TREGOOSE, Richard

One of the most colourful men ever to sit in the Commons, Tregoose was the son of a middling landowner from northern Cornwall. His father, John, not only sat in eight Parliaments for four different Cornish boroughs and served as under sheriff of the county while Richard II was on the throne, but later also went on to become Henry IV’s first under sheriff of Cornwall and on relinquishing that office was chosen one of the county’s coroners. Simultaneously, the elder Tregoose also held office under the duchy of Cornwall as steward of the hundred of Penwith. As a man of some importance, he naturally fell out with some of his neighbours, and it was in the course of a quarrel with one of their number, Ralph Trenewith of Grampound, that he was murdered in October 1406, leaving his son and heir a minor.5 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 643-4. The MP must be distinguished from another man of a similar name, the son of William Tregoose, who was heir to the manor of Bree, and left a da., Elizabeth, who married Geoffrey Beauchamp of Binnerton: CPR, 1436-41, p. 412; KB27/763, rex rot. 20; 765, rex rot. 1; J.S. Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 22, 76. The two men are conflated in HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 866-7.

It is uncertain precisely when Tregoose attained his majority. He was still under age in August 1409, when for this reason he had to be represented in a suit against Richard Penhalwyn at the Cornish assizes,6 JUST1/1519, rot. 118d. but may have reached his majority by June 1415, when he was the recipient of a royal pardon.7 C67/37, m. 28. It is unclear what had prompted him to seek this pardon, although it is possible that it was in some way related to his livery of the family estates. The extent of these holdings is obscure, and it was only late in life that Tregoose was able to augment them by marriage to a wealthy heiress, Margaret, daughter of the Devon landowner Thomas Archdeacon, and by then widow of Robert Kayl. The Archdeacon lands were substantial, extending over some 300 acres in Leigham and elsewhere in Devon, and it is probable that the assessment in 1451 of Tregoose’s annual income from his Cornish estates alone at £20 represented something of a conservative estimate: some time earlier, when Tregoose’s adversaries, seeking to challenge his standing, had claimed that he could at best command an annual income of £10, possibly 20 marks, he had proudly retorted that he had easily 100 marks p.a. at his disposal.8 E179/87/92; C1/17/407B; 45/108.

Rather than for his wealth, however, Tregoose was to become notorious for his unlawful activities.9 H. Kleineke, ‘Why the West was Wild’, The Fifteenth Century III ed. Clark, 83-88. Even early in his career he was known as ‘a rioutes and mesgoverned man’, who kept a liveried retinue of armed malefactors, and preyed upon the men of his shire.10 C1/45/108. His first recorded misdeeds appear to have occurred in 1423. The details of the offence are not known, but on 21 Sept. that year Tregoose had to appear at Boscastle before William, Lord Botreaux, and was bound in £20 to keep the peace towards a certain Isabel Hamely (perhaps the wife of Arthur Hamely), while four sureties each had to pledge £10.11 E159/205, recorda Hil. rot. 4d; 215, recorda Mich. rot. 19; 228, recorda Easter rot. 25. Whatever Tregoose’s offence had been, it was not to remain an isolated instance. On Ash Wednesday 1424 at Mitchell, Tregoose came to blows with the local landowner Simon Killygrew (with whom he had for several years been in dispute over certain property rights) and his servant Josce Tresuthen, and maimed the latter by slashing his right arm with his sword. Barely six months later, a similarly-violent clash took place at St. Michael’s Mount when Tregoose seized one Reginald Bugules, tied him to his horse by the feet, and dragged him for 40 paces. Yet, even such outrages did not prevent his attendance at the parliamentary elections at Lostwithiel the following April, and his attestation of the sheriff’s indenture recording the election result. Less peaceful was Tregoose’s next appearance at Lostwithiel in August, when a disagreement with the lawyer Roger Wolley II* got out of hand, and daggers were drawn. Acts of gratuitous violence soon became the dominant theme of Tregoose’s career. In the summer of 1427 he embarked on the first of a long series of violent assaults on the members of the Cornish mining community, when on 5 June he rode to the stannary of Tregatillan, assaulted William Gylmyn and other tinners working there, and drove them away. Not content with this, three days later, on Pentecost Sunday, he assembled some 140 armed men and rode to St. Columb Major where Gylmyn and other tinners were attending matins, and caused a public disturbance by ostentatiously riding through the town with his force. On 19 June further tinners on Tresevell moor became Tregoose’s next victims, while subsequent weeks saw him embroiled in a dispute over a tenement at Crostow with one John Trevylyas, in the context of which on 6 July he helped himself to four horses belonging to the local gentleman Thomas Moyle, killing two of the animals in the process. As the interruption of the tinners’ mining activity had caused a loss of some £40 in coinage dues to the Crown, the authorities now intervened, and on 14 July Tregoose was arrested at Tregaswith by the powerful Sir John Arundell I* of Lanherne, acting in his capacity as a j.p., and was required to find surety of the peace. Yet, with scant regard for Arundell’s standing, Tregoose broke from the arrest and rejoined 30 of his men who were standing by in a side street.12 KB27/695, rex rot. 6; 729, rex rot. 1; CP40/639, rot. 334d; E207/17/2/208; JUST1/1540, rots. 87, 88.

