Helston

The westernmost parliamentary borough in England, Helston had first sent burgesses to the Commons in 1298 and owed the continuation of its representation throughout the Middle Ages more to its status as a duchy of Cornwall borough and focal point of the duchy manor of Helston-in-Kerrier than to any particular economic or strategic importance. From their pre-Black Death heyday when the surrounding stannary district of Penwith and Kerrier had been the richest in Cornwall, the borough and manor of Helston underwent a steep economic decline, which even a short-lived recovery in the early years of the fifteenth century did little to stay. Helston remained one of the less populous boroughs in the county: at the time of the 1377 poll tax just 188 men and women over the age of 14 were recorded living there.1 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 299-300.

Since the thirteenth century Helston had formed part of the estates of the earls and dukes of Cornwall, but on a number of occasions it passed out of the direct control of the duchy for long periods of time by virtue of royal grants or endowments. Thus, from 1376 to 1385 Richard II’s mother, the dowager princess of Wales, held the manor and borough in dower, and almost immediately after their reversion to the Crown the King granted them to his standard bearer, Sir Nicholas Sarnesfield, for life, subsequently adding the provision that Sarnesfield and his wife, Margaret, might hold the property in survivorship. In 1399, following Richard’s deposition, the widowed Margaret Sarnesfield successfully petitioned Henry IV for a confirmation of her grant, but the usurper’s son, Henry of Monmouth, newly created prince of Wales and duke of Cornwall, had other ideas, sued her for the property in King’s bench, and in 1404 recovered it. Helston remained in the duchy’s hands until 1415, when Margaret was allowed to stake her claim, and had her grant of Helston renewed. In 1424, however, her title was once more called into question. That year, the young Henry VI’s council agreed to lease the manor and borough to two local men, Robert Treage* and Richard Penpons, a grant apparently – as the widow protested – made possible only by the fraudulent arraignment of a jury by Treage’s brother-in-law, Sir John Arundell II* of Trerice.2 CFR, xv. 72; C254/138/141. After unsuccessfully pursuing her claim at common law for five years, in early 1430 Margaret placed it before the Commons in Parliament. Her petition was not dealt with before the dissolution, but was referred to the lords of the council for determination, and all the widow gained was a writ of nisi prius, which proved of little use.3 PROME, x. 431-2. Margaret presented a fresh petition to Parliament in the following year. This time, however, her opponents were ready. In January 1431 both Arundell and Penpons attended the county elections at Lostwithiel, and arranged for Arundell’s elder son Nicholas* to be returned for Lostwithiel, while Penpons himself took one of Helston’s seats. It seems, however, that once again the petition was referred to the council which in July found in Margaret’s favour, and ordered an inquiry into any wastes in the manor caused by Penpons and Treage during their tenure.4 Ibid. x. 482; xi. 65; SC8/25/1243; CPR, 1429-36, pp. 107, 133, 275. The two men were, however, far from defeated, and when Parliament next met in May 1432 Margaret Sarnesfield was forced to present yet another petition. It is perhaps a measure of the control that her opponents still exercised in Helston that Penpons once again took one of the borough’s seats, and Sir John Arundell was also present in the House as one of the knights for Cornwall. The petition nevertheless received a favourable reply in Parliament, and finally settled the matter in the lady’s favour, leaving Helston in her hands until her death 12 years later.5 PROME, xi. 26. On their reversion to the duchy, the King settled the manor and borough in survivorship on the rapacious courtier John Trevelyan* and John Arundell of Lanherne, who retained them until deprived by the Act of Resumption of 1450.6 CPR, 1441-6, p. 322. In December of that year, Helston was farmed to another courtier, John Nanfan*, for a term of seven years,7 CFR, xviii. 182, 199; SC6/816/4, m. 2. and on its expiry Helston reverted to the duchy (then held by the young Prince Edward) for the first time in a generation.

Little is known of the borough’s internal affairs, but under the terms of a charter granted by King John in 1201 the burgesses were allowed to form a guild merchant and given exemption from toll and from pleading outside their own borough throughout England. The burgesses’ exemption from toll in particular caused some friction with other towns, as for instance in 1446, when the privilege was challenged by the townsmen of Southampton, who claimed that the men of Helston were liable for toll, as their own privileges predated those of the Cornish borough.8 KB145/6/25. Helston’s chief officers were its two portreeves, technically duchy appointees, but in practice probably chosen by the burgesses themselves. From 1414-15 the senior of the two, who had traditionally rendered account at the duchy exchequer for the town’s fee farm, adopted the title of mayor. Neither the manner nor the date of the officials’ annual election or appointment is recorded, but it seems to have taken place somewhat later than Michaelmas, perhaps at the feast of St. Katherine. Nevertheless, the borough charter of 1585 which may to some extent have codified existing practice, provided for the mayor’s election during the month of September.9 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 301; C66/1270.

