CARMINOWE, Thomas (c.1395-1442), of Ashwater, Devon.

The Carminowes were an ancient Cornish family who took their name from the family’s principal seat in the parish of Mawgan in Meneage. The senior branch of the family came to an end with the death in 1396 of Joan, daughter and sole heir of Thomas Carminowe of Carminowe, when her estates were divided between the descendants of her great-grandfather’s two sisters, Sir John Arundell I* of Lanherne and John Trevarthian† of Trevarthian. A junior branch of the Carminowes was established in the reign of Edward II by Sir John Carminowe, a younger son of Roger de Carminowe†, and by the 1380s their wealth, centred on the manors of Boconnoc in Cornwall and Ashwater in Devon, outstripped that of the main line. The Carminowes of the younger branch, unlike their cousins, were prolific, and on the accidental death in 1386 of Sir Ralph Carminowe†, who was dragged over a cliff by his own hounds, their lands passed to his brother, Sir William. J.S. Vivian, Vis. Cornw., 72-74; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 489-90.

Thomas, the later MP, was the second of Sir William’s four surviving sons. As his elder brother, John, produced a son and heir, he initially had little hope of ever succeeding to their father’s lands, but the deaths of John and his young son of the same name within a short time of each other changed all of this, and in 1420 the 25-year-old found himself in possession of the Carminowe lands. HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 158, suggests that Walter Carminowe of Belly was Thomas’s elder brother. As Walter had male offspring (Vivian, 74) and was alive when Thomas became the heir of his nephew John, son of his er. bro. John (C138/51/99), Thomas must have been the 2nd son. These included the manors of Ashwater and Luffincott in Devon, and Boconnoc, Penpont (in Altarnun) and Glyn in Cornwall. C138/51/99. This landed fortune probably played its part in allowing him to contract an attractive marriage. While Joan, daughter of the judge Sir Robert Hill, was not an heiress, she was recently widowed and brought to her new husband her dower lands from her first marriage to Sir Otto Trevarthian. These included the Cornish manors of Merther and Trethevas as well as two thirds of the manor of Helligan, and at her death were assessed at £11 19s. p.a. C139/103/37. These acquisitions made up for the uncomfortably large part of Thomas’s inheritance which for many years remained in the hands of surviving Carminowe dowagers. Although his mother Margaret had died in 1419, Alice, the widow of his uncle Sir Ralph, was still alive when he came into his inheritance and survived until 1426. The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 489. After the death of Sir Ralph, her third husband, in 1386, she had married Sir John Rodney† of Backwell and after his death in 1400 Sir William Bonville† (d.1408) of Shute, outliving all of them. Ibid. ii. 282; iv. 224. As her dower from Carminowe Alice held the Cornish manors of Polrood and Tinten (in St. Tudy), Treveniel (in North Hill), Roscare, Trefreock and Dizzard (in St. Gennys), as well as two thirds of the manor of Tamerton St Mary, which only reverted to Thomas at her death. C138/51/99, m. 8; CFR, xv. 131-2. Further lands in Penpont, Trewennack and Downaython were held in dower by Joan, widow of Thomas’s nephew John, who had gone on to marry Thomas Bodulgate*. These never reverted to Carminowe in his lifetime, as Joan survived until 1454. C139/110/46, m. 5.

At the time of John Carminowe’s death in 1420 Thomas and his younger brother Walter may still have been in France, where they had gone the previous year in the retinue of William, Lord Botreaux. E101/49/34, m. 10. On their return, Carminowe set about defending his right to the family lands. The descent of some of them was highly complex, and he faced a number of legal battles with other claimants. So, in early 1423 he was in dispute with John Tretherf* and John Symon of Bodmin over land in ‘Baydek’. When a jury was summoned to resolve the dispute, the defendants rejected it on the grounds that it had been empanelled by Thomas Arundell*, sheriff of Cornwall, who as a kinsman of Carminowe could not be expected to be impartial. Similarly, they succeeded in having a second jury quashed on the grounds of a procedural error. In the long run, however, their tactics proved fruitless and Carminowe recovered his land before the end of the year. JUST1/1536, rots. 27-27d, 30. A few years later, in March 1428, Carminowe was forced to fight Thomas Pever† of Todington over the lands which should have descended to him from his paternal grandmother Alice Tinten, to which Pever laid claim to them in the right of his own wife, the daughter of Sir Nigel Loring KG. The justices of assize upheld Carminowe’s claim and awarded him damages of £200, but nevertheless amerced both him and his opponents for the lies they had told in their pleadings. JUST1/1540, rots. 85, 90. Yet, the dispute continued to simmer, even beyond Pever’s death in 1429, and only in the mid 1430s did Carminowe reach an agreement with John Broughton, his opponent’s grandson, under the terms of which Carminowe and Broughton exchanged the Pever inheritance for the manor of Beaworthy. CCR, 1435-41, pp. 125-6; CFR, xv. 289; CP25(1)/46/84/144; Cornw. Feet of Fines, ii (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc. 1950), 1025.