Following this brush with the law, Tregoose wisely lay low for nearly a year, but before long he returned to his old ways. On 10 Aug. 1428 at Treunwith he clashed violently with John Polruddon*, the lawyer who had just a year earlier acted as his attorney in the Westminster courts, but who had also served as attorney for Sir Thomas Arundell*, the sheriff of Cornwall charged with outlawing Tregoose for his maiming of Josce Tresuthen. Richard now maimed Polrudden too, by severing three fingers of his right hand.13 CP40/664, rot. 405; KB27/695, rex rot. 6; 729, rex rot. 1; E207/14/8; 17/2/108; 173/3. Over the course of the following week he conducted a series of raids on the estates of the neighbouring gentry, helping himself to the corn of Thomas Talek, Edmund Botreaux and John Elyot at Trenge and Cutford Farley. Yet, the sheriff, Sir Thomas Arundell, was not prepared to countenance such treatment of one of his servants and on 17 Aug. at Lostwithiel he made a fresh attempt to place the offender under arrest. Tregoose once more evaded capture, and continued his career of violence. Having joined forces with Odo Vivian, a son of the notorious law-breaker Adam Vivian*, in December at Lanivet he set upon one William Grigge, broke his arms and legs with clubs and left him for dead. A day later the two men and their retainers rode to the house of Alexander Bredon at Egloshayle and forcibly ejected Bredon’s wife, taking the keys of the house as they left.14 KB27/695, rex rot. 6; 714, rex rot. 20; 729, rex rot. 1; Vivian, 533.

