Truro

Truro was an ancient borough that could trace its privileges back to the mid twelfth century. Situated at the heart of the western tin-mining district of Cornwall, in the later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries the town was an important centre of the trade in the metal. In the second half of the fourteenth century, however, the deterioration of the town’s harbour and the rise of a number of rival ports along the river Fowey seriously affected Truro’s economic prosperity. During the same period, its population was decimated by plague, and, following a French raid in 1377, Truro was said to be ‘almost uninhabited and wholly wasted’. The remaining inhabitants may therefore not have been entirely unjustified in describing their home in a petition to the Crown as ‘la petite ville de Truruburgh’.1 SC8/76/3767. Nevertheless, at the turn of the century Truro was undoubtedly a mere shadow of its former self, and it was on account of this state of affairs that from 1379 to 1420 the contribution which the men of Truro owed to every parliamentary grant of a tenth was reduced by as much as £10 from the original £12 1s. 10d. The reduction was subject to periodic renewal, and when Henry IV’s grant of 1410 expired in 1420 the burgesses of Truro petitioned Henry V for its continuation. Although the townsmen sought the intervention of the duke of Bedford on their behalf, there is no suggestion that on this occasion their efforts met with any success.2 SC8/23/1119-21; PROME, viii. 219, 491. Indeed, it is not clear to what extent the town benefited from the general reduction in the rate of tax agreed by Parliament in 1433, for in 1437 the tax collectors for the county of Cornwall, who included among their number Thomas Rescruk (just a few years earlier one of Truro’s parliamentary representatives), declared themselves unable to levy in the town one and one third tenths, amounting to £16 2s. 5¼d. As a result of their failure the assize justices were ordered to inquire into the borough’s decay, but their findings are not recorded.3 Cornw. RO, Truro bor. recs., B/Tru/16.

If Truro’s importance as a centre of the mining industry and as a Channel port had diminished, it found itself instead at the heart of a less reputable, albeit no less profitable branch of the maritime economy. The town’s harbour continued to provide easy access to the narrow seas, while its sheltered position inland and the numerous small landing places at the mouth of the river Fal made it an ideal refuge for privateers and pirates alike. Throughout the period under review, numerous Truro men were implicated in acts of piracy, either at sea themselves or as hosts of pirates and receivers of stolen goods.4 C.L. Kingsford, Prejudice and Promise, 85, 88, 91; CPR, 1429-36, pp. 300, 301, 476; 1436-41, pp. 575-6; C1/20/19; 74/92.

In the twelfth century Truro had formed part of the estates of Richard de Lucy, Henry II’s chief justiciar, but after de Lucy’s death his estates had been divided up and by the fifteenth century the borough formally had no single overlord, although the Bodrugans of Bodrugan had a reasonable claim to be considered the dominant family, appointing bailiffs for the borough and formally exercising the patronage of the parish church. Nevertheless, the great Arundells of Lanherne and the Colshulls of Binnamy also held important properties within the town by right of inheritance from de Lucy and his successors.5 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 315-16; Cornw. RO, Edgcombe mss, ME1836, rot. 3; ME1837, rot. 5d; Cornish Lands of the Arundells (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc. n.s. xli), pp. xxxix, 120-1. In the absence of any pre-modern borough records it is difficult to glimpse anything of the town’s administration in the medieval period, but it appears that by 1411 its chief official used the title of mayor, under which one Richard Treffry attested the parliamentary election indenture of that year.6 C219/10/6.

Equally obscure is the procedure adopted in the election of the borough’s MPs. Truro had first sent representatives to the Commons in 1295, and had continued to make returns regularly thereafter. Until the Yorkist period the names of the representatives of the Cornish boroughs were returned to Westminster by the sheriff in the form of a schedule accompanying an election indenture which for its part might or might not include the names of the borough MPs with those of the knights of the shire. By 1467 the sheriff sealed separate indentures with the mayors and bailiffs of each borough, but the loss of all election returns between 1459 and 1463 makes it impossible to tell when this new administrative practice was first adopted. Even so, there is no reason to doubt that throughout Henry VI’s reign the elections were held locally and the results communicated to the sheriff for inclusion in his official return.

