COURTENEY (COURTNEY), Peter (1616-70), of Trethurfe, Ladock, Cornw.

Peter Courteney – as he rendered his name in 1641 – was descended from the Devonshire Courtenays, although his branch of the family had been settled in Cornwall since the fifteenth century, and the estate at Trethurfe, in Ladock parish near Truro, was acquired by marriage only in the sixteenth century.15Cornw. RO, RS/1/35; Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 51. Courteney matriculated at Oxford in 1633 and then was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn in May 1636, with fellow Cornishmen John Polwhele* and James Erisey* acting as manucaptors or sureties.16Al. Ox.; LIL, Admiss. Bk. 6, f. 117v. By this time his father was dead, and Courteney became a royal ward, with the promise of not only inheriting the Trethurfe estate but also, in due course, that of his uncle, Sir William Courtney.17WARD2/17/63/2. Courteney married a daughter of Jonathan Rashleigh of Menabilly in 1638, with a marriage portion of £2,000, although Sir William’s subsequent obtuseness resulted in a legal contest between the two families.18C2/CHASI/R13/47.

Courteney appears to have shared the distrust of the Caroline regime displayed by many Cornish gentlemen in the 1630s, and was listed with his uncle as having refused to pay Ship Money in 1636-7.19Antony House, Carew-Pole BO/21/23/3. In the messy Short Parliament election for Mitchell, Courteney was returned in partnership with William Chadwell*, but their right to sit was challenged by two rival candidates, Francis Bassett and Samuel Cosworth. The last was probably a client of the Arundells of Trerice, as his brother, John Cosworth†, had been elected for Mitchell on that interest in 1628. Cosworth and Bassett claimed that a ‘surprise’ election had resulted in the ordinary inhabitants of the town being denied a vote, but the Commons overruled their objections, and on 24 April 1640 Courteney and Chadwell were confirmed in their seats.20CJ ii. 10a; Aston’s Diary, 46; Nalson, Impartial Colln. i. 294; Coate, Cornw. 356. Both men were present at Westminster when the decision was taken, but there is no record of Courteney’s participation in the business of the House in what remained of the brief session.21CJ ii. 10a. Courteney corresponded with Rashleigh during the early stages of the Long Parliament, approving his father-in-law’s ‘good effects against my lord of Strafford’ (Sir Thomas Wentworth†, 1st earl of Strafford) in May 1641 and commenting with disfavour on the decision of Richard Arundell* to vote against the attainder.22Cornw. RO, RS/1/35.

Nothing is known of Courteney’s activities during the next twelve months, but like many other Cornishmen he evidently changed his political stance quite radically, as in the early summer of 1642 he was chosen to take the ‘loyal petition’ of the Cornish to Charles I at York and was knighted on 28 June as a result.23Cornw. RO, RS/1/37; CSP Dom. 1665-6, p. 143; Newman, Royalist Officers, 88. A day later he was named to the commission of array for Cornwall, and he was included in the new commission of the peace issued on 15 July.24Northants. RO, FH133, unfol.; C231/5, p. 529. He returned to Cornwall shortly afterwards, signing declarations of the commissioners of array in August, and in September and October he joined Sir Bevill Grenvile*, Sir Ralph Hopton* and others in mustering the posse comitatus.25Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/24/2/103; Cornw. RO, B/35/219; New News from Cornw. (1642), 3 (E.124.20); Add. 18777, f. 18. In November Courteney joined the royalists besieging Plymouth, boasting to Rashleigh that ‘our force grows daily… we shall be at least six or seven thousand within this four days’.26Cornw. RO, R(S)/1/1051. By this time he had been appointed as Grenville’s lieutenant-colonel, and in the early months of 1643 he marched with his regiment into Devon and Somerset, being present at the royalist victories at Braddock Down and Stratton and probably also at Lansdown, where Grenville was killed on 10 July. On 21 September, the day after the first battle of Newbury, Courteney was commissioned by the king to raise a regiment of foot under his own command.27Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 74. The details of his service later in the war are unknown, but evidently he had submitted to Parliament by March 1646, when Sir Thomas Fairfax* granted protection to the house, goods and livestock at Trethurfe.28CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 372. In April 1646, Courteney petitioned to compound for delinquency, and was eventually fined £326 in December 1648.29CCC 117, 335, 1234. In the meantime, he was charged with an £800 assessment by the Committee for Advance of Money – a sum only cleared in March 1651.30CCAM 736. Later in the 1650s Courteney remained in Cornwall, working with Rashleigh to sort out his his finances, selling land to pay off debts and defending his rights through the courts.31Cornw. RO, RS/1/55, 63; R(S)/1/1064.

Despite his outward compliance with the new regime, Courteney kept in contact with the royalists of the south west, and may have been drawn into the conspiracy to rise against the commonwealth. In April 1651 he was one of those investigated as a suspect, being deemed ‘one that is ready to serve upon any insurrection’.32HMC Portland, i. 588; Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 35. There is no evidence that he was involved in the Penruddock rising of 1655, but he was again suspected of complicity in the rebellion led by Sir George Boothe* in August 1659.33CCC 1234. After the Restoration, Courteney made much of his sufferings as a loyal servant of the Stuarts, saying that he had lost £7,000 in fines and plunder and had been imprisoned eight or nine times, but his request for a pension from the Cornish tin farm to relieve his financial situation apparently fell on deaf ears.34CSP Dom. 1665-6, p. 143. He died in 1670, and was succeeded by his only son, William.35PROB11/332/123; Cornw. RO, R/5626, R/5413.