By now, Polrudden’s complaints had spurred the Westminster authorities into action, and in February 1429 a commission of oyer and terminer was appointed to deal with Tregoose.15 CPR, 1422-9, p. 550. This proved more effective than any previous attempts to bind him over to keep the peace, and in late August he found sureties for future good behaviour towards Grigge, while his disagreement with Polrudden was probably settled out of court early in the following year. For a time, Tregoose appeared to have mended his ways, yet in the early weeks of 1433 he was once more up to his old tricks. On 24 Feb. he led an armed retinue to the parish church of St. Colan and immediately after mass assaulted the vicar, Robert Jop, a member of a well-connected gentry family. A few weeks later he began a concerted campaign of intimidation against a young merchant tinner, Robert Borlase, which was to last for more than a decade. Ostensibly, the issue at stake was the question of Borlase’s wardship, for the young man’s father, John Robyn Borlase, had been a tenant of David Tregorrick, Tregoose’s cousin, and when forced to defend his conduct in court Tregoose claimed that it had been his intention to uphold his kinsman’s lawful right. In reality, Tregoose seems to have coveted the Borlases’ mining interests himself. On 18 Mar. 1433 at Lostwithiel he seized Robert Borlase, and, tying him onto a horse without a saddle, carried him first to his residence at Tregoose and then across the county to Colan, Hustyn (in St. Breock), Trefrida (in Jacobstow) and Whitstone, holding him captive for some 13 weeks with just barley bread and water for sustenance.16 C1/17/407B-C; KB27/693, rots. 71, 327; 695, rex rot. 6; 729, rex rot. 1; E207/14/8; CP40/694, rot. 456; 700, rot. 335. Although Borlase subsequently regained his freedom, this was not the end of the matter, for over the following months Tregoose repeatedly waylaid and assaulted him: on 29 June at Haywood in Devon and on 2 Oct. near his own house at Borlasevath (in St. Columb Major).17 KB27/694, rex rot. 7. Nevertheless, Borlase proved to be a more resourceful adversary than most of Tregoose’s other victims. As well as beginning simultaneous litigation in all the royal law courts,18 C1/70/77; C254/141/54; 142/21; KB27/693, rot. 71; 696, rot. 58; 697, rot. 29; CP40/694, rot. 323d. he joined forces with Simon Killygrew and some of the tinners who had previously suffered from Tregoose’s unwanted attention, and secured the backing of the powerful Sir John Arundell II* of Trerice and the lawyers John*, Thomas* and William Bere*. Between them, they agreed to have Tregoose indicted at the Cornish sessions of the peace on a full litany of charges. This, however, was not immediately possible, and in the interim Tregoose retaliated with a systematic campaign of harassment directed at Borlase, his supporters and legal counsel. Jointly with one Thomas Tregorra, who bore a grudge against Thomas Bere on account of an inheritance dispute, he waylaid the lawyer at Hendra near Lanjew (in Withiel) on 22 Oct. 1433. The two men and their retainers greeted Bere with a hail of arrows, and he later claimed that he had only escaped alive because ‘the grace of god [hadde] ben that the cuntrey hadde resyn’.19 KB27/694, rex rot. 7; C1/10/41; E159/213, recorda Mich. rot. 7. Tregorra later stood surety in KB for Tregoose, when the latter was indicted for this matter. A month later, a minor Cornish lawyer, Richard Gay of Bosoughan (in Colan), sought to deliver a royal writ of sub poena summoning Tregoose into Chancery. Well aware of Tregoose’s reputation, he chose the relative security of the stannary court of Blackmore at St. Columb Major to do so, rather than running the greater risk of challenging him in his near-by residence. Yet, Gay proved to have underestimated Tregoose, for with scant regard for the court’s proceedings Tregoose and his men seized the messenger, dragged him away to the house of one Laurence Laurence, and prepared to cut off his nose and ears, being only prevented by the timely arrival of Sir John Arundell of Trerice who came to Gay’s rescue with his retainers. Nevertheless, the impression of the incident on the suitors of the court was such that it proved impossible to convene another session for a considerable time thereafter. Tregoose for his part now turned his attention to Gay’s property. Three days after the lawyer’s narrow escape he rode to his estate at Bosoughan, cut down trees, destroyed the crops, and threatened the tenants.20 KB27/695, rex rot. 6; 729, rex rot. 1; C1/45/108.

Revenge on Arundell, who had foiled Tregoose’s designs, took slightly longer, and was in nature more petty, but the following July he was able to seize 40 loads of his opponent’s hay, which he ruined by throwing them into a watercourse, and some time later he appears to have gained possession of a valuable horse of Sir John’s, said to be worth some £10.21 CP40/740, rot. 217. Next it was the turn of Peter Cartheu*, another ally of Borlase’s, whom Tregoose dragged from the house of his kinsman, the rector of Blisland, a few days before Christmas 1433. As earlier with Borlase, he carried the man across half the county, first to Respryn (in St. Winnow), then to the mansion of his brother-in-law Walter Carminowe, and finally to Bofarnel (in St. Winnow), where he imprisoned him. It is uncertain what concessions Tregoose sought from his victim, but his methods of persuasion were effective: Cartheu was tied to a ladder and was then approached by one of Tregoose’s servants, who threatened to cut off his testicles with ‘a certain great knife’. Before long Cartheu, who, by his own account, nearly died of fright, agreed to pay the vast sum of 200 marks for his release.22 KB27/695, rex rot. 6; 729, rex rot. 1. Walter Carminowe, a younger brother of Thomas Carminowe* of Ashwater, had married Joan, da. of Tregoose’s mother Margaret by her second husband, Richard Respryn†: CP40/683, rot. 543; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 197.

