Tregony

In the middle ages, Tregony had been a town of some significance, pre-dating Truro and Penryn as the main port of the Fal estuary.1 Parochial Hist. of Cornw. i. 282. Despite the powerful patronage of the Pomeroy family as lords of the manor, the silting of the river had choked Tregony’s economy by the early sixteenth century, and a century later it was dismissed by Richard Carew† as ‘not specially memorable … for any extraordinary worth or accident’.2 Parochial Hist. of Cornw. i. 278, 282-3; Carew, Survey, f. 141v. The population of the town in the seventeenth century was probably no more than 400, and few householders lived in properties with more than four hearths.3 Cornw. Hearth Tax, pp. xvii, 56-7. Nevertheless, the borough charter of 1621 was grandiloquent, placing the government into the hands of a mayor and eight capital burgesses elected for life and chosen from the ‘better people of the borough’. It also specified a full complement of officials, including a recorder, town clerk, two sergeants-at-mace, two constables and a clerk of the market, with the burgesses being instructed to wear gowns ‘such as are accustomed in towns of the like quality’.4 C66/2246/16; Cornw. RO, J/2080. In parliamentary terms, the borough had been enfranchised to serve the interests of the Russell family in the reign of Elizabeth I, but in the early seventeenth century it was controlled by the Trevanions of Caerhays, who lived four miles from the town. The Trevanions worked in conjunction with the Arundells of Trerice to ensure that mainly critics of the crown were returned in the 1620s, and this alliance was strengthened by the marriage of John Trevanion into the Arundell clan in 1634.5 HP Commons 1604-1629, ii. 78-9; Cornw. RO, CF/2422. In the same year a third powerful local gentry interest was added to the other two, when the lordship of the manor of Tregony was purchased by Hugh Boscawen senior.6 Parochial Hist. of Cornw. i. 278.

The Trevanion/Arundell interest was still able to control the Tregony elections in 1640. In the elections for the Short Parliament, held on 17 March, the mayor and 12 other electors returned John Arundell I with another local gentleman, John Seyntaubyn of Clowance.7 C219/42/33. In the elections for the Long Parliament, Sir Richard Vyvyan of Trelowarren was returned alongside his kinsman, John Polwhele of Treworgan.8 C219/43/1/60. Both were fairly local to Tregony, but the main influence was probably the Trevanions and the Arundells. Both Polwhele and Vyvyan sided with the king in 1642, as did Trevanion and Arundell. The civil wars had little direct impact on Tregony, which featured only as a convenient staging-post on the southern road from Plymouth to Penzance. The town played host to Sir Richard Grenvile’s troops in August 1644, as the royalists manoeuvred against the army of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, at Lostwithiel; and in March 1646, as Sir Thomas Fairfax* negotiated with the royalist remnant hemmed in at Truro, he quartered men at Tregony to put further pressure on Lord Hopton (Sir Ralph Hopton*).9 Coate, Cornw. 140, 208-9.

After the first civil war, on 11 November 1646, the Commons ordered that a new writ be issued for a ‘recruiter’ election to replace Vyvyan and Polwhele, who had been disabled from sitting in January 1644.10 CJ iv. 719a. In the absence of the disgraced Trevanion/Arundell interest, the new election, held on 9 February 1647, was probably influenced by Hugh Boscawen junior* and his Presbyterian allies, but the surviving indentures suggest the process was not entirely smooth. Both indentures are dated 9 February; the first, returning the Welsh Presbyterian Sir Thomas Trevor, was signed by the mayor, Thomas Cann, and 18 other burgesses and inhabitants, while the second, electing the future regicide, John Carew, had only ten signatures as well as the mayor’s.11 C219/43/1/62-3. The discrepancy between the numbers, and the widely differing political views of those elected, suggest that rival influences were at work, with Boscawen perhaps being able to secure only one seat, for Trevor. Nevertheless, Carew’s extreme views were not clear in February 1647, Boscawen was himself a young man with little political experience, and apart from the mayor eight men (perhaps the burgesses?) signed both indentures; so the irregularity of the return may merely reflect the chaos that resulted from a weak patron and a corporation unused to managing its own affairs.

Tregony fell back into obscurity during the 1650s, and was noted only as a useful place for the local justices of the peace to gather, when they were considering the pressing of seamen from the Cornish ports in 1653.12 CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 321. In the same year, it was reported that 100 men were pressed at the town, but that only 30 agreed to go to the navy at Plymouth, protesting that as the Rump Parliament had been dissolved, they were not obliged to serve.13 CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 91. This surprising degree of political engagement may reflect the views of the region rather than the town itself; certainly it is hard to see how Tregony could possibly have produced 100 sailors from its own population. The borough was disenfranchised under the Instrument of Government of December 1653, but it was allowed to elect MPs for Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament in 1659, when the traditional electoral arrangements were restored. The indenture for that election, dated 11 January, was signed by the mayor, Henry Slacke, with the approval of ‘the burgesses and inhabitants’, who signed the reverse, and the return of Edward Boscawen and another Cornish Presbyterian, John Thomas, indicates that Hugh Boscawen had now consolidated his position as patron of the borough.14 C219/46/29. The hegemony of the Boscawens was to prove short lived, however. From the beginning of 1660 the royalist Trevanions re-emerged as a major influence over Tregony, and this led to a disputed election in April 1660, and an uneasy division of the seats between the rival families in the 1670s and 1680s.15 HP Commons 1660-1690.