LAWHIRE, John

More may be added to the earlier biography. The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 567.

During his period on the Cornish bench, Lawhire was one of the most regular attenders at the county sessions. Between October 1429 and July 1431 he sat on the bench on 14 out of the 22 days the j.p.s met. E101/554/39; KB27/679, rex rot. 5; 680, rex rot. 1; 681, rex rot. 6; 686, rex rot. 4d.

After Lawhire’s death, at some point before 1443, the share of the family estates settled on his brother Thomas by their father was disputed between his daughters Elizabeth (then wife of William Horde) and Joan, and their kinsman, the prominent lawyer Thomas Tregodek*. KB27/750, rot. 59d; 751, rots. 37d, 78d; 752, rot. 79d. The nature of Tregodek’s relationship to the Lawhires has not been discovered, but he had played a central part in the land settlements made by Thomas Lawhire, and in 1492 Elizabeth Lawhire, then widowed, would describe Tregodek’s putative son John as her kinsman, and he did subsequently inherit some of her property: Cornw. RO, Rashleigh mss, R2193-6, 2198, 2200-1, 2209, 2210; Arundell (Tywardreath) mss, ART5/2. The women were supported by Robert Curteys†, who in 1446 agreed to submit the dispute to the arbitration of (Sir) Hugh Courtenay* and Sir William Bonville*, and bound himself to ensure that the two heiresses would also assent to whatever was decided, but this attempt at mediation apparently came to nothing. Tregodek then called on the help of an influential esquire of the royal household, John Trevelyan*, and at Easter 1451 Curteys informed the justices of common pleas that the two men and a group of associates had set upon him at Restormel and imprisoned and maltreated him until he agreed to pay ten marks for his release. Rashleigh mss, R2197; CP40/761, rot. 105. Trevelyan’s involvement produced the desired result for Tregodek. In December 1454 a panel of arbiters, ostensibly settling differences between him and Trevelyan, made a collusive award of the Lawhire estates in favour of the latter, whose associates (to whom the lands had been granted in 1449), sealed letters of quitclaim to Tregodek shortly afterwards. Rashleigh mss, 2198-201; CCR, 1454-61, p. 48.