TRELAWNY, Samuel (1630-66), of Ham, nr. Plymouth, Devon, and Hengar, St Tudy, Cornw.

Samuel Trelawny was a native of Devon, distantly related to the Cornish Trelawnys of Trelawne. His father, a wealthy Plymouth merchant and Long Parliament MP, was imprisoned in 1642 for privately accusing Parliament of acting treasonably, and he died in captivity in 1644.13Clarendon, Hist. i. 587. Trelawny, who succeeded his father at the age of 14, played no part in the civil wars. He matriculated from Exeter College, Oxford, in July 1647, and a month later entered Gray’s Inn.14Al. Ox.; G. Inn Admiss. i. 245. There is no evidence that he was involved in royalist plotting during the commonwealth and protectorate, unlike his kinsman, Jonathan Trelawny.15CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 139, 531, 533; 1650, pp. 294, 531; TSP iii. 428; iv. 10. Instead, Trelawny was apparently engaged in the more mundane task of restoring his financial fortunes. In February 1651 he married the only daughter and heiress of John Billing of Hengar, in the Cornish parish of St Tudy, and a month later he petitioned the council of state, presumably in order to recoup some of the losses to the family estate incurred during the wars, which he later estimated at around £12,000 in personal property, as well as the burning of the family seat at Ham, near Plymouth.16Maclean, Trigg Minor, i. 389; CSP Dom. 1651, p. 113; 1660-1, p. 303. He was not involved in the local administration of either Cornwall or Devon during the 1650s, but his father’s royalism was apparently not held against him, as on 11 January 1659 he was elected as MP for Bossiney alongside the veteran Presbyterian Anthony Nicoll*.17C219/46/6. Trelawny’s involvement in the session that followed is entirely obscure.

At the Restoration, Trelawny, with John Maynard*, Edmund Fowell* and William Morice*, presented plate worth £400 to the king on behalf of Plymouth corporation.18Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/133, f. 6v. Trelawny was returned for Camelford and Plymouth in the elections for the Convention in the spring of 1660, and he also served the latter borough from 1661 until his death in April 1666.19HP Commons 1660-1690. He died childless.20Maclean, Trigg Minor, i. 389. In his will, drawn up in April 1666, he left a life interest in the house at Hengar, an annuity and household stuff, to his wife, and various sums of money to the family of his brother-in-law, William Jennens I† of Plymouth. The bulk of the estate had already been settled by separate deeds, but the beneficiary is not known.21PROB11/320/496.