As obscure as the conduct of the borough’s internal affairs are the procedures and franchise that governed Helston’s parliamentary elections. Throughout the reign of Henry VI the names of the borough’s MPs were recorded by the sheriff of Cornwall on a schedule accompanying the election indenture, naming the men elected and occasionally their sureties, but never giving any hint of where or by whom they had been chosen. In the first decade of the reign there is no evidence to suggest that successive sheriffs’ returns did not in fact reflect the will of the burgesses, but from 1435 the schedules and indentures give rather more cause for concern. In 1435, the name of Nicholas Aysshton was inserted into the sheriff’s indenture over an erasure, but no similar alteration is in evidence on the accompanying schedule, perhaps indicating that the emendation was nothing more than a simple correction of a scribal error.10 C219/14/5. By contrast, in 1437 Thomas Tregodek’s name replaced one previously erased on both the indenture and the schedule,11 C219/15/1. while in 1447 (by which date the names of the parliamentary burgesses no longer appeared on the indenture) both of Helston’s representatives were inserted over erasures,12 C219/15/4. as was Thomas Penarth in the schedule for the Parliament of 1449 (Nov.).13 C219/15/7. No explanation for Tregodek’s return has come to light, but one of the MPs of 1447, William Menwenick, was attorney-general to Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, then steward of the duchy of Cornwall, who might not have been able to exert much influence in Helston, but could certainly make his presence felt at the shire court; while in 1449 Penarth was probably already closely associated with John Trevelyan, who at that date not only held Helston at farm, but actually presided over the Cornish elections as sheriff.

The names of Helston’s representatives are known for 17 of the 22 Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign: no names have been discovered for the assemblies of 1439, 1445, 1450, 1459 and 1460. The 34 seats for which the MPs’ names are known were divided up between as many as 24 men, all but four of whom represented Helston only once in this period (although two of them – Vivian and Richard – had each claimed a Helston seat in the latter years of Henry V). Of the remaining four, Penarth sat twice (in the two politically charged Parliaments of 1449), while David Urban was elected for the constituency on three occasions between 1422 and 1427, Richard Penpons claimed four Helston seats between 1431 and 1442, and Nicholas Aysshton was the borough’s most consistent representative, being returned for the borough five times between 1422 and 1435. Aysshton’s parliamentary career also stood out in a wider context. He was returned to the Commons in no fewer than ten Parliaments between 1421 and 1439 in the service of the shire of Cornwall and three of its boroughs, before being summoned to attend the Lords in his judicial capacity on a further 11 occasions. Although none of Helston’s other MPs could match this record, several nevertheless built up respectable parliamentary careers of their own. Like Penpons (who took a Lostwithiel seat in 1435), Aysshton’s factotum Robert Clay sat in a total of five Parliaments, representing the boroughs of Liskeard, Plympton Erle and Truro after his single return for Helston. Along with Urban (who had been MP for Bodmin in 1421) William Menwenick and William Richard sat four times each, respectively finding seats at Launceston and Truro, and Nicoll’s and Rescruk’s respective returns for Bodmin and Truro took each of them to the Commons on three separate occasions. Four men (Archer, Baron, Hert and Roger Treouran I) each sat once for another constituency.

In spite of the overall high proportion of Helston’s MPs who apparently only ever sat in the Commons once, the repeated returns of Aysshton and Urban in particular meant that during Henry VI’s minority the borough was regularly represented by men with prior parliamentary experience. Thus, as many as 14 of the 22 Helston seats in those years (up to and including 1437) were taken by men who had previously sat in the Commons, and on four occasions in those early years of the reign (in 1422, 1423, 1425 and 1427) both Helston Members were so qualified. Conversely, only in 1433 had neither of the borough’s MPs previously been returned, and it is probable that this circumstance was a direct consequence of the town’s recent removal from the custody of Treage and Penpons back into the possession of Margaret Sarnesfield. Similarly, it may be inferred that the return in 1426 of the Bodmin lawyer and duchy official John Nicoll alongside the undistinguished newcomer Stephen Morys resulted from the difficulty of finding men willing to travel to the provincial town of Leicester rather than a change in the attitude of the local electorate. The relative stability of Helston’s parliamentary representation in the early years of Henry VI’s reign stands in striking contrast to that of the reigns of the first two Lancastrians, although the fragmentary survival of the returns (extant for just 13 of the 21 parliaments which met during the period 1399-1421) may somewhat understate the true level of parliamentary experience commanded by Helston’s Members in that period.

