ARUNDELL, Sir John II

A branch of the Arundell family had been settled at Trerice since the mid fourteenth century. Their descent from the main line at Lanherne is a matter of some debate: in the early sixteenth century Leland noted the difference between the two families’ arms and was told that the Arundells of Trerice believed themselves to be descended from the Arundales of Lower Normandy, who had at an unspecified point held the castle of Culy.5 J. Leland, Itin. ed. Toulmin Smith, i. 185. The Cornish idiosyncracy of distinguishing men of the same name by including their provenance as a suffix to their surname meant that the family were usually known as ‘Arundell Trerys’ in the south-west (a practice which confused at least one Westminster clerk who recorded a pardon to ‘Sir John Arundell Trerys of Trerice’), whereas the great Arundells of Lanherne could afford to be so insolent (or familiar) as to refer to their kinsmen as ‘John (or Nicholas) Trerys’.6 C67/39, m. 16; Cornw. RO, Arundell mss, AR2/740, m. 1d; Cornish Lands of the Arundells (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc. n.s. xli), 44, 89; CCR, 1429-35, p. 36. In documents of the Arundell family of Lanherne members of the Trerice branch need to be distinguished from members of the family of Trereise: The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 654.

Like many other gentry families, the Arundells of Trerice owed their fortunes to the vagaries of the marriage market. On the death of Sir John’s grandfather, Ralph, the wardship of his son and heir, Nicholas, had been granted to the landowner John Pellour, who had lost little time in marrying the young man to his own daughter and ultimate heiress.7 Arundell mss, AR41/6. This match brought the Arundells the manor of Pellour, as well as some valuable connexions in the hierarchy of the duchy of Cornwall, and laid the foundations for future prosperity. Nicholas’s increased wealth and standing allowed him to assume a place in the governance of the shire and he was subsequently appointed a j.p. and Prince Henry’s deputy sheriff. It was however John’s own marriage to Joan Durant that established the family among the more important gentry of Cornwall, for she brought him a moiety of the former estates of the Allet family. These holdings included the manors of Efford, Thurlebeare (in Launcells) and Lanest (in St. Columb Major), as well as half of Allet (in Kenwyn) itself, which combined with his paternal inheritance of the family seat of Trerice, Govely Moor (in Cuby), property in the borough of Lostwithiel, and over 1,000 acres of land in various Cornish parishes provided him with an annual income in excess of £20 p.a.8 Cornw. Feet of Fines, ii. 952; C140/10/26; Feudal Aids, i. 222-5, 227, 235, 237; Cornw. RO, Tremayne mss, T490-3, 495-8, 500, 503; Arundell mss, AR41/5-6.

Yet, the acquisition of the Durant estates did not go smoothly, and for many years embroiled Arundell in acrimonious litigation with a series of rival claimants who asserted titles often dating back to obscure settlements of the mid fourteenth century. Among these claimants were Baldwin Fulford* who for nearly a decade from 1427 to 1436 sought to secure lands in Marhamchurch and other property rights in the county,9 JUST1/1531, rots. 46d, 48d; 1540, rot. 80; SC2/157/6, rots. 4, 5, 7, 10d, 13, 14d, 17; CP40/702, rot. 325d; 703, rots. 558, 559; Cornw. Feet of Fines, ii. 1004. and Walter Reynell*, whose bid for holdings in Southdon and elsewhere continued from about 1426 into the early 1440s, and employed the full arsenal of legal harassment, including claims of forgery against Arundell, his brother-in-law, Robert Treage*, and his kinsman Thomas Pellour†, as well as the lawyer John Mayhew†, who frequently served him in the courts.10 KB27/653, rot. 44; CP40/660, rot. 139; 711, rot. 439; JUST1/1540, rots. 74d, 77. Equally troublesome were the successive husbands of Arundell’s mother-in-law, who after John Durant’s death had gone on to marry first Geoffrey Jolynton, then Ralph Keriell and eventually the Middlesex landowner Richard Maidstone*.11 CP40/672, rot. 114d. Maidstone in particular proved a tenacious opponent. In late 1434 the parties offered mutual securities of £400 to stand by the arbitration of the prominent lawyers Nicholas Aysshton*, Nicholas Radford*, John Fortescue* and Master Peter Styuecle, or in the event of their failing to agree, the award of Chief Justice Cheyne. The following February Arundell had to find further surety of £500 to return to Chancery in July, and agreed to pay 200 marks to Maidstone.12 CCR, 1429-35, pp. 349, 350, 354; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 91; iii. 667; CP40/683, rot. 463; 695, rots. 34, 136d, 253; 705, rot. 447; C1/1508/5. It is possible that Arundell’s acquiescence in a settlement with Richard Maidstone was in part prompted by other difficulties facing him at the time, for just days before appearing in Chancery to seal his bonds to the Exchequer official, he had been forced to surrender formally to the Fleet prison and pay a debt of £40 as well as 20s. damages to John Hill of Hareston, who had succeeded in having him outlawed for his refusal to pay: CP40/667, rot. 568d; CPR, 1429-36, p. 449. Perhaps more far-fetched than these claims was the plea of the lawyer Richard Respryn†, who claimed lands in Carveer as the jointure of his wife, Margaret, from her previous marriage to John Tregoose†.13 CP40/683, rot. 543. It is hard to establish the relative merits of all these challenges, but the differing and irreconcilable descents pleaded by the various parties would seem to suggest that at least some of them were spurious.

