NANFAN, James

The Nanfans were an ancient family from western Cornwall with long established traditions of parliamentary service. Both James’s father and grandfather had represented Cornish boroughs in the Commons: Henry Nanfan† sat for Lostwithiel in 1361 and secured a double election at Helston and Launceston in 1363, while his son Thomas was returned for Helston in 1377.4 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 301; iv. 655. Thomas’s son James was evidently born at some point in Richard II’s reign, but probably rather earlier than was suggested at the time of his grandson’s proof of age in 1449, when he was said to be aged ‘50 years and more’, for he is first recorded at the Cornish assizes of August 1408 when along with his parents he was co-defendant in an assize of novel disseisin over lands in ‘Germoegh moor’.5 C139/140/42; JUST1/1519, rot. 94.

By early 1418, Nanfan had married Margaret, one of the two daughters and coheiresses of John Megre, a tin merchant normally resident in London, but with property in Penryn, Truro and Kenwyn.6 Reg. Stafford, 278; Add. Roll 64389. These Cornish holdings would after Megre’s death in 1419 be divided between his daughters, while his London property was in the first instance to fall to his widow, before being shared between them. John Megre was a wealthy man, and by his will not only left 20 marks to Nanfan’s wife, but also assigned a further 100 marks to each of the couple’s daughters for their respective future marriages. Along with John Archdeacon, husband of Megre’s other daughter, Nanfan was appointed one of his father-in-law’s executors and was allowed £2 for his trouble, a modest reward at best, since the executors were still pursuing the tin merchant’s debtors in the law courts in the late 1440s, some of them individuals as important (and potentially dangerous) as Sir John Arundell II* of Trerice, Philippa, widow and executrix of Sir William Bodrugan* (a daughter of Sir John Arundell I* of Lanherne), and John Tretherf* of Tretherffe.7 PCC 46 Marche (PROB11/2B, f ); Corp. London RO, hr 148/26; CPR, 1446-52, p. 13; CP40/718, rot. 304; 721, rot. 104; 726, rot. 319; 746, rot. 498; C131/64/14. By early 1423 Nanfan had also succeeded to his paternal inheritance, encompassing lands in Nanfan, Penpons, Redallen and Beauripper, and probably also including the lands in the parishes of Cury and Crantock which he held by the 1450s. Even in that year he had to fend off a challenge to his tenure of holdings in ‘Penhalmoer’ near ‘Penhalnihan’ against the son and widow of William Trethake†, who claimed that Nanfan’s grandparents had merely had a life interest in the property concerned, and had previously made similar claims against his parents.8 Cornish Lands of the Arundells (Cornw. Rec. Soc., n.s. xli), 14, 29; C1/42/97; CP40/648, rot. 355; JUST1/1519, rot. 95d; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 654-5. The combined Nanfan and Megre estates made James a substantial landowner, whose total annual income was assessed at £10 p.a. in 1451.9 E179/87/92; Cornish Lands of the Arundells, 14, 29. This was clearly a conservative estimate, for at various points in his career he was able at least temporarily to augment his holdings. Thus, Nanfan’s son-in-law John Trenewith – perhaps in the context of a marriage settlement – settled his manor of Fentongollan (in St. Michael Penkivel) on James and Margaret Nanfan for their lives in survivorship, and for a period from May 1436 Nanfan additionally had custody of the lands of the young heir of John Trewike, which had been granted to him by Ralph Reskymer.10 C139/123/42, m. 4; CAD, v. A11383.

There is nothing to suggest that Nanfan took an early interest in parliamentary affairs on account of family tradition, for it was only after his own return for Truro in 1426 that he is known to have attended the Cornish shire elections, and his subsequent regular appearances on these occasions may have owed more to his official duties in the county court as a coroner than to any personal interest in the representation of his shire. Certainly, he seems to have owed his own single election for Truro to his local credentials, for at least one of his sureties, William Penalewy†, was a local man.11 C219/13/4.

