EDGCUMBE, Piers (c.1610-67), of Mount Edgcumbe, Cornw. and Cothele, Calstock, Cornw.

The Edgcumbes had been landowners in the west country since the thirteenth century, and had represented various parliamentary constituencies in Devon and Cornwall since 1447. Piers Edgcumbe’s father, who had been sheriff of Cornwall and MP for Grampound and Bossiney, was among those who defended George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham, against the attacks of Sir John Eliot† and his friends. Edgcumbe was too young to be politically active during the 1620s, although he was returned for the Cornish borough of Newport in 1628, and during the personal rule of Charles I he was to continue his education with a prolonged tour of Europe, apparently joining Leiden University in the summer of 1629, travelling through France and Spain in 1630-1, and studying at Padua University in 1632-3. In 1636 he married a daughter of the Wiltshire landowner, (Sir) John Glanville*; on his father’s death in 1639 he inherited a substantial estate in Cornwall and Devon; and in 1640 he succeeded to lands on the Isle of Wight, bequeathed to him by his uncle, Thomas Coteel.25HP Commons 1604-1629. As a result, Edgcumbe became one of the wealthiest of the east Cornwall gentry, and in June 1641 he was able to extend his land holdings still further, by purchasing the manor of Beeding in Sussex from Thomas Howard, 21st earl of Arundel.26Cornw. RO, ME/803.

Edgcumbe was elected to Camelford for the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, but there is no evidence for his involvement in the business of the Commons beyond a single committee appointment, to consider the disputed election of Sir Edward Bishop.27CJ ii. 18b. In the autumn, Edgcumbe was again elected for Camelford, but his record as a parliamentarian was scarcely any better. He was one of the small number of MPs who voted against the attainder of Thomas Wentworth†, 1st earl of Strafford on April 1641, but it is unclear if he was a firm ally of the king at this point, as within a fortnight his career appears to have dried up completely.28Procs. LP iv. 51. On 30 April he was named to the committee on subsidies, and on 3 May he took the Protestation, but no more was heard of him in the Commons.29CJ ii. 130b, 133b; Procs. LP iv. 148, 172. He was probably absent from the House throughout the crisis months at the beginning of 1642, but on 20 July he was apparently still on good terms with Parliament, as he was given leave to go into the country for six weeks.30CJ ii. 682a. By this stage, however, Edgcumbe had already been appointed as a commissioner of array in Cornwall and Devon, and soon afterwards, as colonel of a militia regiment, he garrisoned Mount Edgcumbe and neighbouring Milbrook for the king and was raising money for the cause. On 12 November he was among those royalist MPs that the Commons voted to bring to London in the custody of the serjeant-at-arms.31Northants RO, FH133; Bellum Civile, 23-4; CJ ii. 845b; Cornw. RO, ME/984, 2925.

In January 1643 when parliamentarians from Plymouth briefly captured Mount Edgcumbe, they justified their actions in part because of Piers Edgcumbe’s reputation as ‘a great malignant’ and ally of the ‘Hoptonians’ (the followers of Sir Ralph Hopton*).32HMC Portland, i. 91. In the same month, the Commons resolved that Edgcumbe should pay a ‘loan’ of £1,000 for the parliamentarian war effort, and moves were made to ensure payment.33CJ ii. 916a, 939b; Add. 18777, ff. 116v, 131v. There is no doubt that Edgcumbe was among the leading Cornish royalists by this time. The Bodmin mayors’ accounts record that he met Sir Peter Courtney*, John Arundell I* and other gentlemen at the town on 19 January 1643, consuming three quarts of wine.34Cornw. RO, B/BOD/285, unfol. According to Joseph Jane*, Edgcumbe was involved in the clique led by Warwick, 2nd Baron Mohun, and Sir Francis Bassett, which controlled affairs in Cornwall in the spring of 1643, and instigated the seizure of estates and the spending of public money without proper authority.35Bodl. Clarendon 26, f. 163v.

