VYVYAN, Sir Richard (1613-65), of Trelowarren, Mawgan-in-Meneage, Cornw.

The Vyvyans originated in St Buryan parish in the west of Cornwall, and acquired the manor of Trelowarren through marriage in the fifteenth century. Sir Richard’s father, Francis Vyvyan†, sat for Fowey in 1604 and St Mawes in 1614, served as sheriff in 1617, and was governor of St Mawes Castle until the powerful Killigrew interest engineered his conviction for negligence and embezzlement in the court of star chamber in 1632.28HP Commons 1604-1629. Sir Richard Vyvyan had the upbringing suitable to his position as heir to one of the greatest estates in Cornwall. He matriculated from Exeter College, Oxford, in June 1631 and was awarded the degree of BA on the same day.29Al. Ox. In the following November he entered the Middle Temple, and although he was not called to the bar he studied law at least until December 1635, when he was chosen to be ‘Prince d’Amour’ in the society’s winter celebrations.30MTR ii. 787, 830. As prince, Vyvyan had his own mock-court, with officers of state, a guard, and chaplains who gave cod sermons ‘and in the pulpit made three low legs to his excellency before they began, which is much laughed at’.31Strafforde Letters, i. 507. The revels were encouraged by real courtiers, like Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke (who provided cloths of state), William Cecil*, 2nd earl of Salisbury (who furnished the guards with halberds) and Henry Rich, 1st earl of Holland (who sent gifts of venison). Even so, the costs of this were enormous. According to Gervase Holles, Vyvyan had to pay £6,000 from his own pocket, although this may have been an exaggeration, as another estimate put the sum at £2,000.32Mems. of the Holles Family ed. A.C. Wood (Cam. Soc. ser. 3, lv), 236; Strafforde Letters, i. 506-7. As one observer reported, Vyvyan was ‘a man who had good fortune left him … but now feared by this princely dignity may outrun those fair fortunes’.33HMC Var. vii. 411.

There was a serious point to this extravagance, as the climax of the season was a masque by the students, given in honour of the elector palatine, and with Queen Henrietta Maria in the audience.34Strafforde Letters, i. 507. The chance to re-establish himself and his family in royal favour was not missed by Vyvyan, and he was knighted on 1 March 1636, shortly after the masque had taken place.35Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 204. Despite reports that Vyvyan had ‘outrun’ his fortune, he was soon planning improvements his Cornish estates, and in July 1636 he was granted a licence by the bishop of Exeter to renovate the private chapel at Trelowarren.36Coate, Cornw. 4. A few months later he secured an advantagous match with the daughter of James Bulteel of Barnstaple, and in the same year he was made deputy lieutenant of Cornwall by the earl of Pembroke.37Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 530; Cornw. RO, V/T/2/10; X78/20.

Vyvyan apparently stayed out of politics in the late 1630s, and when the king requested loans to help fund the first bishops’ war in April 1639 he was among those who declined, saying that they had ‘contributed by another way’.38Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 912. He was elected for Penryn in the elections for the Short Parliament in April 1640, but played no known part in its proceedings. In the autumn he was elected for Tregony, and again his activity was unimpressive. On 6 November 1640 he was named to the privileges committee, but nothing is known of his activity for the following six months.39CJ ii. 21a. Procs. LP i. 18. On 3 May 1641 he took the Protestation, and at the end of June he was one of the messengers sent to the Lords with the declaration on the state of the kingdom, which asked the king to disband his army and remove evil counsellors and papists from his court.40CJ ii. 133a, 185b; Procs. LP iv. 172. If this indicates an involvement with moderate opposition elements, it did not develop any further. On 13 July he was granted leave of absence, to allow him to go into the country, and he returned only briefly in the winter, being named to a committee to visit the inns of court to request the surrender of known delinquents, on 4 January 1642.41Procs. LP v. 613; CJ ii. 208b, 367b. Vyvyan was again given leave on 19 May, and did not to return to Westminster thereafter.42CJ ii. 579a.

