TREVANION, John (c.1613-43), of Caerhays, Cornw.

The Trevanion family had been established as landowners in Cornwall since the fourteenth century.8Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 501. John Trevanion’s grandfather, Charles†, sat for Grampound in 1584; his father, also Charles, was knight of the shire in 1625 and a supporter of the political interest of William Coryton*, using his influence in the boroughs of Grampound, Tregony and St Mawes to secure the election of critics of the crown during the 1620s. The Trevanions also had court connections, especially through John’s great aunt, who married Sir Robert Carey†, later 1st earl of Monmouth, and was a lady of the privy chamber to Anne of Denmark.9HP Commons 1604-1629. This mixture of Cornish status and Whitehall connections made the young John Trevanion a very attractive match. In May 1633 he came to London and was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn on the 15th of the same month.10LI Admiss. i. 220. A day later Lord Lambart (Charles Lambart†) singled him out as ‘a proper young gentleman, whose estate after his father will be about £2,000 per annum’, and suggested that he might make a good husband for one of the daughters of the secretary of state, Sir John Coke*. A key recommendation, apart from his inheritance, was that ‘the countess of Monmouth is his aunt’.11CSP Dom. 1633-4, p. 59. Lambart’s plan did not come to fruition, as in December 1634 Trevanion married a sister of another of Coryton’s friends, John Arundell I* of Trerice, who brought a portion of £2,150.12Cornw. RO, CF/1/2422; CF/2/775. The bride’s friends thoroughly approved of the match, with Lady Grenvile (wife of Sir Bevill Grenvile*) enthusing, ‘the family noble, the estate great, and the young man of good disposition’.13R. Granville, Hist. of the Granville Family (Exeter, 1895), 185-6.

It was through his father’s patronage that Trevanion was returned for Grampound in the Short Parliament elections in 1640. The return was contested, but on 20 April Parliament agreed with a report that Trevanion’s indenture was in order, and he was allowed to take his seat.14CJ ii. 7a. In the autumn he was elected for Lostwithiel alongside Richard Arundell*. Trevanion played no known part in the first five months of the Long Parliament, but on 21 April 1641 he announced his support for the king in the most public way possible, by voting against the attainder of the 1st earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†).15Procs. LP iv. 42, 51. Trevanion took the Protestation on 3 May, but public anger against the ‘Straffordians’ was by then at its height, as the first rumours of an ‘army plot’ to free the earl began to circulate.16CJ ii. 133b. On the same day a paper of names of MPs who opposed the attainder – the ‘betrayers of their country’ – was posted up in London.17Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 249. It was probably this unrest that precipitated Trevanion’s departure from the capital, ostensibly ‘for recovery of his health’, as authorised by the Commons on 8 May.18CJ ii. 139a; Procs. LP iv. 266. Whether Trevanion ever returned to Westminster in uncertain. On 17 December 1641 he was again given leave to go into the country, and on 16 June 1642 he was listed as absent from the call of the House.19CJ ii. 346b, 626n.

At the outbreak of civil war, Trevanion was one of the strongest Cornish supporters of the king. At the end of June 1642 he was appointed (with his father) as commissioner of array for the king, and both men were active commissioners in the next few weeks, and they also sat together on the ‘Cornish committee’ in October.20Northants RO, FH133; Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/24/2/103, 132; Cornw. RO, B/35/219. In the meantime, Trevanion was one of those Cornish gentlemen who raised ‘voluntary’ regiments, at their own expense, to replace the geographically circumscribed posse comitatus.21Coate, Cornw. 38; Bellum Civile, 23; Clarendon, Hist. ii. 452. The 1st earl of Clarendon (Sir Edward Hyde*) later classed Trevanion with other royalist heroes like Sir Bevill Grenvile and Sir Nicholas Slanning*, and emphasised the ‘entire friendship’ between the three men.22Clarendon, Hist. ii. 452; iii. 104n. Slanning was Trevanion’s companion throughout the royalist advance during 1643. They were both stationed at Modbury during the brief siege of Plymouth in February, and at the battle of Stratton, in May, they jointly commanded one of the four columns that assaulted the parliamentarians, entrenched at the top of the hill.23Coate, Cornw. 53, 68; Clarendon, Hist. iii. 70; Bellum Civile, 34, 37, 42. When Prince Rupert besieged Bristol in July 1643, Trevanion’s regiment formed part of the brigade commanded by Slanning. The assault on the city walls, led by the Cornish regiments on 26 July, was an unmitigated disaster. The resistance was strong, and it was found that the ladders for scaling the ramparts were too short. In the chaos that followed, as the officers tried to rally their men they were vulnerable to parliamentarian snipers, and both Slanning and Trevanion were mortally wounded. Trevanion was taken to the rear, but his ‘thigh being shot, it swelled, grew black, and stank, whereof he died about midnight’.24Mems. of Prince Rupert ed. Warburton, ii. 257, 259; Bellum Civile, 58; Coate, Cornw. 97-8. The enduring image of Trevanion is that put forward by Clarendon: ‘He was a steady young man, of a good understanding, great courage, but of few words, yet what he said was always to the purpose’.25Clarendon, Hist. iii. 104n. Trevanion’s sacrifice was certainly appreciated by the royal family, and in the mid-1640s the prince of Wales granted his widow and young sons the lease of Restormel Park, outside Lostwithiel, in compensation.26CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 142. His eldest son, Charles Trevanion†, would sit for Grampound and Tregony after the Restoration.27HP Commons 1660-1690.