After 1437, the pattern of Helston’s representation changed once more. The evidence for Henry VI’s majority is incomplete, with returns surviving for only six out of the 11 Parliaments that met between 1439 and 1460, while the loss of the returns for 1439 and 1445 makes it impossible to tell when exactly the change occurred. The impression from the incomplete run of returns is that in the second part of the reign it was rare indeed for Helston to return an experienced MP. Just three of the 12 seats for which names are known between 1439 and 1460 were taken by men who had previously sat in the Commons, and of these only a single one was directly re-elected.

One factor that made many of the men who represented the borough between 1422 and 1460 reluctant to seek election on more than one occasion may have been Helston’s extreme remoteness from the meeting places of Parliament, for a high proportion of the borough’s MPs did come from the western third of Cornwall. Hert, Lannargh and Vivian came from Helston itself (although the first probably spent most of his time at Westminster), Penrose lived in the adjacent parish of Sithney, and Gerveys apparently had houses both in Helston and at Bonallack near the port of Gweek. Penpons normally resided at Redruth, Richard at neighbouring Lelant, Urban at Penryn, and Rescruk in the parish of St. Anthony in Meneage. The Treourans owned property in the parishes of Sancreed, Ruan Major and Grade. Several other Members came from central Cornwall: Nicoll and Baron from Bodmin, Borlase from neighbouring St. Wenn, and Sage from Grampound to the south. Conversely, Aysshton and his servant Clay divided their time between Callington in the east of the county and Westminster; Menwenick, who normally lived in Lostwithiel, also had a house at Trewen; and Tregodek lived at South Petherwin and Penarth at Morval in the south-east of the county. The residences of Bolepyt and Morys are unknown, but they do at least appear to have been of Cornish extraction. Only Archer, who came from Warwickshire, and Newton, who probably hailed from eastern Devon, were complete outsiders.

A number of Helston’s MPs in the period under review came from families with traditions of parliamentary service, or themselves helped to establish such traditions. Thus Borlase and Penrose followed their fathers into the Commons, where Archer’s maternal grandfather and Menwenick’s great-grandfather had also sat. The elder Treouran was joined in the Commons by his son, while Aysshton, Borlase and Nicoll were followed there by their respective offspring. Penpons’s father-in-law and brother-in-law were both MPs, as was Urban’s more remote kinsman John Urban†, who had in fact at one time also represented Helston.

The relative obscurity of several of the MPs makes a full analysis of their occupations difficult, but it seems that – as might be expected – the number of trained men-of-law among them increased over the course of the fifteenth century. Whereas just seven of the 31 men who had sat in Commons for the borough between 1386 and 1421 had been lawyers, and during the period when the borough was under the duchy of Cornwall’s direct control the return of such professionals had been positively frowned upon, half of the 24 men who represented Helston under Henry VI practised the law in some way, several of them with some distinction. Menwenick was a member of Lincoln’s Inn, Richard had trained at Furnival’s Inn and Archer had joined the Inner Temple. More distinguished still was Aysshton who rose through the ranks of his profession to become a serjeant-at-law and ultimately a justice of common pleas. In his wake, Clay (for many years Aysshton’s loyal servant) rose through the clerical branch of the profession to gain promotion from the position of clerk of the peace into the ranks of the associate justices of assize. By contrast, Hert’s clerical career never took him beyond the confines of the Exchequer, but the omnipresence of the common law in royal administration makes it almost certain that he, too, possessed some legal knowledge. The county coroners Nicoll and Roger Treouran I, as well as Sage and Penpons, who served as under sheriffs, came from the social group of minor lawyers willing to fill these offices, while Archer, Richard, Tregodek and Urban all acted as other men’s attorneys at one stage or another of their careers. By contrast with the substantial number of lawyers, no artisans or merchants have been definitely identified among Helston’s representatives. It appears that Gerveys, Lannargh, Penarth, Penrose, Rescruk and Vivian all made a living off the land, and in addition to his legal practice Urban also had interests in the tin industry.

