TRELAWNY, John

The Trelawnys were an important gentry family from eastern Cornwall with traditions of parliamentary service dating back to the reign of Edward II. The family’s lack of imagination when it came to choosing names for their male offspring meant that throughout the fifteenth century there were at any one time at least two, and often more kinsmen of identical name active in the south-west, and their activities are often difficult to disentangle. It nevertheless appears clear that the man who represented Liskeard in Henry V’s last Parliament was the younger son of one of the Cornish knights of the shire in the same assembly.

This John Trelawny is recorded in 1422 as the beneficiary of a settlement of lands in the parish of Linkinhorne to the north of Liskeard.3 Cornw. Feet of Fines, ii (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc. 1950), 950. It is not known whether he received any formal training in the law, but this may be the implication of his appearance at the Launceston assizes in the same year as attorney for his father and other kinsmen.4 JUST1/1531, rot. 32. There is, however, no indication that he ever set out to make a career of the law, beyond what was necessary for the defence of his family’s property, and a profitable marriage, probably contracted even before his first return to the Commons, allowed him to settle down to the life of a county gentleman. Like his father before him, Trelawny found his bride among their neighbours in the parish of Menheniot. Joan Helligan was the sole grand-daughter of a former MP for Liskeard, John Helligan†, and in the event of her father’s death without male issue stood to inherit the valuable family property. The Helligan estates were centred on the family seat at Helligan in the parish of St. Mabyn to the north of Bodmin and other lands in the same area, but also included lands in Menheniot which complemented the Trelawnys’ own possessions there. Both John Helligan and his son Nicholas died within a short time of each other, and by the later 1420s their estates had passed to Trelawny and his wife, giving them an annual income assessed in 1451 for purposes of taxation at no less than £12 p.a.5 Feudal Aids, i. 229-31, 241; E179/87/92.

Like his father before him, Trelawny was a well-respected figure in Cornish society. Among the gentry families whose deeds he attested were the Colyns of Helland and Dernefords of East Stonehouse;6 Cornw. RO, Arundell mss, AR1/353; Edgcombe mss, ME681. he participated in the shire elections of 1431, 1433 and 1442, and he received occasional gifts of bread and ale from the townsfolk of Launceston.7 Launceston recs. B/Laus/139, m. 5. The Trelawnys’ links with the latter town (where they owned property) were particularly close, and it is unclear whether it was the MP or his younger son (who was at times styled ‘of Launceston’), who served as bailiff of the duchy of Cornwall borough in 1453-4, and as its mayor four years later, although the elder John Trelawny’s return to Parliament in 1449 for the borough of Lostwithiel, where the duchy had its headquarters, suggests that it was indeed he.8 Ibid. B/Laus/89, 100, 142; SC6/816/4, m. 1; SC11/968. It is not clear, what part – if any – Trelawny played in the proceedings of this assembly, but he evidently found time to transact private business, for two days after the beginning of the second session he (alongside his kinsman Thomas Tregodek*, the lawyer John Glyn†, and Thomas Lanhergy*, a fellow Member of the Commons) appeared in the court of King’s bench to stand bail for a group of Bodmin artisans accused of counterfeiting.9 KB27/752, rex rot. 6.

