TREGODEK, Thomas

The Tregodeks were an ancient Cornish family who took their name from the place in the parish of South Petherwin. They held extensive estates in that parish, as well as neighbouring Launceston, Lezant, Lewannick and Stokeclimsland, and further afield in Launcells, St. Gennys, Week St. Mary, Warleggan, Liskeard, Menheniot, Morval and St. Germans.3 Cornw. Feet of Fines (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc., 1950), ii. 784, 887, 906. The family’s pedigree in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is confused, but it seems clear that the Helston MP of 1437 was the son of Nicholas Tregodek, himself the younger of two sons of that name of Robert Tregodek of Treguddick. This Nicholas was probably the man who at some point prior to 1421 clashed with the abbot of Tavistock over a cargo of Bay salt which the latter had seized, and who as a result of his attempts to recover his property was outlawed and stripped of his property.4 Ibid. 784; C1/45/43; 74/18; CP40/703, rot. 324; CPR, 1416-22, p. 352; CFR, xvi. 9. He is last recorded in early 1437, around the time of Thomas’s election to Parliament.5 Reg. Lacy (Canterbury and York Soc. lxii), iii. 239, 243. A much later reference to Thomas’s illegitimacy offers the best explanation for a settlement Nicholas had made in 1412. He had then placed the core of the family estates in Thomas’s possession, subject to an annual rent of £10, and provided for their descent to his issue.6 SC11/968; Cornw. Feet of Fines, ii. 887.

Thomas’s bastardy also goes some way towards explaining Nicholas Tregodek’s decision to sell other lands, which he had acquired by marriage. One such sale to the Launceston burgess John Bale* eventually led to litigation, when Thomas claimed that his father’s wife had in fact settled the property on him.7 Cornw. Feet of Fines, ii. 864, 915, 974; C1/33/318. Nor was this the only dispute which Thomas inherited from his father, for it was also Nicholas who began a squabble over land with the influential John Palmer*. The two men eventually came to an arrangement, but shortly after Nicholas’s death the affair flared up once more. By the spring of 1431 Palmer had begun litigation against Thomas in the court of common pleas, alleging that he and his associates had forged muniments relating to the Tregodek lands, which Palmer now claimed as his own. Although Tregodek initially declared himself ready to negotiate, he petitioned the chancellor, Bishop Stafford of Bath and Wells, asserting that Palmer’s action was malicious, and that he had hired one John Bant, whom he accused of being complicit in the forgeries, to lose the suit deliberately, so as to ensure Tregodek’s conviction.8 Cornw. Feet of Fines, ii. 1008; CP40/681, rot. 129; 698, rot. 128; 703, rots. 324, 324d; 706, rot. 335; C1/12/87; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 5. The quarrel continued to simmer, and on occasion erupted into open violence. According to Tregodek’s version of events, Palmer attacked and imprisoned him in London on 3 Nov. 1437; while Palmer claimed that Tregodek, in an attempt to kill him, ambushed him in Exeter in the summer of 1443.9 CP40/734, rot. 315d; 737, rot. 138. Some form of settlement was reached, but it was evidently an uneasy one, for in 1449 the parties were once more in court. On this occasion it was Tregodek who informed the justices of King’s bench that as long before as January 1430 Palmer had invaded his property and threatened his tenants, preventing him from drawing their rents for the intervening years, and causing him damages of £300. To further annoy his adversary, Tregodek simultaneously brought another suit in the court of common pleas, this time referring to a violation of his pasture rights dating from 1430, and claiming the vast sum of £1,000 in damages. Palmer contended that all of this was clearly ancient history, and had been settled some ten years earlier by the arbitration of John Mayhew† and Richard Chicket, who had adjudged to Tregodek a grand total of 20s. in full satisfaction of all matters pending between the two men. Both opponents asked that the matter be tried by jury, but negotiations between them evidently continued, with the result that before the end of 1449 Palmer finally agreed to make a formal disclaimer of any title he might have to the disputed holdings.10 CP40/734, rot. 315d; 752, rot. 311; KB27/752, rot. 80; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 5; Cornw. Feet of Fines, ii. 1086.

