TREOURAN, Roger I

Treouran’s family came from the far west of Cornwall, where they owned property in the parishes of Sancreed, Ruan Major and Grade. Roger’s landed income was nevertheless modest at best, and even allowing for a degree of underassessment is unlikely to have exceeded by much the £5 p.a. at which it was rated in 1451.8 C67/42, m. 13; KB27/697, rot. 33d; 702, rot. 58d; E179/87/92. Roger thus trained in the law and made for himself a career in the service of a succession of local landowners.9 CCR, 1435-41, p. 427; C140/10/22; CAD, iv. A9931, A9991; Cornw. Feet of Fines, ii (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc., 1950), 1118. Among the more prominent of these was the wealthy Edward Pomeroy, whom Treouran served as steward of his Cornish estates. It was in this capacity that he was accused by the local landowner William Rosmodres of having colluded with the influential John Trenewith to ruin him by accepting some 500 pleas against him, his brother Nicholas and other kinsmen and tenants in the court of Pomeroy’s principal manor of Tregony.10 C1/43/22. Certainly, Treouran possessed ties with the Trenewiths, for he would later appear alongside his kinsman John Treouran* as a witness at the proof of age of John Trenewith’s son and heir, also called John*, and claim to recall being present at the boy’s baptism in the parish church of St. Michael Penkevel more than 20 years earlier.11 C139/140/42.

In the interim, Treouran had also attracted the attention of the Crown. In the summer of 1433 he was among the commissioners appointed to inquire into an act of piracy committed by the men of Penzance, not far from his home at Driff,12 CPR, 1429-36, p. 300. and five years later he was charged with an investigation into wastes in the deanery of St. Buryan. Within a short period he had also joined the ranks of the county coroners, and went on to serve in this capacity for more than two decades. During this period he conducted numerous inquests, but one that may have stood out was that into the murder of the notorious Richard Tregoose* in September 1452.13 KB9/271/74. He was evidently regarded as a reliable administrator, a circumstance which may have recommended him for repeated appointments as a tax collector.

Rather less than of his official appointments is known about Treouran’s private affairs. As was common for men of his standing, he was periodically pursuing minor disputes in the royal law courts. Thus, in 1435 he was engaged in litigation against a group of lesser men from the Helston area for apparent incursions into his property,14 KB27/702, rots. 58d, 68d. while by the autumn of 1441 he had quarrelled with the lawyer Robert Skelton* over an obscure trespass: their disagreement would occupy the courts for much of the 1440s.15 KB27/722, rot. 103; 746, rot. 76.

The circumstances that led to Treouran’s return to Parliament in early 1449 for the borough of Truro are unclear, but his kinsman John Treouran was of some consequence in the town’s merchant community and may have facilitated the coroner’s election. Moreover, even by this time Treouran may already have been in the service of Alice, dowager countess of Oxford, and one of the heiresses of Sir Richard Cergeaux†, who held extensive estates in western Cornwall, and whom he would serve as her receiver general until her death in May 1452.16 CP40/779, rot. 407; Arundell mss, AR2/844. Roger himself attended the shire court (probably in his official capacity as a county coroner) and attested the indenture with the sheriff recording the names of the knights of the shire, but there may have been some question over his own return, for his name was inserted into the schedule recording the borough members over the erasure of a much shorter name.17 C219/15/6. It is not known what part, if any, Treouran played in the deliberations of the Commons, but following the dissolution the government took the unusual step of including him among the collectors of the tax he had himself agreed to in Parliament.18 Treouran’s pardon of 1458 proves that it was indeed he rather than his son who served as collector in 1449: C67/42, m. 13.

It is likely that Treouran’s connexion with the de Vere family played a part in his election for Helston in 1455. Following the death of Countess Alice, he seems to have maintained links with her son the earl of Oxford, and two other members of the de Vere circle, the earl’s brother Sir Robert* and his servant Thomas Gale*, were also returned to Parliament from the south-west that year. Moreover, Treouran was accompanied to Westminster by his son Roger II, indicating beyond reasonable doubt that he had actively sought to be elected.

Little is known of Treouran’s later years. From the second half of the 1450s his interests expanded into Kent, where he was serving as an associate justice of assize about that time, and by the end of the decade he was also employed as a feoffee in that county.19 CP25(1)/116/329/888. At the same time, however, he remained active in Cornwall, where he was confirmed in the coronership after Edward IV’s accession. He was still serving in this office in January 1469, but was probably discharged on account of his age and debility around that time.20 C242/12/2; KB27/838, rot. 27; C261/1/31. It is just possible that it was he, rather than his synonymous son, who in the spring of 1477 was appointed to deliver the gaol of Launceston, but in the light of Treouran’s advancing years it is impossible to be certain.21 C66/540, m. 8d.