The death in that same summer of 1449 of Trelawny’s elder brother, Richard, without male heirs, sparked off a series of lengthy and acrimonious disputes between the dead man’s two daughters and their descendants on the one hand, and his surviving brother (the subject of this biography) and his offspring on the other. Almost immediately, Trelawny laid claim to the family estates, claiming that Richard’s daughters had been born out of wedlock. In September 1455, Bishop Lacy of Exeter ordered an inquiry, but its findings were delayed by the bishop’s death a few days later and the troubles which beset the choice of his successor.10 Reg. Lacy, iii (Canterbury and York Soc. lxii), 212. Consequently, even four years later Edmund Laurence, a Trelawny tenant at Tregrilla, was still able to plead the supposed bastardy of the coheiresses as a pretext to challenge their title. However, in October 1459 the new bishop of Exeter, George Neville, finally certified the legitimacy of Richard Trelawny’s second marriage to the justices of King’s bench.11 KB27/793, rot. 123d. That year the Crown was forced to appoint a high-powered commission of oyer and terminer to investigate claims that John Trelawny, his two sons (both called John) and other kinsmen had for the previous four years conducted a systematic campaign of violent harassment against the men of Tregrilla, and that the sheriff and his officers were powerless to restrain them.12 CPR, 1452-61, p. 518; STAC2/35/83. It is not known whether the commissioners ever completed their investigation, or whether it fell victim to the wider disorder which accompanied the collapse of the Lancastrian regime, but within days of Edward IV’s accession the Trelawnys had resumed their lawless activities. In the autumn of 1464 the Cornish bench heard that on 10 Mar. 1461 Trelawny’s two sons and other kinsmen had expelled Richard Trelawny’s feoffees (who included Walter Lyhert, bishop of Norwich, John Arundell of Lanherne and Thomas Bodulgate*) from the manors of Tregrylla, Trelawny and Woolston, of which they had had control for the previous three years.13 KB9/307/31. Early in 1455 Richard Trelawny’s coheiresses had complained to the earl of Salisbury, then chancellor, that the feoffees were refusing to surrender their estates, but the feoffees were at this stage not favouring John Trelawny either, for that summer he clashed with Thomas Bodulgate over property rights at Woolston and elsewhere: C1/1489/93; CP40/783, rot. 317; 786, rot. 405. By this date, Trelawny, who had died on 20 Feb. 1464, had been succeeded by his elder son, John Trelawny of Brightor, and it fell to him to continue the fight for the family estates. In Easter term 1465 the matter came to trial in the court of King’s bench, and on 1 Aug. a jury at the Cornish assizes cleared the Trelawnys of any wrongdoing.14 KB27/816, rex rot. 35. It was John Trelawny of Brightor who served as a coroner of Cornw. from 1461 to 1463, and who was treated to gifts of red and white wine by the burgesses of Liskeard and Launceston in 1466-7 and 1470-1 respectively: C242/12/2; KB9/303/1, 2; Cornw. RO, Liskeard bor. recs, B/Lis/265, m. 2; Launceston recs, B/Laus/147, m. 3. It was probably also he who married Florence, da. of Sir Hugh Courtenay* of Boconnoc: if so, he may have been the John Trelawny ‘of Bocconoc’ who in 1452 led a raid on the house of William Temys* at Rood Ashton in Wilts. As a result of the Courtenay marriage, a share of the estates of the earls of Devon came to the Trelawnys after the death of Henry Courtenay, marquess of Exeter, in 1556: J.B. Rowe, Plympton, 23-24, 232; J.S. Vivian, Vis. Devon, 245; KB9/134/1, no. 28. In the interim, however, Richard Trelawny’s daughters and the elder daughter’s husband, John Penpons, had petitioned the chancellor, Bishop Neville of Exeter, describing how John Trelawny, his sons and their kinsmen, purportedly with the support of Thomas Courtenay, the late earl of Devon, had fortified the family manors with guns and other armaments against their rightful owners.15 C1/28/298; 29/427. The Trelawnys now apparently adopted a different approach. Even before being exonerated at the Launceston assizes, on 22 July 1465, John and his supporters were said to have seized Richard Trelawny’s younger daughter, Isabel, and abducted her from her guardian and intended husband, Sir Thomas Burgh†, but in the autumn of 1468 the court of common pleas heard that in fact Isabel, now aged over 18, had been taken into the service of a Liskeard tradesman, but had absconded after only three months of her three-year term.16 CP40/829, rot. 420; R. Inst. Cornw. Jnl. v. 274-5; G.C. Boase and W.P. Courtney, Bibliotheca Cornubiensis, iii. 1350. Far from choosing as prestigious a husband as Burgh, it appears that Isabel subsequently married the mere yeoman Richard Wase. Under the cover of the general turbulence after Queen Margaret’s landing, on 13 May 1471 Wase and a group of armed associates took control of Isabel’s inheritance by force, and ransacked John Trelawny’s house at Woolston.17 KB9/337/24. Yet it appears that before long John recovered both lands and property, and within a few years Isabel was dead. In 1476 it fell to her daughter, Elizabeth Wase, to renew the quest for her inheritance, which she was still being denied by the former MP’s descendants on the pretext of Isabel’s purported illegitimacy.18 C1/50/196-9; 61/231; C253/46/221. The Trelawny inheritance continued to be ill-fated for some years. In 1501 Richard Trelawny’s gds., John Penpons, was quarrelling with his mother’s third husband, Thomas Bowring, over her wishes regarding the descent of part of the property: C1/220/20-24.

John Trelawny of Brightor was succeeded by his son, yet another John, and it was he who in 1497 was drawn into the Cornish uprising against Henry VII and is thought to have fought at Blackheath. Certainly, this John Trelawny and his neighbour John Coryton had to pay a fine of ten marks on behalf of the inhabitants of their parish of Menheniot shortly afterwards.19 E101/516/27. Trelawny died in 1515, seised of the manors of Menheniot, ‘Trefeses’ and ‘North Mordrede’, as well as other lands in Cornwall, and was succeeded by his son Walter.20 C142/31/120. The John Trelawny of Menheniot, who died at some point between 15 Nov. 1509, when he made his will, and 26 Jan. 1510, when probate was granted, may have been this man’s yr. bro.: PCC 24 Bennett (PROB11/16, f. 184). It is uncertain which of the John Trelawnys served as county coroners in 1480-1, 1495, and 1505-7: KB9/355/1-2; 405/21; 406/56; 439/640; 445/25; CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 652. His grandson (surprisingly called John) became the next member of the family to sit in the Commons, representing Liskeard in 1553 and Cornwall in 1558 and 1563.21 The Commons 1509-58, iii. 478.