In accordance with his family’s standing, the young John Arundell went to France in 1415 in the retinue of Sir Edward Courtenay, eldest son of the earl of Devon, and may have fought at Agincourt with Sir Edward later that year.14 DKR, xliv. 571; N.H. Nicolas, Agincourt, 375. He was certainly much in favour with the King, who in December 1417 sold him the wardship of the heir to the important Carminowe family of Boconnoc for a mere £100,15 CPR, 1416-22, p. 130. He married the heir to his daughter, Joan, who after Carminowe’s death married the household esquire Thomas Bodulgate*: C139/156/10. and it is possible that it was he, rather than his cousin Sir John I*, who was appointed to the Cornish bench from 1416 to 1419.16 Sir John I had been knighted 17 years previously, and it seems unlikely that his son John of Bideford would be appointed in preference to him: CPR, 1416-22, p. 450. Further service in France was to follow. In the spring of 1418 Arundell joined the expedition of Thomas Beaufort, duke of Exeter, to Normandy. If he remained with the duke throughout, he may have participated in the capture of Evreux in May and been present at the siege of Rouen, which surrendered the following January. In the course of the expedition, Sir John was knighted, perhaps by Beaufort himself.17 DKR, xliv. 604; CP, v. 203. He is first found styled a knight at the Cornish shire elections of 19 Sept. 1419: C219/12/3. The renown he had acquired in France clearly played a role in his selection as one of the commissioners dispatched into Cornwall to negotiate loans for the war, as well as subsequently to collect the sums promised. This task discharged, he once more departed for France, this time, in 1420, in the retinue of the young earl of Devon, Hugh Courtenay, with a personal following of 27 men-at-arms, including his putative kinsmen Ralph, Michael and William Arundell, and a contingent of archers.18 E101/49/34, m. 8; DKR, xliv. 619.

Arundell’s income placed him firmly in the ranks of those expected to contribute to the government of their shire, and on his return from France he was pricked sheriff of Cornwall, an office in which he was to continue for the next 18 months. Within days of his appointment it fell to Arundell to conduct the Cornish elections to the Parliament of 1420, not an unfamiliar task to him, for he had previously been present at the elections of 1417 and 1419 and sealed the indentures with the sheriff. He was to preside at two more elections during the course of his shrievalty, and for years afterwards he continued to take an interest in the choice of Cornwall’s parliamentary representatives, attesting the sheriffs’ indentures on no fewer than five occasions between 1423 and 1435. Although there is no definite evidence that Arundell was anything other than impartial when presiding at elections, it may be no coincidence that both elections of 1421 saw the return of one or other of his kinsmen of the Lanherne line (John* and Sir John I), and in May 1421 the borough of Lostwithiel, where the elections were held, returned John Colyn†, who had served in his retinue in France in the previous year.19 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 640; E101/49/34.

At the same time, however, relations between the two branches of the Arundells were strained. That same summer saw a serious quarrel between Sir John II and his more influential cousin, Sir John I of Lanherne, come to a head. The details and cause of the dispute are now obscure, but it may have been connected with Sir John I’s acquisition in 1415 of the lands held in dower by Joan, widow of Sir John of Trerice’s grandfather, Ralph Arundell. By 1421 the matter had evidently turned violent, for the lords of the Council ordered Sir John I to be bound in the immense sum of £1,000 to keep the peace towards his kinsman.20 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 60-61.