It may be a measure of how far Helston’s parliamentary representation in Henry VI’s reign had become gentrified that at least four of the borough’s MPs played an active part in the French wars. Gerveys sailed to France in the retinue of Hugh Courtenay, earl of Devon, in 1420, and Lannargh did likewise in 1428 in that of Thomas Montagu, earl of Salisbury. Later in the wars, Archer travelled in the train of Sir Henry Norbury* in 1435, while Tregodek crossed the Channel with the duke of York in 1441. Hert never went to war himself, but for much of the 1430s was kept busy requisitioning shipping for successive expeditions. Once the English possessions in France had been lost, and England itself had descended into civil war, other Helston MPs found outlets for their warlike exploits at home. Newton was part of the earl of Devon’s host that sacked the manor-house of William, Lord Bonville*, at Shute in December 1455, and Archer could claim similar justification for his part in the defence of the Tower of London against the soon-to-be victorious Yorkists in the summer of 1460 (a misjudgement for which he paid with his head just days after the garrison’s surrender).

In the absence of comprehensive local records that would allow for the compilation of a full list of local office holders, it is impossible to tell to what extent Helston’s MPs were drawn from the ranks of those who also held borough office, but among those who represented the borough during the reign of Henry VI were at least two men who also held the mayoralty: Gerveys, who represented the borough in 1432, served as mayor in 1456-7 and as (possibly senior) portreeve in 1461-2, while Lannargh, the mayor of 1434-5 and 1448-9, on the first occasion may well have presided over his own election to the Commons.

Probably as a result of the borough’s removal from the duchy of Cornwall’s control, holders of other duchy offices played little part in Helston’s parliamentary representation. Just three of the MPs during the reign of Henry VI ever held duchy office, and all of them did so some time after their elections. This is not to say that the borough’s overlords and other men of influence in western Cornwall did not influence the returns. It seems evident that Penpons procured his first two elections for Helston by virtue of his tenure of the manor and borough (and, indeed, in defence of it), while the return of two newcomers in 1433 after Margaret Sarnesfield had recovered her title has already been noted. The influence of the duchy may have at least indirectly come into play in the return in 1447 of Menwenick, who at the time was attorney-general to the earl of Devon, then (disputed) steward of the duchy, while Penarth’s two elections in 1449 unquestionably owed much to his links with John Trevelyan, who then controlled the borough. Like Menwenick, the Devonian Newton may have owed his return for Helston to Earl Thomas’s influence, and there can be little doubt that Archer and Baron were the nominees to the Parliament of 1453 of Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, who in that year’s elections asserted his influence across the south-west. The Treourans were closely connected with the de Vere earls of Oxford who had landed interests in Cornwall on account of the inheritance of Countess Alice, one of the heiresses of Sir Richard Cergeaux†, and had recently further strengthened their influence in the region by the marriage of Alice’s younger son, Sir Robert de Vere*, to one of the daughters of Sir Hugh Courtenay† of Haccombe. Within the ranks of the regional gentry, Morys was connected to the Bodrugans of Bodrugan and Penpons and Sage to the powerful Arundells of Lanherne, but there is no concrete evidence to suggest that either of these families played any part in securing their return to the Commons. Nevertheless, in the second half of the 1440s the heirs of both families were in the wardship of the King’s principal minister, William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, and thus added to the pool of patronage available to the duke’s circle at court which also included Trevelyan, both lord of Helston and sheriff of Cornwall.

If none of Helston’s MPs had held duchy office prior to their return, a few of them had at least made a name in the county by holding Crown office. Baron, Nicoll, Penrose, Sage and Roger Treouran I had all been appointed to royal commissions, Menwenick had served as county escheator and on the sheriff’s staff, and Penpons and Sage had been under sheriffs. Nicoll and Treouran had both been tax collectors and were serving county coroners at the time of their elections for the borough. By contrast, Aysshton, Menwenick, Penpons and Rescruk all went on to serve as commissioners at varying stages after representing Helston; Aysshton, Menwenick, Penpons and Sage were appointed to the Cornish bench; Aysshton and Clay served as justices of assize, and the latter became clerk of the peace and (like Penpons) a sheriff’s officer. Baron became controller of customs for a brief spell, while Urban and Rescruk were appointed to collect parliamentary subsidies. Archer’s career of office-holding was restricted to his native Midlands, and Hert’s (beyond his office at the Exchequer) to eastern England.