the taxation granted by the Commons. Renfrew Arundell, Fulford, Nanskelly, Tregoose and Trenewith were thus unusual among Cornwall’s MPs in not having held any Crown office prior to their elections.

Probably as a consequence of the lack of a duke of Cornwall distinct from the King himself, the importance of the duchy officers among Cornwall’s representatives went into steep decline from its heyday in the reign of Henry IV. Whereas the duchy steward was returned to the Commons on ten occasions during the period 1386-1421,24 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 293. the only holder of the office to be elected under Henry VI was Sir John Arundell I, who was returned in 1422 and 1423. The only other knight of the shire to hold duchy office at the time of his election (Trenewith, who held the bailiwick of Trigg hundred by hereditary right, may be excluded from this consideration), was Trevelyan, who had for some years been bailiff itinerant and steward of the duchy lands in Devon, as well as keeper, constable and parker of a range of duchy estates in Cornwall. Bodulgate (who had occupied no duchy office when he was first returned for the county in 1442) was by the time of his re-election in 1445 sharing with Trevelyan the keepership of eight duchy manors and boroughs and went on to secure appointments as duchy parker, constable of the castle of Tintagel, and ultimately duchy havener in Cornwall.

The predilection of the Cornish electorate for choosing representatives with some experience of public life did not mean that its choices were in their majority old men. As far as the available evidence permits us to tell, Cornwall’s MPs in this period were usually in their 30s. Thus, Bodrugan was aged about 28 in 1426 and about 35 at the time of his last return, Carminowe first sat when he was about 31, Courtenay about 30, Colshull about 37, and the three sons of Sir John Arundell I were all in their 30s during most of their parliamentary service. The exceptions to the rule were Sir John Arundell I himself, who in 1422 was already in his late 50s, Tregoose who in 1449 was of a similar age, Botreaux, who in 1425 was over 40, and (Sir) Renfrew Arundell, the youngest of the Arundell sons, who by the time of his final return in 1442 was in his late 40s. At the lower end of the scale, Trenewith was hardly more than 23 when he sat in the Commons, and Herle (like Bodrugan) was about 28.25 Similarly, Bodrugan had been not much over 22 and Botreaux perhaps even younger when they first sat in the Commons in earlier reigns.

Although there is no indication that any magnates exerted undue influence over the Cornish elections during this period, it is worthy of note that several of the county’s representatives were in one way or another connected with the greater men with landholdings in the region, or influence at the centre of government. Thus, Aysshton served Humphrey, earl of Stafford, as steward of his manor of Caliland, Bodulgate was closely linked to the Holand dukes of Exeter, and Tregoose briefly officiated as one of the earl of Devon’s bailiffs. Renfrew Arundell was a servant of Cardinal Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, and accompanied the prelate to the Congress of Arras, while his kinsman Sir John II was retained by Humphrey, duke of Gloucester.

By whatever means they had secured their seats, Cornwall’s MPs were well placed to participate in the Commons’ deliberations, since many of them possessed first-hand experience of the French wars that loomed large in the proceedings of successive Parliaments. Sir John Arundell I, his sons John and Thomas, Bodrugan, Botreaux, Carminowe and Herle had all joined Henry V’s armies, while Tretherf and Sir John Arundell II had the distinction of having fought at Agincourt in the retinue of Edward, Lord Courtenay, and Bodulgate, Fulford and Tregoose campaigned in France in the 1430s. Appropriately for the representatives of a county characterized by its long coastline, Sir John Arundell I and Herle had served as vice-admirals to Thomas Beaufort, duke of Exeter, and Herle was actually serving in this capacity at the time of his election. By contrast, some of their fellows had achieved notoriety by open acts of piracy or serious criminal behaviour, including instances of torture and attempted, as well as successful murder. Having failed to dispose of his nephew, Lord Botreaux, by the crafts of a necromancer, Sir Ralph Botreaux had gone on to rid himself of the hapless magician by the more conventional means of two hired thugs, but had nevertheless secured election to the Commons shortly after, in 1427. Quite exceptional, even in Cornwall, were the criminal activities of Tregoose, who for more than 20 years raped, tortured and killed opponents in the vicinity of St. Columb Major. It is perhaps not surprising that more than one of Cornwall’s representatives died violently. Tregoose was murdered by John Tretherf’s son, and Fulford and Courtenay were executed for their continued Lancastrian loyalties respectively in 1461 and 1471, while Bodulgate met a somewhat more honourable end fighting at Barnet.

Cornwall’s knights of the shire were accompanied to Parliament by the representatives of no fewer than six parliamentary boroughs. Three of these (Lostwithiel, Dunheved in Launceston and Helston) were the property of the duchy of Cornwall; Bodmin was a seigneurial borough pertaining to the local priory with which the burgesses were in conflict for much of the mid fifteenth century; while Truro and Liskeard were by and large independent communities, subject to a range of local gentry families. None of these urban constituencies was, however, substantial enough to be able to resist the influence of a determined sheriff, and there is evidence to suggest that the holders of that office on repeated occasions returned pre-determined slates of Members to Westminster. Thus, the majority of the MPs returned by Trevelyan to the two Parliaments of 1449 were his associates, and in 1453 William Daubeney* found seats for several retainers of Henry Holand, duke of Exeter.