BORLASE, Mark

The Borlases of the parish of St. Wenn originated in Angoulême and had settled in England in the reign of William Rufus. Like many of their neighbours, they derived the surname by which they became regularly known in the fifteenth century from their Cornish family seat. Mark Borlase’s grandfather Noel had still used an earlier surname of ‘Frank’, while Noel’s niece Alice had retained the family’s even earlier, Conquest-era, appellation of Taillefer even in the lifetime of Mark’s father Andrew.3 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 295. Borlase’s father, who represented Truro in the Parliament of 1395, died in about 1413, and the family lands that fell to his son and heir included holdings in ‘Trevesek’ near Pencarrow (in Egloshayle), Penryn and Fowey.4 Cornw. Feet of Fines, ii (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc. 1950), 873. By contrast, the Borlases are not known to have held any property in the borough of Helston, and it is unclear whether Mark fulfilled the statutory requirement for residency in the constituency that returned him to the Commons in 1433. Along with the family’s landholdings went an interest in the Cornish tin industry, and like other landowners Borlase was regularly a party to litigation in the stannary court of Blackmore.5 SC2/157/6, rots. 1d, 3d, 9d, 12, 20. It is possible that it was their common interest in tin that brought him into contact with the disreputable Richard Tregoose*, for whose good behaviour he stood surety at the Lostwithiel sessions of June 1429. This was to prove an imprudent decision, for not only did Tregoose break his pledge, but prominent among his next victims was a member of Borlase’s own family, Robert, son and heir of the recently deceased tin merchant John Robyn Borlase of St. Columb. Mark Borlase found himself liable to pay his security of 20 marks to the Crown, and litigation over this was pending in the court of King’s bench for several years.6 KB27/694, rex rot. 7.

Although there is no suggestion that Borlase himself was an exceptionally quarrelsome man, he made periodic appearances in the royal law courts. Thus, in 1425 the influential Sir William Talbot† accused him and one John Froden, a gentleman from the parish of St. Stephen in Brannel, of an unspecified trespass, while in the autumn of 1447 he was among three Cornish gentlemen whom the abbot of Tewkesbury sued for a similar offence.7 KB27/656, rot. 61d; 657, rot. 81; 746, rot. 76. Borlase died not long afterwards, for the John Borlase who in 1451 was said to have landholdings worth £3 p.a. in Cornwall was probably his son and heir who had by then succeeded to the family holdings.8 E179/87/92. Mark’s widow, Alice, went on to marry William Benalva of Benalva, who by the autumn of 1452 was suing his two stepdaughters for Alice’s dower from the lands that had been settled on them.9 Mark’s younger son, Roger, m. Joan, wid. of John Gaer of St. Creed; his daughters Joan and Edith respectively m. Thomas Payn and John Thomas: Borlase, 23; CP40/768, rot. 430d; 773, rot. 450; Reg. Lacy, iii (Canterbury and York Soc., lxii), 200.