The coroners’ duties were often onerous, and it is possible that Nanfan himself procured the royal writ which ordered his dismissal on grounds of ill health in July 1433. The reverberations of his official conduct nevertheless continued to haunt him for some time and as late as the autumn of 1445 a royal writ of certiorari ordered an inquiry into an inquest into the murder of one Hervy Rawlyn held by Nanfan in May 1432. Nanfan was forced to defend his conduct of the inquiry in the court of King’s bench, but was subsequently fined 13s. 4d. when the justices found fault with it.12 KB9/225/81; 252/1/55, 56; KB27/739, fines rot. 1; CCR, 1429-35, p. 217. Nanfan’s service as coroner points to a degree of legal training, but he is not otherwise known to have practiced as a lawyer, although he occasionally served his neighbours as an arbiter or a witness to their property settlements. The individuals with whom he was thus associated included some of the most important men of Cornwall like Sir John Arundell I, Sir William Bodrugan, and the royal household esquire Thomas Bodulgate*, but also merchants like Richard Vage of Liskeard, lawyers like Thomas Tregedek*, the widow of Stephen Bant*, and a bevy of lesser men.13 KB27/742, rots. 136d, fines 2d; C1/18/23; CAD, iv. A10425; Cornw. RO, Edgcombe mss, ME1221; Arundell mss, AR4/2121-2. Nanfan’s relations with his neighbours were, however, not always cordial. In the autumn of 1431 he was suing the former sheriff Robert Chamberlayn for embezzling writs of debt and in November 1447 he was able to clear himself of charges brought in Chancery by the attorney-general John Vampage*.14 E13/139, rot. 17; C253/27/29.

A few years earlier, James had been among a group of men headed by his more important kinsman John Nanfan* who were accused by William Clerk alias Tanner, second husband of Philippa Bodrugan, of having conspired to secure his wrongful indictment and imprisonment for supposedly purloining some of the deceased Sir William Bodrugan’s muniments, which rightfully pertained (along with custody of the Bodrugan estates) to John Nanfan’s master, Henry Beauchamp, duke of Warwick.15 CP40/736, rot. 338. Another dispute over property at ‘Treburthek Pye’, of which he was said to have disseised the influential Flamanks of Boscarne on behalf of John Nanfan, was never settled in James’s lifetime and still occupied the courts in the mid 1480s.16 C1/81/64, 65. It was perhaps in the context of this particular dispute that in December 1450 Nanfan fell victim to an assault by a group of men led by Ralph Flamank of Kelly at Trevisker in St. Eval.17 CP40/762, rot. 311.

By this date it must have been increasingly clear that Nanfan was unlikely to father a son, and he began to take a keen interest in his grandson, John Trenewith*, the son of his elder daughter. He headed the witnesses at Trenewith’s proof of age in September 1449, and although he was rather vague about his own age, he remembered clearly seeing the boy being lifted out of the font of the church of St. Michael Penkivel almost 23 years earlier.18 C139/140/42. Already, he had become embroiled in a drawn-out dispute over the young man’s inheritance with the latter’s stepmother, Margaret Pomeroy, and her second husband Thomas Tresithney, for he headed a group of men whom they accused of a unspecified trespass in that year.19 KB27/751, rot. 48d. Three years earlier, James’s influential kinsman John Nanfan, perhaps at his bidding, had used his connexions at court to secure a royal grant of Trenewith’s wardship, and had fended off the rival claims of Sir John Colshull* to the young man’s custody.20 C44/29/18; CPR, 1446-52, p. 51; A.R. Myers, Crown, Household and Parl. 178. Nanfan’s attachment to Trenewith remained a close one throughout his life and he appears to have spent his declining years living in his grandson’s household.21 C1/42/97.

The exact date of Nanfan’s death has not been established, but it occurred at some point before 1470, by which date his holdings in Beauripper, Penpons, Redallen and elsewhere were in the Trenewith’s hands. Nanfan’s younger daughter, Beatrice, had remained in the care of her maternal grandmother, Emma Megre, after her mother’s death, and at the age of 15 had married the Somerset esquire Hugh Malet. They had several children, none of whom survived their mother, who was herself dead by the late 1460s.22 C1/16/701; 42/97-99; Cornish Lands of the Arundells, 67; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 712; PCC 46 Marche; Corp. London RO, hr 148/26; J. Maclean, Trigg Minor, i. 546.