TRENEWITH, John

Trenewith was born in 1426 as eldest son to an important Cornish landowner, and baptized, apparently at Michaelmas, in the bustling parish church of St. Michael Penkivel. For one reason or another, a number of prominent gentry were present, and were later able to recall the event. Trenewith’s maternal grandfather, James Nanfan, who had no son of his own, had come especially to see his newborn grandson and heir presumptive. John Trevanion* and Oliver Tregasowe* were at the church for a wedding, while Roger Treouran I*, John Treouran*, and John Lannargh* were among those who had come for the funerals of John Scott and of one John Lamonby, who had been murdered by marauding Bretons.10 C139/123/42; 140/22. The boy’s mother died when he was just four years old. His father, still a young man, lost little time in seeking out another wife. Within a short period he dispatched a servant to Bury Pomeroy in Devon to inspect Margaret, one of the daughters of Edward Pomeroy†. An old servant later remembered how on the messenger’s return Trenewith had asked him how Margaret compared to his first wife, and had been told that she was ‘sumwhat more in stature’. Overhearing this, young John had asked his father ‘Fader, shall y have a nother moder?’, to which the latter had replied ‘Yea, sone, but thowe shall have noon that shall love the so well as thy owne moder ded!’ and had broken down in tears.11 C1/42/97. As Trenewith was sole heir to an important family, a marriage was contracted for him before he was even 13 years old. His bride was Elizabeth, a daughter of (Sir) Renfrew Arundell, himself a younger son of Sir John Arundell I* of Lanherne, the leading landowner in the county.12 Vivian, 3; C140/10/22. Elizabeth seems, however, to have died young for before long Nanfan’s grandfather agreed a fresh match with the local lawyer Thomas Tregarthen, who paid him £40 to marry the young heir to his sister.13 C1/42/97.

The early death of Trenewith’s father at the age of 41 on 26 Nov. 1444 left him a young man of more than 18 years, but still legally a minor, and his wardship almost immediately became the subject of a dispute between the Crown and the wealthy John Colshull*. In October 1445 custody of the heir was granted to John Devenish* and Thomas Portalyn*, probably acting as agents for their master, Henry Beauchamp, duke of Warwick, for little over a year later, in December 1446 and following the duke’s death, the wardship was reassigned to Trenewith’s kinsman, the royal household esquire John Nanfan*, who began to fend off Colshull’s legal challenges, but may have handed the ward over to his grandfather, James Nanfan. In August 1448 a Liskeard jury nevertheless found in Colshull’s favour, and John Nanfan, well aware that Trenewith had already attained his majority, did not pursue the matter any further, but defaulted. The Crown, however, was not prepared to let the matter rest, and so the attorney-general, John Vampage*, continued to pursue in the court of Chancery the pertinent question whether the elder John Trenewith had held half the manor of Bodannan from the King in chief.14 CFR, xvii. 300; xviii. 4, 22; C44/29/18; KB27/755, rex rot. 9; C139/124/42, m. 3; CPR, 1446-52, p. 51. It is uncertain whether the official inquiry into this matter had progressed very far by the time that Trenewith was finally able to prove his age and gain entry to his paternal inheritance in September 1449, but it may to some extent explain why this important formality was delayed. Soon, however, his energies were to be absorbed by other matters. The elder John Trenewith’s words to his four-year-old son now proved prophetic, for he had indeed married Margaret Pomeroy,15 C1/43/22; C254/143/38. and she in her turn had lost little time after her husband’s early death before marrying Thomas Tresithney. Trenewith had appointed Margaret his executrix, and she, finding herself in full possession of the Trenewith lands, brought them to her second husband. It was not until 1448 that the Crown challenged her tenure in the name of the heir, and that April Thomas and Margaret took the precaution of suing out both a pardon for having married without royal licence and a writ of dower, but otherwise showed little inclination to surrender any of the holdings they had in their grasp.16 C1/16/139-41; 63/212; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 128, 138; CCR, 1447-54, p. 9.