In the early weeks of 1644, Edgcumbe was in Oxford. He attended the royalist Parliament there, signing its letter to Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, on 27 January; and in March he was given an honorary doctorate of medicine by the university.36Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 573; Cornw. RO, ME/3090; Ath. Ox. iv. 66. Parliament had already begun further proceedings against him, and on 22 January Edgcumbe was disabled from sitting at Westminster, ‘for deserting the service of the House, and being in the king’s quarters, and adhering to that party’, and in July he was assessed as liable to pay a fine of £3,000 by the Committee for Advance of Money.37CJ iii. 374a; CCAM 423. In August 1644 he was back in Cornwall when Essex’s army was run to ground at Lostwithiel. He wrote to Edward Walker that with a few reinforcements, the troops at Liskeard could ‘attempt on that town of Saltash’, where the parliamentarian rearguard was holed up, ‘which (if we carry) will be the security of all these parts, and a terror to the enemy, whose numbers within the town of Plymouth we are advertised very credibly to be inconsiderable, at least not such as to spare any to come on this side [of] the water’.38Add. 15750, f. 21. Edgcumbe’s concern for south east Cornwall also prompted him to take a force back to secure Mount Edgcumbe, an unauthorised initiative that attracted criticism from Charles I, who accused him of having ‘gone home from our army and deserted the service’ by leaving Lostwithiel.39Harl. 6802, f. 269; M. Stoyle, West Britons (Exeter, 2002), 140-1.

With the defeat of Essex, Edgcumbe was soon forgiven, and his regiment resumed their garrison duty at Mount Edgcumbe and Millbrook. He and his lieutenant-colonel, William Scawen*, are known to have played a minor role in the local administration in the spring of 1645.40CCSP i. 274. Edgcumbe remained at his post until the defeat of the king’s main field armies, and the advance of the victorious New Model army across the Tamar in January 1646. The game was up, and Edgcumbe, with his brother Richard*, his uncle Ambrose Manaton*, William Scawen, William Coryton*, Thomas Lower* and others immediately opened negotiations with Sir Thomas Fairfax* through their fellow Cornishman, Hugh Peter.41Bodl. Tanner 59, f. 745; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 317; Sprigge, Anglia Rediviva, 209, 212-3. In return for surrendering the garrisons, Edgcumbe and his friends were promised Fairfax’s ‘best mediation to Parliament for immunity of person and estate’, and the general wrote to the Speaker (William Lenthall*) to this effect in March 1646. By 30 March they had travelled to London and taken the ‘negative oath’, desiring time to consider whether they could in conscience take the Covenant as well. After a delay, on 15 February 1647, the Commons ordered that they should be able to compound at the generous rate of only two years’ value, with Edgcumbe’s fine at a tenth being calculated at £2,513.42CCC 1082; CJ iv. 495a; v. 88b-89a; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 317. There seems to have been some resistance to this, however, and a series of allegations were made against Edgcumbe in April 1647, detailing (and probably inflating) his importance as a Cornish royalist.43Cornw. RO, ME/2925. The Edgcumbe case languished thereafter, prompting Fairfax to again write in his favour in March 1648, as ‘they have not found the effectual favour which they might expect according to my engagement’, and he urged that the unpaid portion of the fine should now be lifted. In August, the Commons again made moves to clarify the situation, but thereafter the process stalled, and in April 1649 the two Edgcumbes and Scawen petitioned Parliament for redress, with yet another letter of support being sent by Fairfax, who emphasised that his own honour, and that of the army, was at stake. In June, after consultation with the Committee for Compounding, the remainder of the fine was at last remitted.44CCC 1082-3; CJ v. 511a, 690a-b; vi. 202b; CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 37-8. This was not the end of the affair, however, as in November 1650, after a series of bitter complaints from members of the Cornish county committee – who saw Piers and Richard as ‘high-spirited malignants’ – Edgcumbe was forced to admit that his estate had been undervalued. In January 1651 he was faced with another fine, this time amounting to £1,275, and on its payment his estate was finally discharged.45CCC 290, 336, 382, 1083.

