KENDALE, Richard

The Kendales ranked among the most prominent families of Lostwithiel and its region in the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Both Richard’s grandfather and father held the mayoralty several times and represented the borough in Parliament in the reigns of Richard II and Henry V, and the family’s importance was further reflected by the indult for worship in a private chapel that Bishop Lacy bestowed on Stephen Kendale and his wife and children in 1431.5 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 515; Reg. Lacy, i (Canterbury and York Soc. lx), 241.

Their position may have made the Kendales prone to a degree of highhanded behaviour. In an otherwise unexplained incident in the summer of 1440 Stephen and his wife and son came to blows with a local chaplain, Edmund Pery. According to the presentment of a local jury, Stephen, Christine and Richard Kendale had waylaid Pery and his servant William Clerk and had abused and maltreated them, while Richard had shot the chaplain in the thigh with an arrow, inflicting a wound from which he subsequently died. The Kendales for their part claimed to have acted in self defence, asserting that the apparently heavily armed Pery had struck Christine on the head with a baselard, before attacking her husband, while Richard had merely intended to come to his parents’ aid. The Crown accepted this defence and within a few weeks the Kendales had been granted full royal pardons for their actions.6 KB9/233/67-69; KB27/718, rex rot. 27; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 454, 470.

Neither these events nor the quarrel over the estates of their kinsman Thomas Kendale, in which Richard and his father were embroiled in these years, significantly damaged the family’s standing in Lostwithiel, and in 1442, the year when Richard was elected to his first Parliament, his father attended the shire elections at Lostwithiel and attested the indenture with the sheriff which recorded the names of both shire and borough Members. There is no indication that Kendale distinguished himself in Parliament, and it was not until 1448 that he was appointed to the duchy of Cornwall office of bailiff of the stannary of Blackmore. Nevertheless, his new dignity may have led him to take a more active interest in public affairs. He attested the Cornish elections held in January 1449, served a month later as a justice of gaol delivery in the county, and in October was once more elected to represent the borough of Lostwithiel in the Commons. On this occasion he may have attracted the government’s attention, for late the following year he was commissioned to procure shipping in the West Country for the passage of Lord Rivers to Aquitaine, and in March 1451 he was appointed to make an inquiry as to what ships had been commandeered for that purpose.7 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 437, 444.

At the same time Kendale was also active for some of his more important neighbours both at Westminster and in the south-west. In December 1450 he stood surety for John Nanfan*, to whom custody of the manor and borough of Helston had been committed; in July 1452 he was appointed an arbiter in a dispute between John Arundell of Lanherne and Sir Hugh Courtenay* of Boconnoc, and a few years later, in May 1457, he acted as attorney for Renfrew Arundell*.8 CFR, xviii. 182; Cornw. RO, Arundell mss, AR17/65, AR20/20. Periodically, he was called upon to witness property transactions.9 Cornw. RO, Wynell-Mayow mss, WM357; Tremayne mss, T504; Arundell mss, AR1/300, 359, 360, 361, 405; AR4/1394-5. Yet, Kendale was not on amicable terms with all of his neighbours. The details of his breaches of the law are now obscure, but in late July 1452 a commission of oyer and terminer was appointed to inquire into the felonies he had committed in association with his kinsman Edmund Kendale, a clerk, and the influential Richard Tregoose*.10 CPR, 1446-52, p. 585. Nor were the Kendales’ unlawful activities restricted to England alone. In June 1453 commissioners were ordered to inquire into the complaint of a Breton merchant, John Valanson (or de Valansia), who on his way to England had been attacked at sea by two Cornish ships, including Le Barke, of which Richard and Edmund Kendale were part owners. Ignoring the merchant’s safe-conduct, the Cornishmen had taken the vessel to Fowey, disposed of the cargo, and, adding insult to injury, had procured fresh safe-conducts for their prisoners so that they might trade to raise their ransom.11 CPR, 1452-61, p. 119; DKR, xlviii. 399; C1/22/57; C253/34/314. However, none of these accusations seem to have done significant damage to Kendale’s local standing, and in 1455 the burgesses of Lostwithiel returned him to the Commons once more. Richard lost no time in making use of his spell at Westminster to sue for a renewed royal pardon, which was granted in October while the House was in session. Furthermore, and ironically in view of his alleged activities of three years earlier, in February and March 1456 Kendale, still a sitting MP, was twice commissioned to inquire into acts of piracy in the south-west.12 C67/41, m. 24; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 302, 306.

In the interim, Kendale’s father had died, leaving him as heir to the substantial family property in Lostwithiel, Penkneth in Lanlivery, Bridgend in St. Winnow, Treworgey, Morval, Liskeard, Duloe, Pelynt, East Looe and St. Ive, as well as the fishery in the river Looe.13 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 514-15; Cornwall Feet of Fines, ii. 976, 1026; C1/77/81-83, 837/5; Cornw. RO, Liskeard, St. Keyne, Lezant and Menheniot deeds, X556/6. The income from these lands aside, the Kendales also had an interest in the tin trade, which had a few years earlier led to a vicious family quarrel over the tinworks formerly belonging to Richard’s uncle Thomas Kendale. Despite Stephen Kendale’s swift action to reunite the family holdings after his brother’s death, the latter’s widow, Maud, had succeeded in retaining some of her late husband’s mines and had taken these to a second husband, Otto Vivian, whose tenure the Kendales continued to challenge in the royal law courts in the early 1450s.14 C1/18/76; 1506/33-34; KB146/6/22/4; CP40/761, rot. 57.

Although there ostensibly appears to be nothing in Kendale’s career to connect him with the cause of Lancaster, the supporters of Richard, duke of York, took a different view and their victory at Northampton in 1460 cost Kendale his stannary office, from which he was dismissed at Michaelmas. Although he was able to secure a royal pardon in August 1463, he soon also found himself in serious financial trouble. On 28 Nov. 1461 he and his brother-in-law Richard Penpons had bound themselves by statute staple to John Broughton† for repayment of a debt of £70. As the Cornishmen failed to pay their debt, in February 1467 Broughton secured a writ ordering the sheriff of Cornwall to arrest and imprison them and to confiscate their property. Fortunately for Kendale, the sheriff of the day, Sir John Colshull*, was the brother-in-law of two of his old associates, Sir Renfrew Arundell and John Nanfan, and was prepared to turn a blind eye and return into Chancery that he had no property within his bailiwick, nor had he been able to arrest and find him. This struck the authorities at Westminster as an unlikely story and, whether or not they noticed Kendale’s name (as an attestor) on the election return Colshull sent into Chancery in May, they issued a fresh writ for the confiscation of his property in July.15 CP40/821, rot. 434; C67/45, m. 10; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 410, 443.

It is not known whether Kendale was ever brought to justice. He appears to have spent his final years living the quiet life of a local landowner, occasionally arbitrating disputes among his neighbours, including John Beket and the wealthy Thomas Trethewy†.16 E210/1589, 2641; Plymouth and W. Devon RO, Yonge of Puslinch mss, 107/648, 650. Mindful of the quarrels that had divided his family for more than half a century, he also settled some of his estates on feoffees with the intention of providing for his younger sons. In the event, however, it was just this settlement which led to further trouble. The date of Kendale’s death is obscure, but he was dead by October 1486, by which date his sons John and Thomas were already engaged in a bitter confrontation over their paternal estates.17 C1/77/81-82. For more than a generation after his death the Kendales ceased to play any part in Parliament, but in the reign of Elizabeth I Lostwithiel once more returned a Kendale to Westminster.18 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 392.