As soon as he had proved his age, Trenewith himself took up the battle for his inheritance in Chancery, and it may have been with a view to pursuing this matter in Parliament that he sought election to the Commons in the autumn of 1449 as one of the knights of the shire for Cornwall. By mediation, the parties reached a settlement under the terms of which Trenewith was to release to the Tresithneys all actions pending between them, while they were to return to him all muniments relating to his inheritance still in their possession. A degree of mistrust did, however, remain between Trenewith and his stepmother, and before long there was renewed bickering as to whether she had surrendered all the deeds in her possession.17 SC8/345/E1321; C1/16/697-701. Whatever the reasons for Trenewith’s election, he was by far the youngest of all of Cornwall’s shire-knights in the reign of Henry VI, and it is possible that it was this relative inexperience which persuaded the sheriff of Cornwall, his own distant kinsman John Basset, to attempt to deprive him of part of his parliamentary wages of £35 4s., or so he complained to the court of the Exchequer in the summer of 1452.18 E13/145A, rots. 1, 52d, 60d.

The estates which eventually came into Trenewith’s possession included the Devon manor of Alweston, and the Cornish manors of Trenowth, Fentongollan, Nancollan, ‘Trewethenek’, ‘Tregenber’, ‘Trethullo’, ‘Rust’ and Pounte’, as well as half of Bodannan, to which was attached a moiety of the hereditary bailiwick of the hundred of Trigg.19 CP40/720, rot. 303; C139/33/38; 123/42; C1/16/699, 701, 63/211-12. In 1451 these lands were thought to be worth a mere £10 p.a., clearly an underassessment (even allowing for a further £4 from land still in the hands of the widow of Trenewith’s grandfather, Maud, now wife of John Treher of Truro), for Fentongollan and Trenowth alone were later assessed at £5 each, while Trewethenek was said to be worth £6 13s. 4d. p.a. Further lands in Cornwall, also rated at £10 in 1451, were to pass to Trenewith on the death of his maternal grandfather, James Nanfan, and a clearer impression of his true income is given by the sum of almost £70 of cash rents which John would later receive from his four daughters for the estates which he had settled upon them.20 E179/87/92; CAD, iv. A9697; C1/316/80; C139/123/42; C142/35/74; Arundell mss, AR2/740.

The early 1460s saw Trenewith embroiled in a prolonged dispute with the wealthy lawyer Richard Penpons*. The issue at hand was property rights in the vicinity of Redruth, but both Trenewith and his opponent were sufficiently well connected to draw some of the greatest men in the region and, indeed, the realm into the affair. In the spring of 1463 Penpons complained to the chancellor that Trenewith in association with his former brother-in-law, Sir Renfrew Arundell†, then sheriff of Cornwall, and the latter’s under sheriff, Richard Joce†, had a year earlier invaded his estates and under threats forced his tenants to pay their rents to them. Ostensibly – so Penpons said – Trenewith and his associates had pretended to be acting as agents of Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, whose steward Arundell claimed to be, and as a result he had petitioned the earl’s council. Hearing of the abuse of his authority, the earl had been ‘not oonly wrothe but gretly displesed’ and had ordered Arundell, Joce and Trenewith to vacate Penpons’s lands immediately. The three men were less than pleased to have their names blackened in this way and had made it known that if Penpons should insist on holding his law-court at Redruth on 1 Oct., he should be met and not go home again uninjured. As a consequence, Penpons had gathered 20 of his servants for his protection when he came to hold court on the said day, but his opponents, so Penpons alleged, had come with an even larger following of 120 armed men, and ‘in rioutouse and heynouse wyse’ had broken up the court and forced him to flee. Trenewith, Arundell and Joce for their part denied all of this, claiming to have come to Redruth merely intending to hold a court on an neighbouring manor belonging to the earl of Warwick, and maintained that whereas they had merely been accompanied by 16 of their menial servants, it had in fact been Penpons who had raised 120 men from all over the county and drawn them up ready for battle in a field near the earl’s holdings. Penpons had then sent messengers to inform the earl’s men that if they persisted in holding the court and would not withdraw, ‘men should lye on the cresse’. Only on hearing of this had various friends and kinsfolk rallied to Trenewith and his associates, and thus driven Penpons away.21 C253/39/99; C1/28/1A-B. In fact, so Trenewith for his part claimed, it had been Penpons and his kinsmen and servants who had been guilty of trespassing on his property. In March 1464, so he said, they had destroyed a ditch which supplied his mill at Beauripper with water, while the following July they had returned there, forcibly taken his tin and assaulted his servants.22 CP40/818, rots. 314, 437. The outcome of the matter is not known, but it is possible that it was in fact Trenewith who was in the wrong, for around this time he took the precaution of suing for a royal pardon which was granted in April 1463.23 C67/45, m. 11.