By this time, Gay’s complaints to the chancellor had led to the appointment of royal commissioners headed by Sir Thomas Arundell to arrest Tregoose and produce him in Chancery.23 C1/45/108; CPR, 1429-36, p. 351. This, however, had little effect, for Tregoose was already in London. In the early days of February 1434 Borlase had ridden to the city carrying 39 pieces of tin worth about £100, which he delivered to the keeper of the weighhouse in the parish of St. Stephen Walbrook. Tregoose and his cousin Tregorrick had evidently been watching the merchant-tinner’s movements closely, for they lost no time in alerting an associate, the London draper Philip Malpas*, who immediately brought a suit for the metal in Tregorrick’s name in the mayor’s court, and obtained an order to one of the city serjeants to seize the consignment. Once the disputed property had safely been taken into the custody of the authorities, Malpas brought Tregoose himself into court, who without hesitation claimed it as his own. This was accomplished with such speed and discretion that neither Borlase nor any of his friends or associates got wind of the transaction before the court had found in Tregoose’s favour and the tin was taken to Malpas’s house before 11 o’clock on the same day. Borlase was clearly not prepared to give up easily, so Tregoose resorted to further bullying tactics. Having physically attacked his opponent at least twice at Westminster and in London in the early days of February, he repeatedly did so on their return to the south-west: in May at Roche, in July at St. Columb Major and in August at St. Laurence (in Bodmin). Both along the road and back in Cornwall, other men fell victim to Tregoose and his retainers. On 17 Feb. a certain John Brekenale was assaulted and deprived of his doublet by them at Basingstoke, on 31 Mar. one William Cok was attacked at Reswalstes and on 17 May one John Jackhoskyn suffered a similar fate at St. Columb Major. Four days later, Tregoose turned his attention to yet another lawyer, Nicholas Yonge, who had made the mistake of accepting Borlase’s employment. Twice – on 21 May at Roche, and on 29 July at St. Columb Major – Tregoose waylaid attorney and master, allowing them only narrowly to escape with their lives.24 C1/70/77; KB27/694, rex rot. 7; 695, rex rot. 6; 729, rex rot. 1.

On 1 Sept. the government made a fresh attempt to deal with Tregoose and appointed commissioners to inquire into his crimes, once again headed by Sir Thomas Arundell and his brother Renfrew*, and including the lawyers Nicholas Aysshton* and John Cork*.25 CPR, 1429-36, p. 468. It is uncertain whether the commissioners ever convened a separate inquiry, for just over a month later on 6 Oct. Sir Thomas and Cork presided over the autumn sessions of the peace at St. Columb Major and heard a string of extraordinary charges against Tregoose, including perhaps deliberately trumped up accusations of a series of rapes of young girls: on 15 Dec. 1428, the jurors claimed, he had broken into the house at Carneton of John Merbyn junior, a bondman of Richard, earl of Warwick, and carried off his daughter; on 30 Jan. 1430 he had seized and raped the 14-year-old daughter of John Touker at Tregorra; the following 26 June he had done likewise to 15-year-old Joan, daughter of John Faukyn at Bosoughan moor; and a similar fate had befallen Isabel, the 15-year-old daughter of Ralph Jackevathy, at Bosoughan Gay on 24 Oct. 1431.26 KB27/695, rex rot. 3d; 714, rex rot. 20; CP40/732, rots. 117, 343, 515d; 733, rot. 303d; 734, rot. 311d, 315.