The names of Truro’s MPs are known for 17 out of the 22 Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign. No names have been found for 1439, 1445, 1450, 1459 and 1460. Twenty-five men divided these 34 seats between them. Of these, as many as 17 only represented Truro on a single occasion, and two others who had been returned by the borough before 1422 claimed only a single seat during the reign of Henry VI. Five further men represented Truro twice during the reign, but the borough’s most favoured choice was William Trethake, who took no fewer than six Truro seats between 1421 and 1433. Nevertheless, as a group Truro’s MPs, many of whom cut their teeth in the service of other constituencies, were a more experienced body of parliamentarians than these figures suggest. Particularly in the early years of Henry VI’s reign, a high proportion of the borough’s Members had prior experience of parliamentary service. Thus, of the 22 Truro seats available during the King’s minority, more than half were filled by men who had previously sat in the Commons, and on five occasions during this period (1422, 1425, 1429, 1431 and 1432) both of the borough’s MPs were so qualified. On four occasions during that period one of the Members was re-elected directly, and in 1432 both men who had represented the borough in the previous year were returned again. Conversely, however, there were also three Parliaments during these years (1426, 1427 and 1435) when both Truro Members appear to have been parliamentary novices. The evidence for Henry VI’s majority is less certain, as the returns for as many as five out of the 11 Parliaments that met between 1439 and 1460 have been lost. The sense provided by what remains is that as a body Truro’s representatives in this later period were less experienced: just four of the 12 seats for which names are recorded were taken by men known to have been returned on a previous occasion, and there was only one certain instance of a re-election to consecutive Parliaments.

Apart from Trethake (who prior to his six returns for Truro had made his parliamentary debut in 1420 as Member for Helston), at least four other men also built significant parliamentary careers in the service of a variety of constituencies. Robert Clay sat in four Parliaments for Helston, Liskeard and Plympton Erle prior to his single return for Truro and John But sat four times for Barnstaple, Bodmin and Liskeard before serving twice as a Member for Truro. The most distinguished parliamentarians among Truro’s MPs were Robert Treage, who in turn represented all the Cornish boroughs except for Launceston, sitting in the Commons no fewer than nine times overall, and the outsider John Norris who served in the same number of Parliaments, most often as a knight of the shire for Berkshire. Two others, Thomas Rescruk and Robert Trenerth, were elected three times, and seven others (Thomas Bere, John Polruddon, Stephen Resker, Nicholas Roche, John Salter II, Roger Treouran I and Henry Tuddenham) at least twice.

Despite the continuity provided by the frequent returns of men such as Trethake, Truro’s MPs were a far from homogenous group. Their professional backgrounds were disparate. Eight of them (Bere, But, Clay, Colyn alias Brune, Polrudden, Treage and Trethake) practised the law at some point in their careers, while three were merchants: Trenerth was a mercer, Salter a haberdasher and Jane a cloth merchant. Condorov was a ship-owner who occasionally engaged in privateering or piracy, whereas Nanfan, Nanskelly, Norris, Rescruk, Roche, Thorpe, Treouran and Tregasowe might be best categorized as members of the landed gentry above any professional or occupational pursuit, while Potte and Tretherf were little more than prosperous peasants, the latter styled a mere husbandman. Nor, as far as it is possible to tell, did many of the MPs actually hail from Truro or its vicinity. Only John Penrose I and Peter Rawlyn appear to have lived in the town itself, while Robert Colyn alias Brune and Gregory Tretherf came from the neighbouring parishes of St. Erme and Ladock. Of the remainder, the majority resided in more distant parts of Cornwall, Trenerth was a London merchant with only loose ties with his native county, and John Norris, Henry Tuddenham and Roger Thorpe were complete outsiders, living respectively in Berkshire, Norfolk and Essex.

Beyond prior membership of the Commons, there is no indication that Truro’s electorate valued previous experience of office-holding particularly highly. Just six of the borough’s MPs during the period under review had held office under the Crown or the duchy of Cornwall prior to their first or only return. Of these, But was perhaps the best qualified, having served as the duchy of Lancaster’s feodary in Devon, deputy butler and deputy havener, tax collector, under sheriff and a royal commissioner. Salter and Treage had held a range of customs offices in the Cornish district, Treouran was a serving county coroner at the time of his return in 1449 and had previously been a tax collector and royal commissioner, while Clay had been an associate justice of assize. Employment on the sheriff’s staff was clearly of paramount importance. Trethake, like But, had also been under sheriff of Cornwall before first being elected at Truro, and he would occupy this office again later on in his career. It is even possible, albeit not entirely certain, that he was under sheriff at the time of his first return for Truro in May 1421. Clay was serving as receiver of writs for the sheriff of Cornwall when he was elected for Truro in 1455, and Bere, who was appointed under sheriff not long after his second Parliament, is known to have been a sheriff’s officer earlier in his career. Of the remainder, seven of Truro’s MPs went on to hold office within the county of Cornwall after completing their spell in the Commons, and four others, who never held office within the county of Cornwall, filled various positions in their own counties further afield.