If the disputes with the Tresithneys and Penpons had been a nuisance, they paled into insignificance compared with the problems that another part of his inheritance caused Trenewith in the mid 1460s. The property in question, 12 houses in the parish of St. Mary Woolnoth in the city of London, had previously belonged to his maternal great-grandfather, the London pewterer John Megre†, who had died in 1419, leaving two daughters, Margaret and Lucy, as his heirs. Margaret had married Trenewith’s maternal grandfather, James Nanfan, and they had had two daughters, Joan and Beatrice. Joan had married the elder John Trenewith, while Beatrice had in the first instance remained in the custody of her grandmother, the widowed Emma Megre, until she was betrothed to the Somerset esquire Hugh Malet at the age of 15. At the time of the marriage Emma had purportedly declared in the hearing of her London neighbours that the 12 houses, which were then in her hands, would fall to Beatrice and her children, or in the event that she should die childless become part of the endowment of the parish church of St. Mary Woolnoth, where John Megre was buried. Emma had died in 1442, and before long Beatrice Malet, her children, and all the descendants of Lucy Megre were also dead, leaving John Trenewith as sole living heir to the London properties. In the meantime, however, the parson and churchwardens of St. Mary Woolnoth had taken possession of the property, and sought to defend it in the London courts. As a result of a suit they brought in the mayor’s court, Trenewith was arrested and imprisoned until he was able to regain his freedom by suing a writ of certiorari out of Chancery in November 1467. To add insult to injury, the parson and churchwardens based their title to the disputed properties on a claim that Trenewith was in fact the son of Margaret Pomeroy (the stepmother who had caused him such problems a decade earlier), rather than of Joan Nanfan, and so the court heard detailed evidence as to his supposed parentage, the numerous witnesses including the wealthy Sir John Marney, as well many prominent Cornish lawyers including Trenewith’s brother-in-law, Thomas Tregarthen. The weight of this evidence was clearly overwhelming, and the court decided that Trenewith had proven his case and should be acquitted, yet the Londoners were not prepared to give up easily and brought a fresh assize in the city’s sheriffs’ court. Before long, Trenewith once more found himself in a London prison, where he remained until a writ of corpus cum causa forced his transfer back into the charge of the court of Chancery, where on 1 Feb. 1469 he found sureties of £300 for his appearance. In April the court finally confirmed its earlier verdict and acquitted him afresh, at the same time ordering further inquiry into the vexatious behaviour of the parson and churchwardens. Yet even after the verdict of April 1469 they were said to be plotting fresh suits in various courts.24 C253/42/204; C1/39/269-71; 41/170; 42/96-99; 44/77-82; CP40/842, rot. 226. By then the prior of St. Mary Overy in Southwark had also staked a claim to other parts of the Megre inheritance, and Trenewith was forced to do battle for them in the London courts, as well as to defend his purportedly vexatious litigation against the prior in Chancery.25 C4/5/9.

There is nothing to indicate what Trenewith’s attitude to the Lancastrian Readeption may have been, and it is in fact possible that the squabble with the Londoners had absorbed too much of his energies to leave him much time to concern himself with the intricacies of high politics. By mid October 1470 he had returned to Cornwall where alongside other leading gentry he busied himself attesting deeds for his brother-in-law, Tregarthen, while awaiting the outcome of the struggle for the Crown of England. It may thus have been a mere precaution, perhaps connected with his disputes in London, that he sued out a royal pardon in December 1471.26 CCR, 1468-76, no. 604; C67/48, m. 27.