The accusations heard by the royal justices were clearly serious, and their potential consequences sufficiently severe to compel Tregoose and his erstwhile associate Odo Vivian to appear personally in the court of King’s bench at Westminster in January 1435. The two men were formally committed to the Marshalsea, but although they were later to complain about having had to suffer imprisonment they were immediately released on bail found by Tregoose’s brother-in-law, Richard Penpons*, and three associates. It took until the end of June to assemble a jury in court, and when this had finally been achieved, Tregoose was promptly cleared of the charges of rape.27 KB27/695, rex rot. 3d. This, however, was not a result which he had been prepared to leave to chance. In Easter term the King’s attorney in King’s bench, Thomas Greswold, had appeared in court and demanded that the jurors who had appeared to try the charges against Tregoose and Vivian be discharged, on the grounds that the jury had been packed in the defendants’ favour by the sheriff of Cornwall, Thomas Bonville*, and his under sheriff Thomas Giffard*.28 KB27/696, rex rot. 5d. Nor was the jury which acquitted the defendants a month later any more impartial. In Hilary term 1436 Thomas Bere, whose suit against Tregoose had come to trial at the same time, was to complain that the jurors of the previous summer had each been paid 40s. by Tregoose, as well as a fuel allowance of 6s. 8d. for horse-fodder, in order that they might appear in court and return a favourable verdict.29 KB27/699, rot. 64d. Bere had good reason to feel aggrieved. Although he might consider himself the original victim in the dispute with Tregoose, in early 1435 the latter had succeeded in having him bound over to keep the peace in £20, while his two sureties, John Polruddon and Thomas Tregodek*, each had to find £10. On the day set for his re-appearance in court Bere had failed to turn up and his surety had been declared forfeit.30 KB27/696, rex rot. 17d.

There was now a real chance that the issue would spill over onto the parliamentary stage. Although Bere spent the late summer of 1435 at the Congress of Arras in the retinue of Cardinal Beaufort, his friends and supporters back in Cornwall had been able to secure him a borough seat in the Parliament that was due to meet at Westminster in October. Tregoose also secured election, as one of the Members for Bodmin, while his brother-in-law, Penpons, was elected at Lostwithiel. If it was the protection of parliamentary privilege that Tregoose sought, rather than the immediate ability to prevent his opponent from bringing a bill in Parliament against him, he soon found recourse to other avenues of avoiding the officers of the law as well. By May 1436 he had received licence to join the retinue of the duke of York on his expedition to France, Richard Penpons and John Louthe being registered as his attorneys at the Exchequer. A formal grant of protection was enrolled in Chancery at the end of June.31 DKR, xlviii.313; E159/213, recorda Mich. rot. 3d. Process against Tregoose and Vivian nevertheless continued all this while, and although the two men were able to buy extra time, as a result of their non-appearance in court at the end of 1436 they were declared convicted by default and in their absence proceedings to outlaw them were begun. In July 1437 King Henry, formally declared an adult, offered a general pardon for all offences preceding his coronation, an offer of which Tregoose rapidly availed himself.32 KB27/695, rex rot. 6; 703, rex rot. 9d; 729, rex rot. 1; C67/38, m. 1; E159/220, brevia Hil. rot. 20d. Finally, in June 1443 Tregoose was also able to procure a writ of error which allowed him to challenge his earlier outlawry. Even so, it proved difficult for him to extricate himself from the complex net of litigation which enveloped him: as late as June 1452 Exchequer process over the bond he had made in 1423 was still ongoing.33 C254/146/349.

