TREGASOWE, Oliver

The Tregasowes were an old Cornish family, documented in local deeds by the 1330s, who probably took their name from the family seat in the parish of St. Erme in central Cornwall. At the time of Oliver’s only documented return to Parliament his father was still alive and attested the sheriff’s indenture recording the results of both shire and borough elections, as he did also on two other occasions, in April 1421 and 1433. In March 1430 the two Tregasowes appeared together at the Cornish assizes as joint tenants of a tenement, possession of which they successfully defended against one Robert Braun.4 JUST1/1540, rot. 98. The full extent of the family lands is uncertain, but in 1451 Oliver was said to command an annual income of £5, while his kinsman Nicholas Tregasowe was said to be worth a further 40s.5 E179/87/92. This was probably an underestimate, for Oliver’s lands extended across 18 parishes throughout Cornwall.6 Cornw. Feet of Fines, ii (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc. 1950), 981, 1015, 1035; Coryton mss, DD.CY1061-2; Feudal Aids, i. 229. Some of these holdings, in Trewall (in St. Germans), and elsewhere Oliver had already acquired by the middle years of Henry V’s reign, when he accused the wealthy Ralph Trenewith† of abusing the King’s absence in Normandy to deprive him of the property, a dispute which continued into the mid 1420s.7 C1/4/77; 68/57; KB27/649, rot. 88d; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 651.

It is possible that these holdings formed part of the estates which came into Tregasowe’s hands by virtue of his marriage to a potential heiress, a descendant of one of the branches of the prolific Moyle family, for Oliver was later to sign away his title to the manor of Trewall to (Sir) Walter* and Roger Moyle.8 CP40/826, rot. 117. The acquisition and defence of his wife’s lands presented Tregasowe with considerable difficulties, for their descent was governed by a set of complex entails. A threat to the Tregasowes’ tenure presented by Joan, the widow of the lawyer Edward Burnebury* (and possibly Joan Tregasowe’s paternal aunt) was apparently quickly neutralized,9 CP40/689, rots. 123, 139, 403, 403d, 447; 691, rot. 130. but a more serious challenge was mounted by other members of the Trenewith family. By virtue of an earlier settlement, property in Liskeard and elsewhere had come into the hands of Stephen Trenewith† of Earth and his wife Isabel. After Stephen’s death the lands should have descended to his daughter Joan, wife of Adam Vivian*, but on her childless demise within two years of her father’s death the title should have devolved to Tregasowe’s wife. However, Trenewith’s widow, Isabel, had married the influential duchy of Cornwall official Michael Power, the constable of Launceston castle, who did not hesitate to claim the property in her name. Tregasowe had no intention of surrendering his wife’s lands without a fight and in September 1439 entered the property by force with a group of servants and drove off some of the livestock. Power proved a formidable opponent. In August 1441 Tregasowe was arrested at Boconnoc by Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, and Baldwin Fulford* and committed to Power’s custody in the gaol of Launceston castle, with instructions to produce him at the next sessions of the peace. Yet in mid September he was still in prison, and it was only then that a writ of corpus cum causa summoning his case into Chancery secured his release. Litigation in the common law courts continued regardless, and in the summer of 1445 Tregasowe procured letters of protection on the pretext that he was about to join the Calais garrison under the duke of Buckingham. Within a few months, it had become apparent that he had no intention of doing so, and in October the letters were revoked.10 KB27/724, rots. 70, 70d; KB9/237/25, 26; CP40/723, rot. 390; 724, rots. 104, 315; 727, rot. 306; 731, rot. 115. The dispute with Power aside, Tregasowe’s Bosmaugan property also drew him into disputes with at least two other landowners, John Nanskelly I* and the highly influential Thomas Carminowe* of Ashwater, which were in progress by the summer of 1435, and continued in parallel with his quarrel with Power into the 1440s.11 CP40/698, rots. 133, 337; 699, rot. 330d; 727, rot. 306; 738, rot. 103; 742, rot. 106.

