TREFFRY, John

Treffry was a member of a branch of his family which had settled at Tremure in the parish of St. Tudy to the north of Bodmin.2 There were several other men of similar name active in Cornw. at the time. In 1451 the Cornish tax assessment records two John Tremures, and in the summer of 1467 there were two John Treffrys of Tremure, perhaps the MP and his son: KB27/825, rot. 46d; E179/87/92. The MP must also be distinguished from John Treffry of Tretherf who in 1452 was among the men accused of the murder of the notorious Richard Tregoose*, and Sir John Treffry of Fowey who rose to considerable prominence under Hen. VII and married one of the gd.das. of Thomas Luccombe*: C1/36/67-68; 174/13; 206/37; 228/8; C67/53, m. 19; CAD, iv. A9909, 9978, 9983, 9997, 10316, 10334; KB9/271/73, 74. Less prominent than many of their kinsmen, the Treffrys of Tremure owned only limited property, thought to be worth no more than £3 p.a. in 1451.3 E179/87/92. Nevertheless, within the confines of the town of Bodmin, John Treffry was evidently well respected, for in January 1433 he was named among the arbiters in a dispute between Bodmin priory and the influential local gentleman Richard Flamank of Boscarne over the boundaries of their respective holdings,4 Harl. Ch. 57 A 35. and some years later his putative grand-daughter, Hillary, was contracted to marry a member of a leading local merchant family, the Trotts.5 C1/246/39. Such connexions were clearly crucial in securing Treffry’s return to the Commons in 1442, for the townsmen were at this date accustomed to elect men who could be regarded as part of the borough community. In the year of his return Treffry was himself present at the county elections in the shire court and sealed the indenture with the sheriff, and it is possible that he had been charged by his neighbours with the delivery of the result of their own election to the sheriff. This may not have been Treffry’s only appearance at a parliamentary election, but he cannot be identified beyond reasonable doubt with the John Tremure who stood surety for the MPs for Liskeard in 1433 and for those for Lostwithiel in 1447, and who attested the shire indentures of 1437, 1447 and 1453, for there was also another local gentleman of that name who lived at a different Tremure (in St. Issey) in 1460.6 C219/14/4; 15/1, 2, 4; 16/2; CP40/799, rot. 31d.

Treffry’s spell in the Commons aside, he is not known to have held office either under the Crown or the duchy of Cornwall, but he did occasionally serve on local juries such as that empanelled in June 1465 for the inquisition post mortem of John Chudleigh.7 C140/18/49. The date of Treffry’s own death is not known. He is last recorded alongside a John Treffry alias Tremure junior, probably his son, as party to a lawsuit in the court of King’s bench in the summer of 1467.8 KB27/825, rot. 46d. It was probably this younger man who in a petition to Chancellor Rotherham in the second half of the 1470s was accused of bringing various vexatious suits in the stannary court of Blackmore against the Bodmin merchants John Watts and John Cock II* with the connivance of the clerk of the under steward: C1/50/416.