In the interim, Tregoose’s quarrel with Borlase had also continued to simmer. In November 1434 Bishop Lacy of Exeter and others had been commissioned to examine witnesses in the matter of the 39 pieces of tin, and the following February a similar commission was issued to the judge William Goodred† and others.34 CPR, 1429-36, pp. 469, 472. Even a man as ruthless as Tregoose was unable to ignore the chancellor’s writs of sub poena in the longer term, so eventually he provided the court of Chancery with an answer to Borlase’s charges. He admitted to having seized Borlase as his kinsman’s ward, but denied any maltreatment beyond that. As regarding his later assaults on Borlase, he claimed that it was in fact Borlase who had waylaid him at Borlasevath with a retinue of 20 men, whereas he himself had merely been passing, accompanied by just three men and the local esquire Nicholas Carminowe, with whom he had dined that day. Borlase and his men might well have been worsted when their encounter had turned violent, but Tregoose himself had merely acted in self-defence. It was with some mock indignation that Tregoose took issue with the claim that he was retaining men beyond his degree and income, which allegedly amounted to barely 20 marks p.a. and was augmented by his extortions from the goods of poor men. ‘In excusing the great disclander’, he said that he might annually spend some 100 marks and ‘he reportyth him unto all his neighbours and all the gentlemen in the country’ that this was so.35 C1/17/407B-C; CP40/739, rots. 110d, 215. Nevertheless, on 10 May 1436 Tregoose bound himself to accept the chancellor’s judgement in the matter, and not long after an inquiry headed by the assize judge Richard Newton found Borlase’s claims to be true. It is possible that Tregoose went abroad to avoid his opponents: in the summer of 1443 the earl of Shrewsbury certified to the justices of King’s bench that he had served under him in the garrison of Meaux from 1 Jan. to 20 July 1439.36 KB145/6/21. If he did indeed go to France, he had evidently returned by December of that year, when the chancellor, Bishop Stafford of Bath and Wells, ordered him to make full restitution and pay Borlase’s costs and damages by the following Easter.37 CCR, 1435-41, p. 67; 1441-7, pp. 52-53; KB145/6/22. Yet, although Tregoose ostensibly accepted this settlement, within a short period there was fresh squabbling between him and Borlase as to the sums which had or had not been paid. Once more, Tregoose’s old associate Odo Vivian was central to the dispute. Borlase had begun fresh litigation to recover what was owing to him, and in his defence Tregoose claimed that he had paid £100 by hands of Vivian. In May 1445 Vivian was brought into Chancery by a royal serjeant-at-arms, and swore that he had never made any such payment. It was not until May 1448 that both Tregoose and Borlase finally agreed to submit to the arbitration of Nicholas Aysshton and John Arundell of Lanherne, who, it seems, eventually succeeded in bringing about a lasting agreement between the enemies.38 CPR, 1441-6, p. 352; C1/16/196; 17/407D; C253/28/189; C66/460, m. 16; CCR, 1447-54, p. 63; KB27/737, rot. 61d; 743, rot. 16; 745, rot. 67d; 748, rot. 33.

There were good reasons why Arundell succeeded where so many others had failed, for by this date both he and Tregoose had been drawn into the circle of William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk. Alongside the duke and a number of his retainers, Tregoose and his brother-in-law Penpons featured prominently among the feoffees on whom Arundell settled the bulk of the family estates in the later 1440s.39 Cornw. RO, Arundell mss, AR19/4-6, 17/1. It is unclear when or how Tregoose formed this attachment to de la Pole, but the connexion had probably been established by October 1443, when he was granted protection for an expedition to France in the retinue of the Aragonese commander François de Surienne, who was in close contact with Suffolk.40 DKR, xlviii. 359; R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 511. In view of Tregoose’s reputation, there can be little doubt that it was through Suffolk’s influence that in 1449 he came to be elected to Parliament for the county of Cornwall alongside the duke’s henchman Thomas Bodulgate*. The sheriff presiding over the election was another member of Suffolk’s circle, the royal household esquire John Trevelyan*, and among the men who sealed the indenture were John Arundell and Richard Penpons.41 C219/15/6. Like the other knights of the shires, Tregoose was commissioned to distribute in his county the rebate from the tax granted by the Commons. This was to remain the only appointment to Crown office he was ever to receive, although he had briefly served Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, then steward of the duchy of Cornwall, as a duchy bailiff in 1444. In this capacity he had undertaken to arrest a local gentleman, Thomas Lanhergy* who was wanted in connexion with a statute staple bond for £10 owing to Tregoose himself.42 C244/42/2/2, 5. It seems that Tregoose’s new association with the ruling faction provided him with a welcome opportunity to settle some old scores. Over the course of the 1440s he brought a series of lawsuits against Robert Borlase and his earlier associates for what he considered to be their ‘conspiracies’ against him. In spite of the settlement with Borlase, litigation against Sir John Arundell of Trerice, Simon Killygrew and their associates continued into the 1450s and indeed right up to Tregoose’s death, even though by 1450 Arundell was dead, while Killygrew was said to be lying ill in Lostwithiel prison.43 C67/40, m. 28; KB27/737, rot. 89; 739, rots. 38, 38d, 49d, 82; 742, rots. 44, 112d, 117; 743, rots. 13d, 16d; 744, rot. 3; 749, rot. 67d; 751, rot. 48d; 750, rot. 6; 752, rot. 39d; 758, rot. 11, 14d; 765, rot. 80d; CP40/734, rots. 311d, 315, 318, 406d.