Tregasowe is not known to have held any property within the town of Truro, by virtue of which he might be said to have fulfilled the statutory requirement of residence imposed on MPs, but he was probably considered a local man on account of some of the family possessions in the neighbouring parishes of Kea, Probus and Cornelly. In the year when he was elected by the men of Truro, Oliver was himself present at the shire elections at Lostwithiel and attested the election indenture with the sheriff. There is no record of his activity in the Commons, but it is possible that he retained an interest in parliamentary affairs, for he was later present at no fewer than three further elections.12 C219/13/5; 14/5; 15/1, 6. Perhaps on account of his clashes with Power, a man well connected within the duchy of Cornwall hierarchy, Tregasowe never embarked on an extensive career of local office-holding, serving on a royal commission just once, in the autumn of 1433. This commission, an inquiry into the activities of local pirates, also presented Oliver with a serious clash of interests, for his experience of piratical enterprises was not limited to their investigation. Like many of his neighbours he had economic interests beyond the management of his land. His receipt of wine plundered from a Breton ship in 1444 points to connexions among the Cornish privateers, while his later pursuit of litigation in the stannary courts may also indicate an interest in the tin industry.13 SC2/157/9, rot. 3; CPR, 1441-6, p. 339. Tregasowe’s property, however, caused him rather more problems. Seeking to secure his grip on his estates by settling some of them on feoffees, in the summer of 1456 he faced renewed litigation in the court of Chancery, as one of his feoffees, Thomas Enys, had refused to seal the deeds returning seisin to Oliver and his wife.14 C1/1489/96; C253/35/415. Although litigation must have absorbed much of Tregasowe’s energies, he nevertheless found time occasionally to serve on local juries, and he was one of the few jurors who did not seek to avoid their duty in the inquiry into the violent death of Thomas Rescruk*. Tregasowe may, however, have acted from ulterior motives, for he was soon removed from the jury panel at the request of the suspected homicide, Thomas Beville† of Nambol.15 KB27/746, rot. 91d; 748, rot. 71.

There is no definite evidence to show whether Tregasowe consciously took sides in the troubles of the years 1459 to 1461, but his activities in the early months of Edward IV’s reign may indicate a level of hostility to the new regime, or at least a degree of opportunism on his part. Within a few weeks of the new King’s accession, on 28 Apr. 1461, he and his son Stephen with a band of armed men ‘off the most mischevys & riottest disposed people þat be in any countre’ entered the lordship of Pawton, part of the temporalities of the Yorkist chancellor, Bishop Neville of Exeter, and began a concerted campaign of harassment against the tenants, driving off their livestock, slaughtering some of the fattest oxen for their own use, smashing the windows and doors of the houses and threatening the tenants’ families. These attacks continued until the following autumn, when Stephen Tregasowe attacked the bishop’s bailiff, Nicholas Goly, whom he deprived of a purse containing £7 of Neville’s rents, and another episcopal servant, Richard Lannargh, who claimed to have been robbed of £40 in ready money. Probably on account of the continued unrest throughout the realm, Bishop Neville’s reaction was slow, and it was not until September 1462 that royal commissioners were appointed to arrest the Tregasowes.16 C1/27/138; 28/475; KB145/7/5; CPR, 1461-7, pp. 206-7. This proved to be a difficult task even for men with local knowledge, and the following Michaelmas term Joan, widow of Robert Allington, who had appealed the Tregasowes of having been accessories to the murder of her husband (probably the synonymous bastard son of William Allington I*), sued a writ of latitat, complaining that they were hiding in neighbouring Devon.17 KB27/810, rot. 45. It seems that the sheriff of Devon was no more successful than his Cornish counterpart in placing Oliver under arrest, for only in May 1464 did Tregasowe find sureties for his appearance in Chancery. His eventual appearance immediately prompted a flurry of litigation by the chancellor’s tenants, but no verdict is recorded.18 C1/27/138; 28/475; C244/99/126. By contrast, an indictment brought at the Cornish sessions the following spring at least succeeded in putting one of the Tregasowes’ dispossessed victims, one William Reynold, back in possession of his property.19 KB9/309/15. It is possible that it was Oliver’s clash with the authorities which emboldened a number of individuals to challenge his tenure of the family property, for throughout 1463 a number of such contests reached the Westminster law courts. The outcome of a claim by William Cornu and his wife Annora Trevanion to a mill and 20 acres of land in Talcarne is not known, but a dispute with John Rosogan over a tenement in St. Breock was put to the arbitration of the lawyers Richard Penpons* and John Penlyn.20 CP40/808, rot. 102; 810, rot. 356; Cornw. RO, Arundell mss, AR1/392.

Tregasowe was still alive in 1466, when his possession of a tenement in Penryn was challenged by Richard Lannargh, but by this date he must have been a very old man, since even in 1449 he had been thought to be more than 60 years old. He died not long after, for by 1480 his property at Trelavour (in St. Dennis) was in the hands of his heirs.21 C139/140/42; CP40/810, rot. 232; 820, rot. 1; Cornish Lands of the Arundells (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc. n.s. xli), 96. His executor was his son and heir Stephen, who married a daughter of Laurence Syreston and lived into Henry VII’s reign.22 J.S. Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 76; C1/171/21; CP40/878, rot. 271; Coryton mss, DD.CY1554.