PENFOUN, William (c.1393-c.1462), of Penfoun in Poundstock, Cornw.

Penfoun was probably the son of a Cornish gentleman with landholdings at Whalesborough, who between 1411 and 1432 frequently attended the Cornish shire elections and set his seal to the sheriffs’ election indentures. C219/10/6; 11/1; 12/4; 13/1, 2; 14/2, 3. Little is known of his own career, but in the early years of the fifteenth century he was usually associated with his putative father in his activities. Not all of these were entirely uncontroversial: on one occasion John Tregowell, a former servant of a deceased vicar of Poundstock, accused the two men of having unlawfully seized his late master’s goods, preventing the executors from fulfilling the dead man’s will, while at another time the widow and the heir of John Calmady, whose feoffees the Penfouns had been, petitioned the chancellor, claiming that Richard and William were refusing to resettle the lands they held in trust. C1/11/411; 70/163.

By 1416 William appears to have formed an association with the influential Sir William Bodrugan*, for, as he later recalled, he was in the latter’s company at East Looe that summer when a messenger arrived to tell of the birth of John Colshull*. C139/89/67. It is possible that this early connexion also played a part in securing his return to three successive Parliaments between 1429 and 1433, for on each occasion Penfoun’s patron was also returned, together with one or other of the latter’s brothers-in-law, Sir Thomas* and Renfrew Arundell*. In the case of Penfoun’s first election in 1429, there is even some suggestion of dubious practices, for his name was inserted into the sheriff’s indenture over an erasure. C219/14/1; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 272. It was in fact highly questionable whether he fulfilled the legal requirement for residence in his constituency, for although he later served on local juries at Bodmin he is not known to have owned any property in the town. His landed holdings, said to be worth £8 p.a. in 1450, but in reality probably worth somewhat more, were situated in and around the borough of Launceston, which he was to represent in the Parliament of 1433. In 1456 he was granted the remainder of lands in Dunheved and Newport, and a later rental showed tenements in the same places in the hands of his presumed son, John. E179/87/90; Cornw. Feet of Fines, ii (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc. 1950), 1141; SC11/968. In any case, the presence of Penfoun’s putative father at the shire elections to his third and final Parliament in 1431, as well as to those of the following year suggests that he cannot have succeeded to family lands until some time after his service in the Commons.

Penfoun does not appear to have been a litigious man, and is only occasionally found embroiled in disputes in the King’s courts. In August 1427 he was among a group of Cornish gentry, which also included the lawyers Richard Respryn†, Robert Colyn alias Brune* and Stephen Trenewith†, accused of having deprived Alexander Champernowne of land near East Orchard Marry (in Week St. Mary); in the autumn of 1451 he appeared as a defendant in the court of the Exchequer; and five years later he and his putative son John were suing a group of peasants for ransacking their houses at Penfoun and ‘Plymmeswode’. JUST1/1540, rot. 82; E13/145A, rot. 17; KB27/778, rot. 93d. In his later years, Penfoun maintained loose ties with some of the cadets of the Arundell family, whose property deeds he periodically attested. Cornw. RO, Arundell mss, AR16/5, 6.

In Henry VI’s reign Penfoun is not known to have held office either locally or under the Crown, although he occasionally served on local juries. KB27/748, rot. 71; KB9/273/3. It thus seems surprising that the administration of the newly-crowned Edward IV should have called upon him, when he was nearly 70, to be a royal commissioner in his native county. It is possible that he owed this appointment to his presumed son’s proximity to the new rulers: already a royal serjeant, John Penfoun was appointed troner of tin and lead in Devon and Cornwall in August 1461, and he was later to serve as keeper of the duchy of Cornwall parks of Hellesbury and Lanteglos and one of the coroners of Cornwall. CPR, 1461-7, pp. 44, 344; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 21, 284; C242/13/2; SC6/816/8, m. 9; SC6/1291/3/7. William himself did not survive for much longer and was dead by 1463 when his Launceston property was in John’s hands. SC11/968.