By the beginning of Henry IV’s reign members of the Penpons family were of some importance in western Cornwall, where they are documented from at least the 1340s. Thomas Penpons served as deputy to the duchy of Cornwall’s bailiffs of the stannary of Penwith and Kirrier from 1404 to 1410, and a probable kinsman, William Penpons†, represented the duchy borough of Helston in Parliament in December 1421.
The extent of the Penpons’s hereditary lands – if any – is uncertain, and it seems that he himself acquired the bulk of the lands of which he was seised in the second half of his life by purchase or marriage. Thus, by two transactions of 1419 and 1427 he received from one John Trevaswethen over 700 acres in Treswithen, Tregear, Crane, Treskellard, Troon and Newton (in Camborne), and Rosecroggan, Mager and Tregajorran in Illogan.
The dispute over Helston was not to be the only occasion on which Penpons’s acquisitions aroused controversy. In July 1433 the elderly Isabel Trelyver had settled certain parts of her Cornish estates on Richard Gilly, a kinsman of the local lawyer Henry Gilly. Within the next decade, however, a dispute arose over the property, and Isabel, by then 90 years old, blind and bedridden, petitioned the chancellor, claiming that two local men, Roger Kelwa (an associate of the notorious pirate Thomas Beville†) and Thomas Raulyn had forged a deed settling her lands on Raulyn. An inquiry in the locality had found her claims to be true, and she had sued out a writ of forgery against them. At this point, the two forgers had turned to Penpons for assistance, probably in the first instance in his professional capacity. Penpons had advised them to enfeoff his own wife, Amy, and two associates of the property, and this they had done. Penpons’s interest in the lands, which he may have hoped to retain for himself, was now no longer impersonal, and before long he and his associates were themselves accusing the two Gillys of seeking to gain the disputed holdings by forged deeds. The outcome of this dispute, which was ongoing in the 1450s, is unknown.
In spite of Penpons’s failure to defend his possession of Helston from Margaret Sarnesfield’s claims he was nevertheless able to secure re-election to the Commons for the borough in 1432, and twice more in 1437 and 1442. It is possible that he owed these returns – as well as an isolated one for Lostwithiel in 1435 – to his family’s connexions within the administration of the duchy of Cornwall: kinsmen of his intermittently served as deputy bailiffs of the stannary of Penwith and Kirrier from the early years of the fifteenth century to the end of the 1440s. Penpons himself was rather slower to attract Crown office: he was appointed to an isolated commission of inquiry in 1435, and thereafter did not secure similar employment until the final days of his last Parliament. Instead, he was active in the service of private patrons, most notably the earl of Warwick’s retainer, John Nanfan*, whom he served as under sheriff of Cornwall in both 1428-30 and 1439-40, and subsequently the young John Arundell of Lanherne, for whom he acted during his shrievalty in 1443-4. At other times, he also played his part in Nanfan’s and Arundell’s property transactions.
A man whom he did serve was his wife’s brother, the brutal Richard Tregoose. Penpons was on more than one occasion called upon to come to his brother-in-law’s aid. After Tregoose’s arrest in early 1435 Penpons stood bail to secure his release from the Marshalsea, and it is probable that his return for Lostwithiel in that year, at the height of the legal campaign of Tregoose’s numerous enemies against him (and when Tregoose himself sat for Bodmin), was also secured in order to pre-empt any parliamentary steps against the latter. In May 1436 Tregoose procured royal licence to go to France, and Penpons was among the attorneys charged with overseeing his affairs in England during his absence, while a few years later he also found bail for one of Tregoose’s associates, John Vincent.
Penpons’s three daughters all married into Cornish gentry families. Marina married Richard Arundell of Trerice, her sister Joan wed Richard Kendale* of Treworgy, who represented Lostwithiel in their father’s last Parliament, and Elizabeth became the wife of Stephen Boswydell.
There were also conflicts with other neighbours. During one of Henry V’s absences in Normandy in the latter part of his reign Penpons had been reduced to petitioning the chancellor for redress against one John Trewike who – he claimed – had invaded his property at Redruth, expelled him and stolen his goods.
Perhaps by virtue of his ties with the Arundells of Lanherne, Penpons was drawn into the circle of William de la Pole, earl and later duke of Suffolk, who had gained an entry into Cornish affairs by securing the wardships not only of the Arundell heir, but also of the heir of another leading family in the county, the Bodrugans. Yet Penpons’s links with de la Pole seem to have been rather looser than those of the Arundells, or of his brother-in-law, Richard Tregoose. There is no indication that he drew any substantial profit from his association with the duke, and the offices to which he was appointed during de la Pole’s ascendancy in the second half of the 1440s were in keeping with his standing and professional qualifications. Moreover, it seems that he profited directly from the duke’s impeachment and murder in 1450. In November he was granted custody of some 600 acres in the Redruth region for a year, and the grant was subsequently renewed in the two following years.
By contrast, it seems that accusations brought against Penpons in Chancery in mid 1451 by the Cornish esquire John Bassett constituted an attempt to have him convicted on trumped-up charges of forgery. Bassett claimed that Penpons had assisted one Robert Byan and his wife Anne, Bassett’s daughter, in hiring a London craftsman, Robert Huchyn, to make an exact copy of his armorial seal, which they had then used to seal a forged deed by which Bassett had supposedly settled an annuity of £200 upon them. In October Bishop Lacy of Exeter and the royal justice Nicholas Aysshton* were ordered to investigate the complaint, and Penpons admitted having known both Bassett and the Byans for many years, but vehemently denied any knowledge of Huchyn or any involvement in the forgery. Moreoever, when Anne Byan was examined she stated that she had been taken and imprisoned by her father’s men, who sought to persuade her to abandon her husband and to agree to give false evidence against Penpons in court.
Despite his somewhat dubious role in these affairs, Penpons also secured office under the Crown. He was appointed to a number of royal commissions in the course of the 1450s, and from late 1451 served as a j.p. in his native Cornwall. He took his duties in the latter capacity seriously, and was one of the most regular attenders at the sessions throughout the decade. It may be suggestive of the respect he commanded that the sheriff’s indenture recording the Cornish shire elections of 1455 explicitly noted his attendance as a member of the county bench.
Penpons had maintained his old ties with the Arundells of Lanherne, and he now served Sir John Arundell as steward of his own estates, as well as in the capacity of deputy steward of the hundred of Penwith which Arundell held in fee from the duchy of Cornwall.
Although he continued to serve as a j.p. for much of the 1460s, Penpons’s final years were overshadowed by a dispute over a debt of £70 brought by the wealthy esquire John Broughton against him and his son-in-law, Richard Kendale. In February 1467 the sheriff of Cornwall was ordered to arrest Penpons and Kendale and keep them in prison until they had paid, and a few months later the seizure of Kendale’s estates was ordered.