In the meantime, Sir John II continued to serve as sheriff of Cornwall, but his performance of his official duties occasionally also caused controversy. Thus, in late 1422 the parties in a suit before the south-western assize justices accused him of packing juries in their opponents’ favour, while one Robert Wood of Bradworthy claimed the huge amount of 1,000 marks in damages for Sir John’s seizure of his household utensils and arrest of one of his servants.21 JUST1/1536, rot. 28d; KB27/653, rot. 76d. After Arundell had been discharged from his shrievalty in May 1422, his public duties remained limited to only two royal commissions over the next two years. Yet, it was his discharge of the second of them which caused him to become embroiled in a dispute which was to occupy him for much of the next decade, as well as come to the attention of at least two successive Parliaments. The dispute concerned the manor and borough of Helston-in-Kerrier, which Richard II had granted to his father’s standard-bearer, Sir Nicholas Sarnesfield and his wife, Margaret, in survivorship. Unwilling to cultivate the demesne herself, after her husband’s death Margaret had farmed the property to John Wilcotes†, the receiver-general of the duchy, and his clerk Thomas Frankeleyn. On Frankeleyn’s death, an inquiry as to the title to the property had been ordered, and over this Arundell was commissioned to preside. As a result of the inquisition’s findings, Helston had been deemed to have escheated to the Crown, and Robert Treage, who had married Sir John’s sister, along with the lawyer Richard Penpons*, whose daughter Marina had married Arundell’s younger son Richard, had secured a grant of the manor and borough. Margaret Sarnesfeld began proceedings in King’s bench, and eventually was granted a writ of nisi prius by the Parliament of 1429. This proved ineffective, and in 1431 the distraught widow once more petitioned the Commons claiming that the jury in the inquest ‘fuist fait & empanelle par le dit John Arrundell de ses propres gentz’, rather than by the sheriff of the county, as would have been appropriate.22 RP, iv. 384; The Commons 1386-1421, i. 300; iv. 639; C257/55/1; C253/24/27. Arundell got wind of his opponent’s advances to Parliament, and, well versed in parliamentary election practices, promptly arranged for the return of his elder son Nicholas to the assembly of 1431 – probably not entirely by honest means, for Nicholas’s name was inserted into the sheriff’s indenture over an erasure.23 C219/14/2. For himself, Arundell did not secure a seat, but he was nevertheless present at Westminster, ostensibly as one of the duke of Gloucester’s servants, as he claimed when sued for a debt of £160 by one John Roos in January 1431. It is not certain whether Parliament itself debated Arundell’s as yet unusual claim to an extended parliamentary privilege protecting him from being impleaded (rather than just from arrest), nor is it clear whether in the event he was allowed his writ of privilege by the King’s justices.24 KB145/6/9.

Serious though the defence of the Durant inheritance and the matter of Helston might be, they were far from alone in preoccupying Arundell in the law courts. Quarrelsome even by contemporary Cornish standards, he was frequently in dispute with one or other of his neighbours. About the time of the Crown grant to Treage and Penpons in 1424 he had become involved in litigation with the abbot of Hartland, who sought acquittance of service owed to Sir William Bonville*. It is not known whether this particular suit ever reached a verdict, but Arundell’s dispute with Hartland abbey continued throughout his life, and the legal battle was continued after his death, first by his widow and later by his grandson, John.25 CP40/652, rot. 220; 788, rot. 458; KB27/807, rot. 69; 810, rots. 35-36; 817, att. rot. 1. Still more complex were Arundell’s relations with the Syreston family. In 1416 John Syreston† had claimed a debt of 200 marks from the executors of Arundell’s father, and his brother and executor, Robert†, was later to sue Arundell for another of £43 6s. 8d., which may have been related to the earlier suit. In around 1430 John Syreston’s grandson, Laurence, petitioned the chancellor, accusing Sir John of wrongfully depriving him of his manor of Trevarthen, while Arundell claimed to have been enfeoffed by Laurence’s father, Thomas, and to be holding the lands for the execution of Syreston’s will.26 Cornw. Feet of Fines, ii. 952; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 558-9; C1/7/144; CP40/622, rot. 155; C241/213/44. In late 1432 the wealthy Sir John Dynham of Nutwell accused him of having abducted a ward from the Devon manor of Harpford,27 KB27/686, rot. 66. and two years later he was in dispute with Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon.28 KB27/694, rot. 26d. Arundell’s lawsuits against men of lesser standing were numerous.29 KB27/653, rot. att. 1; 670, rots. 86, 86d.

Yet, those whom Arundell merely opposed in the courts could consider themselves fortunate, for he was not above employing alternative methods to get his way. Thus, the London ironmonger John Hatherley*, to whom Sir John Arundell I had granted the wardship and marriage of William Penrose, complained that when he had sent his servants to collect the rents from his ward’s estates, they had been set upon by Sir John II and his associates, who had threatened to cut out their tongues should they persist in executing their master’s business.30 C1/7/80. Hatherley’s complaints probably came to nothing, for it may have been as a result of this petition that a writ of sub poena was issued, which Arundell promptly ignored, and the sheriff of Cornwall, ordered in November 1430 to attach him, returned that he had been unable to locate him.31 C244/4/88; C254/138/58. Even one-time associates might fall foul of Arundell, as did Richard Penpons, who was forced to complain to the chancellor that while he had been in London, unable to protect his property, Arundell had come to his manor of Treswithian with 80 armed men, expelled his pregnant wife, children and servants, consumed what victuals they had found and carried off all other moveable goods.32 C1/43/44.

