KENDALL, Nicholas (d. 1641), of Pelyn, Lanlivery, Cornw.

The Kendall family of Pelyn was a junior branch of the Kendalls of Treworgey who had settled in the parish of Lanlivery, adjacent to the borough of Lostwithiel, in the early sixteenth century. Nicholas Kendall’s father, Walter, married the daughter of a prominent Lostwithiel burgess, and his uncle, also Nicholas Kendall, later became mayor and (briefly) recorder of the borough. Kendall reinforced this connection when he married, in 1623, a daughter of another important burgess, Thomas Treffry.5Vivian, Vis Cornw. 258-60. Treffry may have supported Kendall’s election as one of the stannators of Blackmore, who regulated the tin trade in the area, in 1624.6Bodl. Add. C.85, p. 2. It was almost certainly his influence that secured Kendall’s return as MP for Lostwithiel in 1625, even though his candidacy cut across the established patronage pattern, and may even have been opposed by Kendall’s uncle.7HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Nicholas Kendall’. Kendall’s favour with his father-in-law was apparently short-lived, however, as when Treffry drafted his will in 1631 he left all his lands to another daughter, Blanche, and this position had not altered by the time of his death in 1636.8PROB11/171/438. Treffry’s will not only deprived the Kendalls of a share of his personal estate, it also threatened to overturn the marriage settlement agreed a decade before.9C2/Chas.I/K6/11. Unsurprisingly, Kendall and his wife challenged the will, claiming that Treffry was either intestate or had signed a will when mentally incapable; this prompted a counter action in chancery by Blanche Treffry, and in the end the Kendall claim was rejected by the prerogative court of Canterbury in December 1637.10C2/Chas.I/K6/11; C2/Chas.I/T24/16; PROB11/175/463.

On 13 March 1640 Kendall was re-elected for Lostwithiel in the elections for the Short Parliament, presumably relying on his family’s interest in the borough, especially that of his uncle, who had been chosen recorder in the previous year.11C219/42/15; F.M. Hext, Mems. of Lostwithiel (1891), 167. Any rift between uncle and nephew had long been repaired, as the recorder, who signed the election indenture, had become godson to Kendall’s youngest son, also Nicholas, in the same period.12C219/42/15; Cornw. RO, B/LOS/395. Kendall was not an active MP during the short session, and he was not returned for the borough in the Long Parliament elections in the following autumn, perhaps owing to ill health. He had died by February 1641.13PROB11/185/271. Under the terms of his will, drafted in 1638 during an earlier period of sickness, Kendall left £300 each to three younger sons and £400 to his only daughter, but made no reference to his eldest son, presumably because the patrimonial estate remained in the hands of his father, and with the failure of the Treffry case there were no other lands to bequeath.14PROB11/185/271. After Nicholas’s death, Walter Kendall senior sided with the king during the civil wars, and only on his death, in 1653 or 1654, did the estate passed to the heir apparent, also Walter, who went on to serve as MP for Lostwithiel between 1679 and his death in 1696.15CCC 2240; Index to PCC Admons. ed. Ainsworth, 208; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Walter Kendall’.