SCAWEN, William (1600-89), of Molenick, St Germans, Cornw.

William Scawen was a member of one of the oldest Cornish families, which had been seated at Molenick, in the parish of St Germans, since the reign of Edward I.17Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 421. One contemporary described him as ‘of an ancient descent of gentry and allied to most of the gentlemen and worthy families of the county’ – a position which he enjoyed thanks not only to his Scawen forebears but also to his mother’s family, the Nicolls of St Tudy.18HMC Heathcote, 205. Scawen was educated at Queen’s College, Oxford, and then at Lincoln’s Inn, where his manucaptors (or sureties) were two prominent lawyers, John Glanville and Robert Mason.19Al. Ox.; LIL, Adm. Bk v, f. 35v. In his early career Scawen’s political position was somewhat enigmatic. He had sympathies with Sir John Eliot† and other critics of the crown, and in 1631 refused to pay a knighthood fine.20Stoyle, West Britons, 136, 138. A list of Cornish Ship Money assessments from 1636-7 shows ‘Mr William Scawen’ as one of those refusing to pay the tax in Tintagel, even though there is no indication that he did not pay willingly enough for his main estate at St Germans.21Antony House, Carew-Pole BO/21/3. Scawen also had connections with the Caroline court – not least through his brother, Robert; and his appointment as judge of the vice-admiralty court in Cornwall, made before 1641, suggests that he was no longer considered an opponent of the regime.22C181/5, ff. 187v-8.

The close association of Robert Scawen with Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland, may explain William’s return for East Looe; but it is likely that his election for St Germans was on his own interest as a well-connected Cornish gentleman.23Cornw. RO, DC/LOO/79. When it came to it, Scawen waived his return for East Looe, and chose to sit for his local seat of St Germans, when he arrived in Parliament on 17 April 1640.24CJ ii. 4b; CSP Dom. 1640, p. 42. There is no record of Scawen’s activity in the Short Parliament, but in October 1640 he was eager to sit as MP for St Germans once again. A letter from another resident of St Germans parish, John Moyle II*, to Sir Richard Buller* in December 1640, complained of Scawen’s underhand tactics in this election. Moyle, whose son, John Moyle I*, was also a candidate, protested that ‘I know not what Mr Scawen intends by his vain course of his, I am ashamed that a man that accounts himself a wit should on no matter prosecute a suit so foolishly in such a place’. Scawen apparently argued that the franchise in the borough was restricted to those holding scot and lot, and that ‘he had three or four scot and lot men more’ than Moyle.25Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/24/2/60. As a result, St Germans returned three MPs: Scawen and Moyle, and also Benjamin Valentine, and the dispute had to be settled by the Commons. On 5 December 1640 the St Germans election was considered by the House, and the return of Valentine was accepted as ‘clear without controversy’.26D’Ewes (N), 107. This was more than could be said for that of Scawen and Moyle, and on 6 January 1641 John Maynard* moved that a decision should be taken. After a short debate, it was resolved that Moyle should not sit until his case was determined, and presumably this applied to Scawen as well.27D’Ewes (N), 222; CJ ii. 63b. Although there is no record of a final judgement, Moyle’s reappearance in the Commons from the early summer onwards suggests that Scawen’s election had been rejected.

During the first civil war, Scawen sided with the king, and thus parted company with his brother Robert, who followed Northumberland into the parliamentarian camp. In the early months of the conflict Scawen was commissioned as lieutenant-colonel of the Cornish regiment commanded by his neighbour, Piers Edgcumbe, which would later form the garrisons at Mount Edgcumbe and Millbrook.28Cornw. RO, ME/2925. When the royalist general Sir Ralph Hopton* advanced into Devon against the army of Henry Grey*, 1st earl of Stamford, his forces included ‘Major William Scawen with some of his trained bands’, and Scawen saw service at Saltash and possibly at Stratton and other battles as Hopton advanced eastwards in the early weeks of 1643.29Bellum Civile, 31. He was involved in Sir Alexander Carew’s* plot to betray St Nicholas island to the king later in the same year, and in the summer of 1644 incurred the king’s wrath by disobeying orders and relieving the eastern garrisons rather than maintaining the cordon around the parliamentarian forces trapped in Lostwithiel.30Stoyle, West Britons, 140-1. In 1645 he was active in the royalist government in the south west, attending a meeting with the prince of Wales at Bridwater and adjudicating local cases in his capacity as vice-admiralty judge.31Stoyle, West Britons, 142; CCSP i. 274, 293.

The struggle for royalist Cornwall cemented Scawen’s existing friendship with Piers Edgcumbe, who had appointed Scawen one of his trustees for his estate in a deed of entail signed on 28 September 1642.32Cornw. RO, ME/853. This connection provides the context for Scawen’s behaviour in the early months of 1646, when the king’s defeat was only a matter of time. In early March, when the victorious parliamentarian general, Sir Thomas Fairfax*, had crossed the Tamar and seized Bodmin, he was approached by Edgcumbe, offering to submit to the parliamentarians and to encourage others to do the same.33CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 367. Scawen was included in these talks, which were brokered by the Cornish puritan Hugh Peter.34Coate, Cornw. 207. On 31 March 1646 the Commons read letters from Fairfax recommending Scawen, his kinsman Major Nicholas Sawle, and the Edgcumbes for lenient treatment as their ‘interests and endeavours have been very useful in reducing of the west’, and the matter was referred to the Committee of the West.35CJ iv. 495a.