The long drawn-out quarrel with Palmer was not the only trouble that Tregodek faced during these years. In 1440 he was accused by the influential Thomas Carminowe* of Ashwater of having ambushed and threatened him in the London parish of St. Dunstan in the west,11 CP40/718, rot. 330. while around the same time he became involved in a complex dispute concerning the estates of the Lawhire family. At some point before 1443 the prominent lawyer John Lawhire* had died, leaving as his heirs his two daughters, Joan and Elizabeth, while another half of the family property remained in the hands of Lawhire’s brother Thomas. Tregodek, connected to the Lawhires by ties of kinship which are now obscure,12 In 1492 Elizabeth Lawhire, then widowed, would describe Tregodek’s putative son John as her kinsman, and he did subsequently inherit some of her property: Cornw. RO, Rashleigh mss, R2209, 2210; Arundell (Tywardreath) mss, ART5/2. played a central part in the various settlements made by Thomas Lawhire at this time,13 Rashleigh mss, R2193-6, 2198, 2200-1. but before long, his title to the holdings was challenged by Robert Curteys† of Pill (in Lanlivery), who had established a close connexion with John Lawhire’s daughters, then also described as ‘of Pill’. In 1448 Tregodek claimed that Curteys and the two heiresses had invaded his property at Great Lawhire, and had moreover forged deeds by which the women had acquired the lands in question from their uncle.14 KB27/750, rot. 59d; 751, rots. 37d, 78d; 752, rot. 79d. Two years earlier, Curteys had agreed to submit the dispute to the arbitration of (Sir) Hugh Courtenay* and Sir William Bonville*, and sealed bonds to the effect that the women would agree to this, but this attempt at mediation had evidently come to nothing, so Tregodek now turned to an influential ally, John Trevelyan*. At Easter 1451 Curteys informed the justices of common pleas that Trevelyan and his followers, including Tregodek, had set upon him at Restormel, and seized, maltreated and imprisoned him until he agreed to pay ten marks for his release.15 Rashleigh mss, R2197; CP40/761, rots. 105, 117, 148. It is not clear at what price Trevelyan’s support came, for although in December 1454 a panel of arbiters found in favour of the influential household esquire, a few days earlier Trevelyan himself had released all actions to Tregodek and within eight months Trevelyan’s associates, to whom the Lawhire lands had been granted in April 1449, sealed letters of quitclaim to him.16 Rashleigh mss, R2198-2201; CCR, 1454-61, p. 48.

Tregodek was well equipped to guide all of these disputes through the royal courts, for after his training in the law at Clifford’s Inn, in the years from 1431 to 1449 he had regularly served as an attorney or stood bail in the Westminster common law courts for a succession of his neighbours from the south-west.17 Baker, ii. 1551; KB27/680, rot. 34d; 696, rex rots. 17d, 23d; 735, att. rot. 2; 742, rots. 112d, 117, 136d; 743, rot. 26; 746, rex rot. 45d; 752, rex rots. 5d, 6; CP40/696, rot. 128; 739, rot. 509; 740, rot. 119; 745, rot. 415; 748, rot. 89d; CFR, xvii. 171; CCR, 1429-35, p. 299. This professional career had seemingly only been interrupted in the summer of 1441, when he sued out letters of protection in order to join the retinue of Richard, duke of York, in France. The expedition does not fit neatly into the context of his battles in the law-courts, and a legal manoeuvre may be suspected – the intention being to escape prosecution. Within a month of securing the royal letters patent he made a settlement of all his moveable possessions on four trustees.18 DKR, xlviii. 346; CCR, 1435-41, p. 488. Despite this possible connexion with the duke of York, there is no indication that Tregodek prospered after Edward IV’s accession. He had never held office either under the Crown or the duchy of Cornwall in Henry VI’s reign, and he did not now go on to do so.

Unless he lived to great old age it is unlikely that he was the Thomas Tregodek who served on the juries for several Cornish inquisitions post mortem taken between 1463 and 1467, and was accused in Chancery in early 1472 of refusing to return property in Launceston of which he had been enfeoffed.19 C140/3/31; 7/5; 20/29; CPR, 1461-67, p. 174; C1/38/8. Three generations stood between him and another Thomas Tregodek, who claimed in a Chancery suit of the mid 1530s to be his great-great-grandson.20 C1/912/46-47.