LANOY, Thomas II, of Launceston, Cornw.

The origins of the Lanoy family are uncertain, but by the 1420s they had formed an attachment to the Lords Botreaux of Boscastle. Thomas himself and a kinsman, John Lanoy, were drawn into the circle of Sir Ralph Botreaux*, the last baron’s influential and sinister uncle, and became implicated in his failed attempt in 1426 to murder his nephew by black magic. In early 1433 the two Lanoys (along with Robert Skelton* of Altarnon and one Thomas Wokysbrigge) were indicted at the sessions of the peace of having hired the thugs who had murdered the incompetent necromancer John Neuport near Tintagel. KB9/226/77-78. Furthermore, a year earlier Thomas Lanoy and Skelton had been among the associates of the prior of Launceston accused by Lord Botreaux of having assaulted and imprisoned his servants. CPR, 1429-36, p. 273. As a result of his purported involvement in Sir Ralph’s failed attempt to murder his nephew, Lanoy was committed to the Marshalsea, but at Easter 1433 he was acquitted of the charges laid against him. KB27/688, rex rot. 1. Nevertheless, before long he was in conflict with the law once more when he was named first among a group of Launceston merchants and artisans whom Joan, widow of Nicholas Hele, accused of an unspecified trespass. KB27/702, rot. 12.

Lanoy maintained a formal association with Launceston priory for more than another decade, and was still in its service in 1445 when Bishop Lacy of Exeter ordered an inquiry into the disorderly communal life of the canons. Among the faults found was an excessive number of servants, three of them, including Lanoy, explicitly labelled ‘inutiles’, whose dismissal the bishop ordered. Cart. Launceston Priory (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc., n.s. xxx), no. 400; Reg. Lacy, iii (Canterbury and York Soc. lxii), 335. Even so, Lanoy was of some standing within the borough of Dunheved, where he served as one of the duchy of Cornwall’s portreeves in 1435 and 1441, and where he was elected mayor less than five years after his expulsion from the abbey. We can but speculate whether his attendance at the parliamentary shire elections of the 1440s, which were invariably held in Launceston, whetted his appetite to serve in the Commons himself, but it is surely significant that he never attended the elections when they were held at Lostwithiel. He nevertheless possessed landholdings further afield, at Trecarne, Trecurnell and Churleton. Feudal Aids, i. 233; CPR, 1429-36, p. 273. It is likely that it was he who was by mid 1431 suing a group of his lesser neighbours for a trespass. KB27/681, rot. 65.

Few other details of Lanoy’s career have come to light, although it was probably he rather than a namesake who in early 1451 was suing the wealthy Walter Reynell* for return of a box of muniments, CP40/760, rot. 192. and he is occasionally found serving on local juries. CIPM, xxv. 272, 326, 508; xxvi. 166; C139/139/28, 140/28, 143/30, 156/10, 14. Following Lanoy’s return to the Parliament of 1455 nothing further is known of him for certain, but he is unlikely to have been the Thomas, described as a yeoman from Lanoy, Cornwall, who stood pledge in Chancery proceedings brought by Thomas Trethewy* in the late 1470s, C1/58/197. and a rental compiled at Launceston in 1463 shows no trace of the family among the duchy of Cornwall’s tenants. SC11/968.