Equally, appointment to office and an association with some of the more important members of county society did little to deter Tregoose from his old obsession with the profits that could be gained from the tin industry by illicit means. His next target was the parish church of St. Petrock in Bodmin, which owned the right to a tin toll from a mine in the moor of ‘Crukbargoys’ which had been left to the church by one Udy Philpot, a tin merchant from Roche. Scarcely two years after Philpot’s death, however, Tregoose laid claim to the toll, and proceeded to collect it. The churchwardens were not prepared to risk a direct confrontation with this aggressor, whose reputation as ‘a dysturbure of the Kynges peas and a comyn gaderer of routis and conventycules and oppressure of the kynges people’ preceded him, and sought to recover the toll in the courts, whereupon Tregoose promptly rallied his men, invaded the tinwork with armed might on 7 June 1448, and, encountering one of the Bodmin burgesses, Reynold Tregenethe, beat him and left him for dead. To be doubly sure that the men of Bodmin had learnt their lesson, Tregoose then launched a systematic campaign of intimidation, over the following weeks attacking various groups of townsmen where he encountered them. The most unfortunate of these was one Roger Wodecok, a youth of 17, whom two of Tregoose’s servants seized at Brynnewater near Tregoose. They brought Wodecok to their master, who personally set about his torture by tying a bowstring around his head, tightening it until it broke, then repeating the process with a ‘ffraylynge corde’ which caused the blood to spurt from the young man’s eyes and nose. Tregoose then used the end of the cord to tie Wodecock’s hand behind him before repeatedly striking him on the cheeks and severing his left ear with a knife.44 C1/17/232-3.

In 1452 Tregoose was yet again engaged in questionable activities. That summer a certain John Jakkevarget appeared in the court of King’s bench to lodge an appeal against him and a number of associates, claiming to have been robbed by them of goods worth £40, including three feet of black tin, as well as various tin and pewter vessels and other household goods. A few days before this robbery, so Jakkevarget alleged, Tregoose and his men had also driven away his livestock worth more than £35. For these offences, however, Tregoose would never answer, even though a renewed commission to investigate them was issued in July, headed by the prominent justices of assize Nicholas Aysshton and Walter Moyle*, and including several influential local landowners.45 CPR, 1446-52, p. 585. A writ of replevin sued out by Jakkevarget had produced no result, for in May the sheriff of Cornwall, Thomas Buttockshide, returned that the animals had been removed from the county.46 KB27/765, rots. 8, 37d, 52.

Three months later, Tregoose himself was also permanently removed from the reach of the law. On 30 Aug. he was riding through the village of Pitt near Tregony Pomeroy (in Probus), when he was ambushed by the local esquire Reynold Tretherf and a group of armed men. Tregoose was struck by an arrow, supposedly in the right eye, and, thus incapacitated, was hacked to death by Tretherf’s men. It was more than a week before the local coroner, Roger Treouran I*, held an inquest over the body, giving the murderers plenty of time to escape.47 KB9/271/73-4; Kleineke, 75. Tregoose left no children, so the family lands fell to his sister Amy, wife of the lawyer Richard Penpons, and ultimately to her descendants. His lawless activities continued to occupy the courts for some time, although the victims were reduced to seeking redress from his former associates rather than the prime culprit.48 CP40/805, rot. 105; C1/20/150.