The prospect that Scawen and Edgcumbe, who ‘hath at several times opposed some of the Parliament’s forces and killed many of their men in several skirmishes’, would be given preferential treatment, naturally attracted some opposition from local parliamentarians.36Cornw. RO, ME/2925. Despite this, on 15 February 1647 the Commons voted that the two men were to be allowed to compound at the low rate of two years’ value, and that on payment of the fine their delinquency, and the sequestration of their estates was to be lifted.37CJ v. 88b. On 6 March 1647 Scawen petitioned to compound, and on 18 March he was fined at a tenth of his landed value, resulting in a fine of £431.38CCC 1082. The Committee for Advance of Money also passed an order, discharging Scawen of his ‘assessment’ of £200, on 26 March.39CCAM 423. The chairman of the Committee for Compounding, John Ashe*, was ordered to report Scawen’s case to the Commons at the end of April 1647, but there the matter stalled, perhaps falling victim to the political upheaval at Westminster during the summer of that year.40CCC 1082 The failure of the Commons to bring the matter to a close riled Fairfax, who wrote to the Speaker once again in March 1648, saying that Scawen and the others had been denied the ‘effectual favour’ they had been promised, and demanding their ‘total immunity’ from further proceedings, and the remittance of the remainder of their fines.41CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 37-8; CCC1082. There seems to have been no further action, and at the end of April 1648 Scawen was still on a list of sequestered persons in Cornwall.42CCC 117. The matter was finally resolved only in the spring and summer of 1649, when a new petition from Scawen and his friends, supported by Fairfax and Ashe, prompted Parliament to make a ruling, and the second half of their compounding fines was remitted on 5 June.43CCC 1083.

During the interregnum Scawen played no part in public business. A reference in the diary of the Somerset MP John Harington I* in January 1651, that ‘Mr Scawen desires his brother may bargain with me’, suggests that some sort of rapprochement had taken place between William and his brother Robert.44Harington’s Diary, 65. This did not, however, prevent William Scawen from coming under suspicion as a possible royalist plotter in the summer of 1651, and his earlier fine of £200 was re-imposed by the Committee for Advance of Money in August of that year.45CCAM 1486. In the spring of 1656 Scawen was resident in London, and when his old friend, Piers Edgcumbe, was considering whether to come to the capital despite the ban on royalists living there, he sought the advice of ‘Mr Scawen and other … friends, what is usual in this case’.46Cornw. RO, ME/3026-7.

Continuing ties with Cornish royalists stood Scawen in good stead after the Restoration. When the 1st earl of Bath (Sir John Grenville) was created warden of the stannaries in June 1660, he appointed Scawen as his vice-warden for Cornwall.47Pennington, Stannary Law, 224-5. Scawen also served as commissioner for the hearth tax imposed on Cornwall in the early 1660s, and continued as judge of the vice-admiralty court.48CSP Dom. 1677-8, p. 522; Cornw. RO, T/1884. His influence can be seen in an incident in 1665, when he asked Sir Richard Fanshaw, the English ambassador to Spain, to procure a knighthood for his young kinsman, the Cadiz-born Juan Scawen. In this he received support from the earl of Bath and from a number of other former Cornish royalists, including Richard Arundell* of Trerice, Sir Richard Edgcumbe, Sir John Trelawny, Sir John Coryton and Sir Peter Courtney*.49HMC Heathcote, 178-9, 202, 205, 219.

During the 1670s, Scawen kept abreast of events nationally, receiving weekly newsletters from London throughout 1670 and 1671, and probably in other years as well.50CSP Dom. 1670, pp. 87, 396, 503; 1671, pp. 393, 415, 436, 448, 544. In December 1677 Scawen’s petition asking for remission of fines payable on his lands leased from the duchy of Cornwall, in acknowledgement of his ‘services and sufferings’ in the civil wars and his efforts as hearth tax collector in the 1660s, was referred to the lord treasurer.51CSP Dom. 1677-8, p. 522. Scawen’s main concern after during this period was intellectual, rather than financial, however, as he began to research the Cornish language. The result was his ‘Antiquities Cornu-Britannick’, an edition and commentary on the medieval Cornish ‘Passion Poem’, composed around 1680 and first published nearly a century later.52M.F. Wakelin, Language and History in Cornwall (Leicester, 1975), 23; Stoyle, West Britons, 144-6. Scawen was researching a language that was already in decline, and his principal aim was to identify the reasons for this. His conclusion was that it was the fault of the gentry and others who had married outside the county, leaving Cornish as the language of the poor, who were then ‘laughed at by the rich that understand it not’; other factors included the severing of links with Brittany, the failure to preserve traditional public forms of the language, such as mystery plays, the lack of a translation of the Book of Common Prayer, and the corrosive effect of having English-speaking Devon as a neighbour.53Coate, Cornwall, 2; Wakelin, Language and History, 91, 100; Oxford DNB. Scawen died in November 1689, at the age of eighty-eight, and was buried at St Germans. His two sons and four daughters all seem to have outlived him, but none produced heirs, and so Scawen’s estates passed to his brother’s eldest son, Sir Thomas Scawen. The son and grandson of this Sir Thomas sat as MPs for Surrey in the eighteenth century.54Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 422-3.