TREDENHAM, William (c.1637-62), of Tregonan, St Ewe, Cornw.

The Tredenhams – originally of Tredenham in Probus parish, then of Philleigh, and finally of Tregonan in St Ewe – were a relatively prosperous gentry family from the south of Cornwall. William’s father, John Tredenham, a successful lawyer, had avoided becoming embroiled in the civil wars but was happy to benefit from the sale of royalist estates that followed it. In the later 1640s, for example, he had bought the manors of Tolverne and St Mawes, the advowson of St Just in Roseland, and various other lands from the ruined royalist, Sir George Parry*, and in August 1649 had to defend his new estates from the county committee and the Committee for Compounding.12CCC 1381; SP23/180, pp. 60-1. In the new year of 1652 John Tredenham also started a concerted campaign to acquire the barton of Tregonan from its various owners, including the Tremaynes of Heligan, although the sale was not concluded until after his death, in September 1656, when William Tredenham paid over the final sum of £1,880.13Cornw. RO, T/280-5. William had been educated at the Middle Temple (which he entered in July 1653) and Exeter College Oxford (from March 1654), and when he succeeded to the family estates in 1656 he was no more than 19 years of age.14MT Admiss. i. 153; Al. Ox. It was not until June 1658 that his mother, as her husband’s executrix, transferred Tregonan into William’s possession, presumably when he reached his majority.15Cornw. RO, T/1064.

The increasing influence of the Tredenhams in the area around St Mawes probably accounts for William’s election for the constituency on 8 January 1659. The tenants of the manor of Tolverne in St Just in Roseland parish, recently acquired by the family, elected the steward or portreeve of the borough of St Mawes, and thus had a decisive voice in the parliamentary elections as well.16C219/46/26; PROB11/258/168; Parochial Hist. Cornw. ii. 304. There is no evidence for Tredenham’s activity in Parliament, however, and he appears to have been inactive during the various commonwealth regimes of 1659-60: he did not attend the meetings of the Cornish gentry in December 1659, and he was not a signatory of their declaration for a free Parliament; he appears on local commissions only from March 1660; and he failed to secure a seat as MP for Tregony in April of that year.17Publick Intelligencer no. 210 (2-9 Jan. 1660), 998 (E.773.41); A. and O.; HP Commons 1660-1690.

It was only after the return of Charles II was confirmed that Tredenham became more prominent locally, being returned for St Mawes in May 1660 and May 1661, and he was made a knight in July 1660.18HP Commons 1660-1690; Cornw. RO, T/1677; Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 230. In 1661, in a sign of his loyalty to the new regime, he contributed the substantial sum of £30 to the ‘free and voluntary present’ for Charles II.19Cornw. Hearth Tax, 254. Tredenham died unmarried in May 1662, and in his will (made shortly before, when he was ‘very sick’) he made his mother his executrix, and left part of his estate to his younger brother Benjamin.20PROB11/332/646. He was succeeded by his brother Sir Joseph†, a tory grandee who sat for St Mawes and Grampound between 1666 and his death in 1707.21Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 456.