In 1651, during the alarm that preceded the Scottish invasion of northern England, Edgcumbe was one of the former royalists denounced to the council of state, being seen not as an active plotter, but one who would join any rising against the commonwealth regime.46HMC Portland, i. 584. In July Edgcumbe was ordered to appear before the council of state within a fortnight, and on 19 August he duly attended. A further assessment of £600 was demanded of him on 1 September.47CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 295, 342; CCAM 1388, 1486. In fact there was little to fear, as Edgcumbe’s relationship with the royalists in exile was distinctly frosty at this time, with the 1st earl of Clarendon (Edward Hyde*) noting that Edgcumbe’s surrender in 1646, and his subsequent deals with Fairfax, had shown that he had merely ‘pretended to be of the king’s party’.48Clarendon, Hist. iv. 137. The royalists at home were more forgiving, and among Edgcumbe’s friends in London in 1656 were his old comrades William Scawen and Thomas Lower, as well as Thomas, 2nd Baron Coventry, and Cornishmen like Lord Mohun, Sir Chichester Wrey and Colonel Trelawny.49Cornw. RO, ME/3020, 3027. He remained in close contact with his wife’s family, staying for long periods with the Glanvilles in Wiltshire in the mid-1650s, and in July 1658 Edgcumbe’s brother-in-law, William Glanville, wrote to him with family news, and added that his brother, John Glanville, was anxious to visit him in Cornwall.50Cornw. RO, ME/3021, 3026-7, 3041, 3052.

During the 1650s, Edgcumbe concentrated on improving his estates, and on developing his mining interests. Plans survive showing the major building works to be undertaken at Cothele between January 1651 and August 1652 (which suggest that Edgcumbe was not cowed by the council of state’s measures against him), including the insertion of ‘great stairs’ and new windows.51Cornw. RO, ME/1972. He had been a member of the Mines Royal Company since before the civil wars, and now he became more active, being elected and re-elected deputy-governor of the same from May 1654 until the early years of the Restoration.52BL, Loan 16 (iii), ff. 4-21, 30v. In this period his own tin workings included at least three mines, which brought in a modest profit of £26 per annum.53Cornw. RO, ME/2503-5, 2539, 2771-6. In the spring of 1655 he was busy settling his estate, drawing up a deed of entail and other documents, perhaps in anticipation of further punitive measures by the protectorate government. He told his son Richard to be wary in these ‘dangerous times’, and that any paperwork should be considered

alone by yourself … and after, if you shall need advice thereon, take it, if you well may, in borrowed names, for while you keep the deeds secret you may dispose of them as you see cause, but if they be published they will not then be in your power to suspend or produce, as there may be cause for either.54Cornw. RO, ME/693.

This settlement may have been the cause for the row that now erupted between Piers and his brother Richard – a dispute that had not been settled by the time of Richard’s death in November 1655.55Infra, ‘Richard Edgcumbe’. In September 1656 a further trust deed was drawn up, making sure that the non-patrimonial lands (including those of his late brother) would also pass to his son, Richard.56Cornw. RO, ME/854.

Edgcumbe was inactive during the Restoration period, but he was nominated as a knight of the Royal Oak in 1660, and appointed sheriff of Cornwall.57Polsue, Parochial Hist. suppl. p. 26; Burke’s Commoners, i. 688; List of Sheriffs, 23. He sat for his old seat of Newport from February 1662. By his will, dated 12 May 1666, Edgcumbe left a £5,000 portion to his unmarried daughter, Katherine. He had already provided a generous settlement for his daughter Winifred, and had granted his lands in Hampshire and Sussex to his younger son, Francis. The residue of his estate went to his son and heir, Sir Richard Edgcumbe†, who was MP for Launceston during the Cavalier Parliament and would become knight of the shire for Cornwall in 1679.58PROB11/324/89; Cornw. RO, ME/890-1; HP Commons 1660-1690.