CORNWALL, William

William Cornwall was no doubt a member of the important gentry family, the main branch of which was settled at Burford in Shropshire. This explains why he is generally described in the records as ‘esquire’, but his place in the uncertain pedigree of that family is unknown. The first reference to him may date from as early as January 1406, when, described as ‘of Oxfordshire’, he offered surety in a royal grant to his kinsman, Sir John Cornwall (later Lord Fanhope), but it is not until over ten years later that he begins to make regular appearances in the records. Most of these references relate to his service to one of Herefordshire’s leading gentry, Sir Roland Lenthall of Hampton Court. In April 1418 he was associated with Lenthall and others in a royal grant of the estates of the alien priory of Wootton Wawen (Warwickshire) and three manors belonging to the Norman abbey of Conches; on 19 June 1421 he entered into a bond in 40s. to the King’s chamberlain, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, for the payment of the one mark that would fall due to the duke as chamberlain if Sir Roland should have issue by his high-born wife, Margaret, one of the three sisters and coheirs of Thomas Fitzalan, earl of Arundel (d.1415); and in about 1425 he stood pledge for the prosecution of a petition in Chancery by which Lenthall sought to secure the payment of the portion of his second wife, Lucy, daughter of Richard, Lord Grey of Codnor.1 CFR, xiv. 24; CPR, 1416-22, p. 331; CCR, 1419-22, p. 65; C1/6/162.

Lenthall, however, was not the only man to whom Cornwall made himself useful, and the likelihood is that he was a lawyer. In January 1420 he entered into mainprise in £100 in Chancery for the appearance of John Overe, constable of Chirk castle (Denbigh), before the King and council; in December 1422 he offered surety for Thomas Parker, on Parker’s reappointment as alnager in Herefordshire; and he did so again in the following April when Parker was the beneficiary of another royal grant. Later, in February 1427, he stood surety for two men of lesser account, a monk, Sampson Devereux, and John Mule, in a grant of the keeping of the impoverished alien priory of Crasswell in Clodock (Herefordshire).2 CCR, 1419-22, p. 65; CFR, xv. 16, 37-38, 160.

It is not known why Cornwall settled in Hereford, but when, in 1422, he sued out a pardon for an outlawry against him for failure to answer for debt, he was described as ‘of Hereford, gentleman’, as he was also when offering surety for Parker. His apparent residence in the city and connexions outside it served to recommend him to the citizens as a suitable representative in Parliament, and he was elected on 30 Sept. 1427.3 CPR, 1422-9, p. 24; CFR, xv. 16, 37-38; C219/13/5. Curiously, however, he was not among the Hereford men considered important enough to be sworn to the peace in 1434, nor does he appear as a witness in any surviving deeds for the city.4 CPR, 1429-36, pp. 377-8. His residence there can only have been occasional. Indeed, it is striking that nearly all the certain references to him fall between 1418 and 1427, and this raises the possibility that he combined a legal with a military career. Either he or a namesake had enlisted in the retinue of Edmund Mortimer, earl of March, for the Agincourt campaign, and had resumed a military career by January 1429, when serving under Sir John Salvain at Rouen. Thereafter, if one assumes that all the references refer to the same man, his career can be traced in France until 1441, serving successively in the retinues of Robert, Lord Willoughby, John, Lord Talbot, and Sir Thomas Gargrave.5 N.H. Nicolas, Agincourt, 336; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, fr. 25768/332, 434; 25769/450; 25770/684, 721; 25772/946; 25775/1451; Archives Nationales, K67/1/40; Add. Ch. 11871. The connexion of two of these commanders with Herefordshire, namely March and Talbot, and the scarcity of certain references to our MP in England during the 1430s, suggest that he may be the soldier, as also does his connexion with Lenthall, who was himself a noted military man.

Aside from what may have been a military career, little else is known of Cornwall after his single election to Parliament. In 1438, described as ‘once of London, esquire, alias of Herefordshire, esquire’, he was sued for debt by the executors of a London goldsmith. Later, as a servant of Lenthall, he may have played a part in the marriage, in about 1444, of his kinsman, Thomas Cornwall of Burford, to one of his master’s daughters. Lenthall later came to regret the match, complaining to the chancellor that the bridegroom’s wealth had been misrepresented to him. No other references to our MP have been traced, and he was probably dead by 18 Apr. 1447, when Isabel Cornwall, perhaps his widow, was the defendant in an action of debt in the Hereford mayor’s court.6 CP40/708, rot. 301; C1/14/17; Herefs. RO, Hereford city recs., mayor’s ct. roll 25 Hen. VI, BG11/2/6.