TREGONWELL, John (1632-82), of Anderson, Dorset.

Tregonwell’s ancestors originated in Cornwall, but moved to Dorset when they acquired the lands and monastic buildings of Milton Abbey during the reign of Henry VIII. By the end of the sixteenth century the family had purchased land in East Pulham, Lowke, Abbotsbury and Witherston, as well as the manor of Anderson (or Winterborne Anderson) near Blandford, where John Tregonwell, the MP’s grandfather, built a mansion in 1622.14Hutchins, Dorset, iv. 383-4; Add. 39697, ff. 296-30v; Coker, Survey of Dorsetshire, 1622 (1732), 109. The property speculations of the Tregonwells continued during the early years of Charles I, with Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper* falling victim to various property schemes during his minority: a situation which provoked Ashley Cooper’s condemnation of John senior as ‘a near neighbour but no Samaritan, one that never knew generosity or kindness but for himself, his horse or his dog’.15Christie, Shaftesbury, i. appx. i. pp vi-vii. By this time the estate had effectively been divided between the two sons, John Tregonwell of Milton Abbas, and Thomas Tregonwell of Anderson, who was father of the MP. In Ashley Cooper’s partial account, he said of the MP’s grandfather that: ‘Mr John Tregonwell enjoyed his nightcaps, his poached eggs, his chamber pleasures, and thought no further of the world’, adding that ‘Mr Thomas Tregonwell was perfectly his father’s son’.16Christie, Shaftesbury, i. appx. i. p. xviii.

The Tregonwell family were divided the onset of civil war in 1642. The father, John senior, was a staunch royalist; his elder son supported the local parliamentarians at the beginning of the civil war; while the position of the younger son was ambiguous. Thomas Tregonwell was named as a commissioner of array by the king in June 1642 but recommended as parliamentarian deputy lieutenant for Dorset in the following September; in February and March 1643 he was included in parliamentarian commissions for raising money and seizing estates in Dorset, but this may have been a clerical error for his brother, John.17Northants. RO, FH133, unfol.; LJ v. 354b. Thomas seems to have raised troops for the king later in the war, perhaps after the royalist successes in the summer of 1643, but the force quickly disbanded in protest at the arrival of the king’s Irish reinforcements in the early months of 1644.18CCC 993. After the civil war the family’s estates were sequestered. Much of their property had been taken into the hands of the local sequestration committee, and John Tregonwell senior was forced to compound upon a fine of £3,735 in 1646.19Add. 8845, ff. 3v-7, 19; LJ viii. 501b; CCC 1063.

The stigma of royalism remained with the junior branch of the Tregonwells after the death of John senior in 1650, and the authorities were convinced that the family was involved in the various plots and disturbances in the years that followed. In April 1651 Thomas Coke’s confession revealed that Charles Stuart considered that Thomas Tregonwell and his son John were supporters of the royal cause; both men were subsequently examined by the council of state for involvement in royalist plots, and Thomas was discharged only on signing a bond of £2,000 in May 1651.20HMC Portland i. 588; CSP Dom 1651 pp. 197, 207. The protectoral government again had suspicions of the Tregonwells’ treachery during Penruddock’s rising of 1655, but these were apparently groundless.21Bayley, Dorset, 378. John Dove* wrote to John Thurloe* from Salisbury in March 1655 that ‘young Mr Tregonwell I have examined, and find that he and his servants never were out, and that Lovelace, when they were brought face to face, did not know the gentlemen; so I find Mr John Tregonwell clear as to this business’.22TSP iii. 318.

Official suspicion made the junior branch of the family less able to fend off attacks from other family members, eager to secure the lion’s share of the inheritance. John Tregonwell senior had divided his estate between his two sons, with £1,700 a year in land (according to Ashley Cooper’s estimate) going to his younger son, Thomas Tregonwell.23Christie, Shaftesbury, i, appx. i, p. xviii. This caused a bitter legal battle in chancery between the two brothers in the early 1650s, centring on their father’s changes to his will, which gave various lands, deemed integral to the Milton estate, to John Tregonwell of Milton for life, with remainder going to Thomas and his heirs.24C6/13/200; C6/110/100-1; C6/111/118; C6/115/148. The issue was further complicated by the refusal of the trustees, and John Tregonwell of Milton as executor, to dispose of the estate until the legal question had been decided, which in turn led to a suit from the various legatees, including Thomas’s daughter, Dorothy, who had married the former MP for Corfe Castle, Francis Chettell*.25C6/111/118; C2/CHASI/121/82. A further source of dispute was the claim that Thomas Tregonwell had deliberately hidden the family plate and jewels at Anderson, thus preventing his brother from paying their father's legacies and accumulated debts.26C6/115/148; C6/122/157. The dispute continued after October 1653, and was probably unresolved when Thomas Tregonwell died in 1655, leaving his heir John Trengonwell junior, the future MP.27C6/122/157.