By both marriage and blood Trenewith was exceptionally well connected among the Cornish gentry, and he made the most of the contacts these relationships provided. Like his father before him, he regularly attested deeds and acted as a feoffee, surety and attorney for two of the most powerful families in the county, the Arundells and the Bodrugans.27 CCR, 1468-76, no. 1384; C1/59/123; Cornw. RO, Edgcombe mss, ME571, 617, 1388; Arundell mss, AR1/359-61, AR19/24, AR20/24-27, 31, 32. It was probably through Sir John Arundell that he became acquainted with Arundell’s son-in-law, Sir Henry Marney, who in the 1470s employed him as receiver of his Cornish estates.28 SC6/1242/7, rot. 1. He also maintained close and cordial contacts with kinsmen by marriage such as the Tregarthens and Tretherfs, as well as a range of other neighbours including Henry VI’s household esquire John Trevelyan* and Edward IV’s trusted servant Alfred Corneburgh†.29 CCR, 1454-61, pp. 223-4; 1468-76, no. 797; CAD, iv. A10067; v. A10513, 10880, 11419, 11472, 13066; KB27/807, rot. 52d; Cornw. RO, Arundell (Tywardreath) mss, ART1/40. Clashes with other important kinsmen, such as his father’s first cousin Sir John Basset over the title deeds to the latter’s manor of Tehidy near Redruth, appear to have been isolated instances.30 C1/119/36.

Despite being extremely well connected in his native county, Trenewith appears to have been reluctant to play much of a part in public affairs, which remained restricted to occasional ad hoc commissions. Thus, in December 1461 he headed the commissioners ordered to arrest members of the Beauchamp family, and in October 1473 he was ordered to array the men of his county to counter the earl of Oxford’s landing at St. Michael’s Mount.31 CPR, 1461-7, p. 100; 1467-77, pp. 399-400. It may thus be taken as an indication of the narrow base of Richard III’s regime, particularly in Cornwall, a county which was home to several prominent exiles, that he assumed a more prominent role in that King’s short reign. In the spring of 1483 Trenewith attended the Cornish shire elections to Edward V’s abortive Parliament, the first time that he is known to have done so since 1467.32 Trevelyan Pprs. i (Cam. Soc. lxvii), 87. In December, Richard III added him to the county bench, and twice in the following year appointed him to commissions of array. Such marks of trust did not go unnoticed by Henry Tudor and his fellow exiles, several of them prominent Cornishmen, and on Henry accession Trenewith was promptly relieved of his office of j.p. In subsequent years he must have shown himself conspicuously loyal to the new regime, for he was reappointed to the bench in December 1492, although without assuming any other office under the Crown or the duchy of Cornwall. It is likely that his advancing age played some part in this, since there is an indication that his thoughts in these years began to turn to the afterlife in that he began to make provision for the welfare of his soul, albeit on a limited scale. He gave some cattle, a silver chalice, two pairs of vestments and other items to the parish church of St. Michael Penkevel (the patronage of which had descended to him from the Chenduyt family through his great-grandmother, Joan Treage), where after establishing a perpetual chantry he would eventually be buried.33 C1/623/12; E211/218.

Trenewith died on 12 Mar. 1497 at the age of nearly 71 years. His heirs were his four daughters, Philippa (d.1520), widow of John Carminowe (d.1492),34 C142/35/74; PCC 21 Doggett (PROB11/9, f. 168v); Vivian, 74; C142/35/74. Margaret, wife of John Godolghan, Katharine, wife of Edmund Stradling, and Maud, who had married Thomas St. Aubyn of Clowance.35 C142/40/77; Vivian, 74, 438; C1/316/77; E211/218. To prevent arguments, in the previous November he had taken the precaution of dividing his lands between them, retaining for himself annual rents of £17 7s. from each daughter, but before long this proved a futile exercise, for the younger heiresses and their husbands came to resent the role assumed by their eldest sister, Philippa, who had been appointed her father’s executrix, and the squabbling heirs kept the law-courts busy for some years to come.36 CAD, iv. A9697; C1/192/25; 221/95; 298/53; 313/14-17; 316/77-80; 623/12.