Like many of his neighbours, Arundell occasionally engaged in acts of piracy. Jointly with his kinsman Renfrew Arundell* he owned a balinger called the Christopher of Truro, and it was this vessel which jointly with two of Renfrew’s other ships in October 1440 attacked the St. Julian of Vannes on its journey to Bordeaux. The Cornishmen took and sold the ship and its cargo, said to be worth some 6,000 crowns, leaving its Breton owners to petition for redress in Chancery. A commission of inquiry was appointed, but neither of the Arundells are known ever to have been brought to justice for their part in the incident.33 Procs. Chancery Eliz. ed. Caley and Bayley, i. p. xxxviii; CPR, 1436-41, p. 574.

Another interest which Arundell shared with many of his peers was an involvement in the Cornish tin industry. He is regularly found defending his rights in the stannary courts, where he also pursued his quarrel with Baldwin Fulford.34 SC2/157/6, rots. 4, 5, 7, 10d, 17. It was probably his mining interests that brought him into commercial contact with the London pewterer John Megre†, whose executors (James Nanfan* and John Archdeacon) were pursuing him into the 1440s for debts owed to Megre’s estate.35 CP40/718, rot. 304; 726, rot. 319; 734, rot. 315. Not long before, he had been drawn into the acrimonious dispute between the notorious Richard Tregoose* and Robert Borlase over mining rights. In the autumn of 1433 Borlase and his supporters, who apart from Sir John also included the lawyers John I*, Thomas* and William Bere*, plotted to have Tregoose indicted and arrested on charges of abduction and rape of a virgin and other offences (a conspiracy for which Borlas and his associates were later condemned to pay vast damages of £1,000). The indictment was heard by Arundell’s kinsman Sir Thomas Arundell* of Tolverne, and the following January Tregoose was committed to the Marshalsea. He was, however, able to acquit himself not long after, and embarked on a campaign of violence to take revenge on his accusers. By comparison with several of his fellows, Sir John got away lightly: in July 1434 Tregoose merely took 40s. worth of his hay, which in a show of defiance of his victim’s power he threw into some water. The two men were, however, to clash again a decade later, when Sir John accused Tregoose of stealing a valuable horse worth £10.36 KB27/729, rex rot. 1; 742, rots. 44, 112d; 739, rots. 38, 38d; 743, rots. 13d, 16d; 749, rot. 67d; 750, rot. 6; 751, rot. 48d; 752, rot. 39d; 758, rots. 11, 14d; CP40/732, rot. 117; 734, rot. 315; 736, rot. 338d; 738, rot. 104d; 740, rot. 217; 746, rot. 482d.

There is no suggestion that Arundell’s at times unlawful activities in any way impeded his career as a member of his county community. He was frequently appointed to royal commissions, served on the county bench and as a justice of oyer and terminer, and – as far as it is possible to tell from his attendance at elections in the county court – took an interest in parliamentary affairs. Indeed, it is probable that apart from securing his son’s return for Lostwithiel in 1431 he had also been instrumental in the election of his servant William Condorov* for Truro in 1427, when he was himself chosen a knight of the shire.37 KB27/665, rex rot. 2d. It may have been either on this occasion or on that of Arundell’s next appearance in the Commons in 1432 that another of his servants, William Wheteley, petitioned the Commons for a writ of parliamentary privilege to secure his release from the Fleet prison, a request to which the Commons acquiesced, but which was met by the curt royal response that the King would take advice on the matter.38 SC8/150/7488.

Arundell’s readiness to come to terms with Richard Maidstone may in part have been motivated by a desire to put his domestic affairs in order before once more setting out to France in 1436, this time in the retinue of the earl of Salisbury.39 DKR, xlviii. 310. He did, however, continue to squabble with his neighbours: in 1446 he quarrelled with John Bere of Tregarne over property at Trenowth near Trerice, which the latter claimed in the right of his wife, and the claim a few months later by William Bere that Sir John and his elder son and heir, Nicholas, had unlawfully impounded his livestock may have related to the same matter.40 CP40/743, rot. 318; C244/53/99.

Arundell probably died in the course of 1450, when the sheriff of Cornwall certified his demise in his return to a writ of distraint. He was certainly dead by early 1451, when his heir’s fealty was required by Katherine, widow of William Stafford*, who was soon to marry his kinsman John Arundell of Lanherne.41 KB27/758, rot. 14d; Arundell mss, AR2/740, m. 1d. Sir John’s widow, Joan, is not known to have remarried and lived on into the early years of Edward IV’s reign.42 KB27/810, rot. 810.