Another chancery case was to cause similar problems for John Tregonwell at the end of the 1650s. In November 1658, Tregonwell petitioned in chancery concerning lands at Rockbourne in Hampshire which his father had purchased from the indebted estate of the under-age Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper in 1633. In 1651 Thomas Tregonwell had assigned the manor to his son and his heirs male, only for Ashley Cooper to claim that the land had been sold illegally, as it was already entailed. Ashley Cooper’s reply to Tregonwell’s suit was understandably aggrieved, claiming that he had the greater cause to complain, as Thomas Tregonwell had been given actual notice of the entail when he had made the original purchase. No more is heard of this dispute after the Restoration, but Ashley Cooper was apparently once more in possession of the Rockborne estate by the 1670s.28C6/152/216.

Government disfavour and the legal wrangling of the 1650s did not ruin John Tregonwell’s hopes of a political career, however. The elections for Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament in the winter of 1658-9 caused a bitter faction-fight in Dorset, and Tregonwell became allied to the faction associated with John Fitzjames*, who was apparently instrumental in securing Tregonwell’s election for the borough of Corfe Castle. On 29 December Fitzjames told the high sheriff of Dorset, Sir John Strode, ‘how unfortunately or unhandsomely Mr John Tregonwell of Anderson has been lately frustrated in his former assurance of being a burgess for Corfe’ but within a few days he had struck a deal which seems to have involved Tregonwell’s return for Corfe in exchange for his ‘assistance’ in the county election.29Alnwick Castle, Northumberland MS 552, ff. 63-4. Although Tregonwell’s election demonstrates the value of factional support across Dorset, it was probably secured with the tacit consent of the lord of the manor, Ralph Bankes*, who also sat for the borough in 1659, and Tregonwell’s possession of lands at Kimmeridge in Purbeck, may have given him further leverage in the borough. Tregonwell’s activity in the 1659 Parliament was slight, and he was named to only two committees in February and April. The first concerned the supply of ministers to Wales, and the second was to decide how to rehabilitate the exiled 23rd (or 16th) earl of Arundel.30CJ vii. 600b, 632a. Tregonwell continued to play a minor role in the administration of the locality after the fall of the protectorate, as he was named as a commissioner for the Poole gaol delivery in May and to the oyer and terminer commission for the western counties in June.31C181/6, pp. 357, 377-8.

At the restoration of the king, Tregonwell was at last to benefit from his family’s royalism. As well as his links with Ashley Cooper (soon to become 1st earl of Shaftesbury), in or around 1660 Tregonwell had secured a prestigious match with the daughter of Anne Lady Beauchamp, the widow of the 1st marquess of Hertford’s elder brother, and this no doubt improved his credentials with the new regime.32D.U. Seth Smith and I.M. Braidwood eds. ‘Anne, Lady Beauchamp’s Inventory at Edington, Wiltshire, 1665’, Wilts. Arch. Soc. lviii. 383-4. Tregonwell was nominated deputy lieutenant of Dorset in July 1660, and he was nominated as one of the knights of the royal oak for the county, with his estate being officially valued at £1,100 per annum, although this order of knighthood never came into being.33SP29/8, f. 67; Burke’s Commoners i. 689. The influence of Ralph Bankes was important in securing Tregonwell’s re-election to Corfe in 1660, 1661 and 1679, and his third marriage, to the widow of a wealthy London scrivener, led to greater political influence, but involved him in a protracted dispute over his step-daughter’s considerable inheritance.34Gatty, Mary Davies, i. 171. Tregonwell continued to move in elevated circles during the Restoration period, securing the support of Edward Seymour and John Lord Digby, as well as that of Bankes and Shaftesbury. Despite the former tensions between the two families, Tregonwell remained on good terms with Shaftesbury, in particular, during the 1670s, and came to an agreement over the disputed Rockbourne estate, as the earl testified: ‘[we] came to an agreement, I suffering him to enjoy his own and his lady’s life in the manor, in which I designed to bury all animosity or ill-will as well as lawsuits betwixt the families’.35Christie, Shaftesbury, i. appx i, pp viii-ix. Tregonwell died intestate in London in 1682.36Gatty, Mary Davies, ii. 212.