VINCENT, Walter (1631-80), of Truro, Cornw.

Walter Vincent was the son of a minor landowner with an estate in the parish of St Clement, which abutted the borough of Truro. His father, Henry, had married into the Kendall family, which dominated the borough of Lostwithiel, and the family was also related to the Launces of St Clement.12Parochial Hist. of Cornw. i. 209. Henry had been a royalist during the first civil war, surrendering under the terms of the Truro articles and petitioning to compound ‘for delinquency in adhering to the forces raised against Parliament’ in February 1649. His fine, set at a tenth, was £96 8s. This was paid off, but the next year Vincent senior was investigated for having undervalued his estate, and a further fine of £134 was levied.13CCC 336, 1926. Walter Vincent, who was 11 at the beginning of the war, appears to have been untouched by his father’s tribulations. He was admitted to the Middle Temple in February 1647, being bound with the Devon lawyer, John Maynard*, and his favour among the local parliamentarians is also suggested in May of that year, when he was bound as surety for the son of John Lampen*.14MTR ii. 947, 949. In 1651 Vincent married the daughter of the prominent Truro burgess (and later MP for the borough) Edward Nosworthy – a match that brought him into close contact with other important town families, like the Daniells and the Hills.15HP Commons 1660-1690. As a relatively prosperous lawyer, Vincent was able to expand his family estate during the 1650s, for example purchasing the manor of Treleven from the Trewolla family, although in the subsequent dispute with Thomas Hill (who turned out to be mortgagor of the same lands) he was accused of delay, double-dealing and brow-beating: ‘he speaks much and loud, I suppose to scare others from coming on’.16Letterbk. of Thomas Hill ed. Palmer, 1, 154, 182, 187.

Vincent was elected for Truro in 1656, but he was excluded by the protectoral council, presumably on suspicion of Presbyterian sympathies.17CJ vii. 425b; Little and Smith, Parliaments and Politics, 305. He may have taken his seat in the second sitting in January 1658, when a ‘Mr Vincent’ was named to the committee of privileges, but this was probably his namesake, John Vincent, MP for Peebles Burghs.18CJ vii. 594b. Exclusion does not seem to have done Vincent’s career any harm. He was called to the bar in November 1656; in June 1657 he was included in the Cornish assessment commission for the first time; and in November he was appointed to the commission of the peace.19MTR iii. 1102; A. and O.; C231/6, p. 379. In the next few years he became known as a persecutor of the Quakers. In 1658 alone, he was instrumental in distressing the goods of a woman who refused to pay tithes, imprisoning a man who argued with the minister in church, and gaoling another who refused to take an oath of abjuration.20Recs. Quakers Cornw. 12, 14-16. On 5 January 1659 Vincent came third in the election for Lostwithiel, where he presumably stood on his own interest as an alderman.21HMC Var. i. 336. The defeat forced a rapid reshuffle at Truro, and on 7 January Vincent was again returned for that borough.22C219/46/30. Nothing is known of his activity in this Parliament, although he was in London in February, when he lodged a deposit of £50 for a chamber in the Middle Temple.23MTR iii. 1152. On 27 December Vincent was back in Cornwall, where he attended the meeting of the local gentry, held in Truro, and signed their declaration for a free Parliament.24Publick Intelligencer no. 210 (2-9 Jan. 1660), 998 (E.773.41). Vincent was again returned for Truro in the elections for the Convention in the spring of 1660, and he sat for Mitchell in 1679 until his death in 1680. Of his surviving sons, the eldest, Henry, sat for Mitchell in 1681 and for Truro from 1685, and the third son, Walter, was MP for St Ives in 1689 and Grampound 1690-2.25HP Commons 1660-1690.