Although there is no definite evidence that the three families who shared the over-lordship of the borough of Truro went out of their way to influence its parliamentary representation in Henry VI’s reign, their place in local society was such that many of the borough’s MPs naturally had a prior association with them. Robert Colyn alias Brune was linked with Sir John Colshull*, whom he served as under sheriff in 1438, while Bere, Polruddon, Rawlyn and Roche were part of the circle of the Arundells of Lanherne. Nanfan was linked to the Bodrugans through his daughter’s marriage into the Trenewith family, but of longer standing was Trethake’s service to Sir William Bodrugan*, a connexion which he had inherited from the latter’s cousin, Sir Otto Trevarthian.

Beyond the ranks of the borough’s lords, a few of Truro’s MPs also had other important connexions. Treouran served the dowager countess of Oxford as steward of her Cornish estates, Bere was a servant of Cardinal Beaufort and accompanied him to the Congress of Arras, while Clay was a trusted retainer of the royal justice Nicholas Aysshton*. But was connected not only with the Lords Botreaux of Boscastle but also the influential Grenville and Courtenay families, and Salter and Treage possessed links with the Arundells of Trerice. Finally, Roger Thorpe, John Norris and Henry Tuddenham were all associated with the royal household and the last was also in the service of Thomas, Lord Scales.

If Truro’s overlords on the whole refrained from interfering with the borough’s parliamentary elections, others were less scrupulous. On several occasions during the period under review the Cornish election indentures show signs of having been tampered with in such a way as to affect Truro’s representation. In 1435 Bere’s name was inserted on both the election indenture and the accompanying schedule over erasures, while in January 1449 Roger Treouran was inserted on the schedule as an afterthought, replacing a much shorter name. In 1453, when the borough elections throughout the south-west of England were dominated by the nominees of Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, the choice of the men of Truro also fell victim to external interference. The names of both of the borough’s chosen MPs were unceremoniously erased from the sheriff’s schedule and replaced instead with those of John Norris, the esquire for the King’s body, and Roger Thorpe, the son and heir of Thomas Thorpe*, the prominent Exchequer official who at the start of the Parliament would be elected Speaker by the Commons. As Norris was also elected to the more prestigious place of a knight of the shire for Berkshire some ten days before the date of the Cornish indenture, it is likely that the Truro return was tampered with before being returned by the sheriff to Westminster, where Norris’s double return would have been noticed.7 C219/14/5; 15/6; 16/2.

A comparison with the latter part of Richard II’s reign and those of the first two Lancastrian monarchs suggests a high degree of continuity in terms of Truro’s parliamentary representation, certainly during Henry VI’s minority. Not only did the re-election of men such as But, Treage and Trethake, who had sat in Parliament in the earlier period, provide for some continuity, but the levels of previous parliamentary experience and the proportion of men only known to have sat in the Commons once remained approximately the same. As even in Richard II’s reign impoverished Truro did not have an established burgess group from which its MPs might have been drawn, it is not surprising that the proportion of merchants returned by the borough had not undergone significant change: whereas seven of the 37 men to sit for Truro between 1386 and 1421 are known for certain to have been merchants, the same is true of three of the 25 to be elected under Henry VI – in view of the small numbers involved hardly a significant reduction. More striking change in Truro’s parliamentary representation does not appear to have occurred until the 1450s. Whereas other Cornish boroughs, such as Liskeard, returned men entirely lacking in Cornish, let alone local, connexions to the Parliament summoned to Bury St. Edmunds in 1447, Truro apparently only began to do so from 1453. Hitherto, even those of the borough’s MPs who normally lived outside the county (such as William Chamberlain†, John Megre† and Robert Trenerth) had had close ties within the local community; from 1453 the men who were apparently imposed by external interference were almost entirely lacking in such links (although Clay might have claimed some ties with the county by virtue of his association with the Cornish judge Aysshton). In this, the pattern of Truro’s representation under Henry VI foreshadowed a development which in time would overtake nearly all of its Cornish neighbours: by 1467 the boroughs of the county were all reduced to choosing only one of their two MPs, whereas by 1478 not a single one of them returned a local man.8 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 316-17; H. Kleineke, ‘Widening Gap’, in Parchment and People ed. Clark, 126.