His inheritance made Thomas one of the most substantial landholders in Cornwall, and he assumed the traditional position of the head of his family in county society. In November 1423 he was pricked sheriff, three years later he was elected to Parliament for the first time, and he was subsequently appointed to a string of ad hoc commissions in the region. Moreover, he and his brothers also maintained a regular presence in the county court. Thomas himself attested the shire elections of 1429, 1431 and 1433, his brother Nicholas all those held between 1429 and 1435 and subsequently those of 1442, January 1449, 1455 and 1467, and the third brother, Walter, all those held between 1429 and 1435. C219/14/1-5, 15/2, 6, 16/3, 17/1. Oddly, for a man of his standing, Thomas never became a j.p., although he was placed on several commissions of oyer and terminer. He was appointed to a second shrievalty in 1430 and was returned to his second Parliament for Cornwall in 1435, when both of his brothers were present at the elections. Further evidence of his importance in the county is provided by his inclusion among the members of the gentry required to take the general oath against maintenance in 1434, and the gifts of wine that he received in the early 1430s from the burgesses of Launceston, who were anxious to gain and sustain his favour. Cornw. RO, Launceston bor. recs., B/Laus/137, m. 1d.

Along with his landed wealth, Carminowe owed much of his influence to his extensive connexions among the gentry of the south-west. His elder brother John had married Alice, daughter of Sir John Dynham of Nutwell, the wealthiest landholder in Devon after the Courtenay earl. Vivian, 74. Carminowe’s cousin Elizabeth Fitzroger, daughter of his aunt Alice from her first marriage, had married John Bonville (d.1396), and was mother of Sir William Bonville*, later Lord Bonville and one of the most influential men in the south-west. Further family ties existed with the Arundells of Lanherne, the wealthiest resident landowners in Cornwall. Carminowe had final remainder of the lands bequeathed for the maintenance of an Arundell chantry at St. Columb Major in 1428, and in later years was often recorded witnessing charters for the Arundells. CCR, 1429-35, pp. 36, 245. Through his marriage to the widow of Sir Otto Trevarthian Carminowe forged further links: Otto’s mother Joan had married four times and her numerous children vastly extended the range of families with whom Carminowe could consider himself connected by ties of kinship, including the Bodrugans, Trenewiths and Reskymers. Eventually, the marriages of Thomas’s own daughters to prominent west-country landowners widened his circle of kinship still further. Margaret, the elder, was married to Sir Hugh Courtenay*, a cousin of the young earl of Devon. Joan, her younger sister, married in early 1436 Courtenay’s nephew Thomas Carew, heir to a family who laid claim to baronial rank, despite never being summoned to the Lords, and after his death in late 1461 she wed the Yorkshire esquire Halnath Mauleverer. C47/9/14, m. 5; CP25(1)/294/75/22.

This is not to say that Carminowe enjoyed cordial relations with all of his neighbours. He may have been a somewhat litigious man, for in the summer of 1440, when he accused the Launceston gentleman Thomas Tregodek* and John Bydelake, one-time steward to the Tremayne family, of waylaying and attempting to kill him in the London parish St. Dunstan in the West in November 1437, he described his urgent business that they had prevented him from attending to as ‘informandum homines in lege eruditos de consilio suo tam de impetracione brevium, quam prosecucione et defensione diversarum accionum pro eo et contra eum in curia domini Regis tunc hic motarum et movendarum’. CP40/718, rot. 330. The details of Carminowe’s disagreement with Tregodek and Bythelake are uncertain, but it may have been connected with a squabble between Tregodek and Carminowe’s old friend John Palmer: CP40/703, rot. 324; 706, rot. 335; 716, rot. 125d. The litigation in question probably included a dispute with Oliver Tregasowe* over property in Bosmaugan, and perhaps also the quarrel with Robert Borlase which had seen Carminowe bound over to keep the peace in May 1435. CP40/698, rot. 133; KB27/696, rex rot. 8d.

In 1436 Carminowe’s Crown appointments suddenly dried up, possibly as a result of a violent disagreement with his distant kinsman, Sir William Bonville. Until the early months of the year, their relations had apparently been cordial enough, and Bonville had even paid Carminowe a sum of money in return for his assistance in the purchase of the manor of Tywardreath from Sir John Herle*. It seems, however, that Carminowe had other ideas, and was planning to keep the manor for himself, once he had gained possession. By February 1436 Tywardreath had been taken into the King’s hands on the grounds that Carminowe and his co-feoffees had failed to procure a royal licence for its acquisition, and custody was that month granted to two close associates of Bonville’s, Walter, Lord Hungerford† and Sir Philip Courtenay* of Powderham. By the summer, Bonville was suing Carminowe in the court of common pleas, claiming the immense sum of 2,000 marks in damages for his attempted fraud. In the autumn, the two men reached a settlement. On 27 Nov. Carminowe sealed a quitclaim of his right in the manor to Bonville, a document witnessed by the chancellor, Bishop Stafford of Bath and Wells, and three senior lawyers destined for the judiciary, Richard Newton, John Hody* and John Fortescue*, most probably the men who had arbitrated the dispute. CP40/702, rot. 137d; 703, rot. 124; CFR, xvi. 264-5; CCR, 1435-41, p. 101.

Relations between Carminowe and Bonville nevertheless remained strained. In mid 1439 Bonville sued him and Joan, the widow of his younger brother Walter Carminowe, for the abduction of Annora, daughter and heiress of John Trevanion*, Joan’s first husband, whose wardship Sir William claimed. CP40/714, rot. 324. Carminowe struck back. In September a special commission of oyer and terminer was issued to deal with his repeated assaults on Bonville’s men and the alleged taking of goods to the value of 600 marks. CPR, 1436-41, p. 448; CP40/715, rots. 37, 115d, 237d. There may also be a connexion with the assaults of which Bonville had accused Carminowe’s kinsman Sir John Dynham two months earlier (CPR, 1436-41, p. 314). Some of these assaults on Bonville were centred on Plymouth and were obviously intended to disrupt Bonville’s activities as commissioner to take the muster of the retinue of John, earl of Huntingdon. Carminowe’s motives are obscure. He was himself retained by Huntingdon, with an annuity of £6 13s. 4d., and was meant to accompany the earl to Aquitaine on precisely the expedition he was now disrupting (and on which he apparently never embarked). E163/7/31/2, no. 30; CPR, 1436-41, p. 415; CCR, 1435-41, pp. 452, 481; M. Cherry, ‘Crown and Political Community, Devon’ (Univ. of Wales, Swansea, Ph.D. thesis, 1981), 251-2. Nevertheless, he continued his association with Huntingdon after the incident, and it was probably in the earl’s interest that in March 1440 he arrested a ship called the Isabell of Danzig in the port of Plymouth, as well as placing its master in custody. While the Prussians complained of an act of piracy, Huntingdon claimed that they had attacked a Gascon vessel, the Mighell of Bordeaux, which had been driven into the port by a storm while sailing to England to fetch supplies for his household. C1/43/20-21; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 408-9.

Although Carminowe was a notable Devon landholder, his interests and career were chiefly focused on Cornwall. This absenteeism from his landholdings further east may go some way to explain the repeated incursions into Carminowe’s property at Luffincott that he brought before the law courts from the 1430s. CP40/714, rot. 258d; 715, rot. 225; 716, rot. 28; 717, rot. 363; 720, rot. 31d; 721, rot. 98d; C260/142/23; CPR, 1441-6, p. 216. Equally, it is probable that Carminowe’s final return to Parliament in 1442 for Devon, rather than his native shire, must have owed much to the influence of Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, for whom he acted as a mainpernor on several occasions in that year. CFR, xvii. 208, 211. As his companion, the county returned his brother-in-law Robert Hill*, another member of the Courtenay affinity. Like other knights of the shire in the Parliament, Carminowe was commissioned to distribute the allowances on the subsidies granted by the Commons. CFR, xvii. 214, 218. It is unlikely that he fulfilled this commission with much enthusiasm, as after his return home he was forced to sue the sheriff of Devon for payment of his parliamentary wages. More generous were the citizens of Exeter who sent him a gift of two gallons of wine on 1 Aug. E13/142, m. 14d; Devon RO, Exeter city recs., receiver’s acct. 20-21 Hen. VI, m. 2.

If the Exeter authorities had sought to make an influential friend, their gift was wasted, for Carminowe died on 19 Dec. of the same year. C139/110/46. Feeling death approaching, he had made arrangements for the smooth division of his inheritance between his two daughters and their husbands. The remainder of the manors of Ashwater and Luffincott, as well as lands in Bradford, Tuphill and Monehous were settled on Joan and her heirs, whereas Beaworthy in Devon and various Cornish holdings, including Tinten, were to fall to Margaret and her husband Courtenay. C47/7/6/11, m. 2. As his executors Carminowe appointed (among others) his brother-in-law Robert Hill and the latter’s son John, his surviving brother Nicholas Carminowe, the important Launceston burgess and family friend John Palmer* and the prominent lawyer Nicholas Radford*. C1/18/61. Palmer had been associated with the Carminowes since at least 1416, when he is known to have stayed at their place at Boconnoc (The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 5). Yet, in spite of all his precautions, the administration of his goods and lands proved a drawn-out affair. Not only did creditors demanding settlement of their claims appear on the scene as late as the 1450s, C1/18/61. but Sir Hugh Courtenay also challenged the division of his lands that his father-in-law had made in his lifetime. In February 1446 the Crown ordered an inquiry into the matter, but litigation in Chancery was ongoing in the later 1450s, and even in 1467 the heirs were still squabbling over the division of the Carminowe lands. C47/7/6/11, m. 2; C1/26/66; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 5. Carminowe was buried next to his wife in a splendid tomb in the church of Ashwater commissioned by his two daughters, who also took care to perpetuate their father’s arms in numerous escutcheons around the church. W. H. H. Rogers, Antient Sepulchral Effigies, 339-42. Rogers wrongly identifies the effigies as those of Sir Hugh Courtenay and his wife, but the arms on the tomb clearly show that it is in fact Carminowe who was commemorated (N. Pevsner, Buildings of Eng.: Devon, 138).