At the outbreak of the civil war in the late summer of 1642, Vyvyan was an enthusiastic supporter of the king. In September he interrupted the borough election at Truro in an attempt to persuade the outgoing mayor to call out the local trained bands in the king’s support.43New News from Cornwall (1642), 1-2 (E.124.20); Coate, Cornw. 36. In October he was a member of the royalist committee for Cornwall; he met with John Trevanion* and other royalists at Bodmin in November; and by the end of the year he had contributed £110 to the royalist cause.44Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/24/2/132; Cornw. RO, B/BOD/285, unfol.; B/35/59. Although he had been commissioned as colonel of militia foot for the hundred of Powder in August 1642, Vyvyan apparently took no part in the fighting, but he spent much money establishing a new fort, known as Dennis Fort, on the headland above the Helford River, from the spring of 1643.45Cornw. RO, V/BO/4; V/EC/1; Coate, Cornw. 121-4. By that time Vyvyan had become a key figure in the financial administration that underpinned the war effort, as master of the mint established first at Truro and then (from Oct. 1643) at Exeter. He was made a baronet by letters patent dated 12 January 1645 (on a warrant of 3 Sept. 1644, signed by the king at Boconnoc, after the victory at Lostwithiel).46Cornw. RO, V/BO/9; V/BO/33/7. Exeter remained Vyvyan’s base of operations until its surrender in April 1646, and he left its walls only to attend the Oxford Parliament in the new year of 1644.47Coate, Cornw. 108-111, 113; Cornw. RO, V/BO/22A. His sojourn at Oxford, during which he signed the royalist MPs’ letter to Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, in January 1644, was the immediate cause of his disablement from sitting as an MP at Westminster.48Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 573; CJ iii. 374a. Vyvyan capitulated to Parliament on the fall of Exeter in April 1646 – his fort at Helford having surrendered a few weeks earlier – and he may have argued for peace before that time, as his last days in the city were spent under arrest, for ‘speaking civilly of the army’.49Coate, Cornw. 211, 227; CCC 1190.

Vyvyan was harshly treated by the victorious parliamentarians. He was already a marked man, and had been assessed by the Committee for Advance of Money at the relatively high rate of £2,500 in July 1644.50CCAM 434. In the summer of 1646 this was reduced to £1,000, but his right to exemption on composition, under the Exeter Articles, was not accepted by the committee until March 1651.51CCAM 434. Vyvyan’s experience of the Committee for Compounding was similarly long-winded and discouraging. He had petitioned to compound on 30 June 1646, and his sequestration was nominally suspended on 29 July, with a fine set at £600 the following October. Thereafter the process stalled, and in April 1648 he remained on the list of sequestered royalists.52CCC 117, 1190. In March 1650 he complained that he was still denied the benefit of the articles, and the matter was not finally resolved until September, when he was at last allowed to return to Trelowarren, on signing a bond of £500 for his good behaviour.53CCC 1190; CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 521, 559.

Vyvyan’s worst enemies were not the members of the executive committees in London but his neighbours on the Cornish committee. On 31 March 1646, even before the surrender of Exeter, the county committee had ordered the sequestration of Vyvyan’s estates, and in June goods were seized at Trelowarren and sold off at well below their true value; in July he was assessed at £216, despite the terms of the Exeter Articles, and the standing corn was taken from the fields.54Coate, Cornw. 227-9; Bodl. Walker c.10, f. 157. Vyvyan was also the victim of a campaign of harassment, which included an unwelcome visit to Trelowarren by troops from Pendennis Castle, ostensibly searching for weapons.55FSL, X.d.483 (41). On 17 October 1650 the local committee warned the Compounding Committee that Vyvyan was suspected of having concealed the extent of his estates.56CCC 336. Vyvyan was also persecuted by the committee at Exeter, which in March 1650 was still refusing to allow the restitution of his goods left in the city on its surrender, despite an order by the Compounding Committee in May 1648.57CCC 1190. The attentions of the Cornish and Exeter committees were matched by a series of private cases brought against Vyvyan in the later 1640s and early 1650s, mostly from those, like John 2nd Baron Robartes, whose plate had been seized and melted down at the royalist mint. He later calculated that the cost of these cases, in legal fees alone, amounted to £650.58Coate, Cornw. 230-2, 316.

Vyvyan was not without friends, however. His uncle, Hannibal Vyvyan, had established links with Parliament as early as September 1644, when he offered to provide critics of the earl of Essex with evidence of ‘miscarriages’ during the disastrous Lostwithiel campaign a month before.59CSP Dom. 1644, p. 538. In the spring of 1646 Hannibal was again in the enemy camp, acting as intermediary on behalf of Sir Richard, that he had tried to secure the return of the goods taken from Trelowarren, and to press the county committee to treat his nephew justly.60CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 435. Vyvyan could also rely on a few friends in London, including John Tubb, who may have been his agent; and in December 1646 it was reported that Thomas Gewen* was bringing to Cornwall ‘the resolutions of the committee of Goldsmiths’ Hall concerning his case’.61Cornw. RO, V/EC/2/5-6. Vyvyan’s most influential defender was the New Model’s commander, Sir Thomas Fairfax*, who saw the flagrant breach of the Exeter Articles as an insult to the army. In March 1647 Fairfax protested that the seizure of the goods at Trelowarren was a breach of the articles, and in the spring of 1648 Vyvyan appealed to Fairfax when defending himself against civil cases. Judge Advocate Henry Whalley* investigated the matter, and on 19 February found in Vyvyan’s favour, prompting a letter from Fairfax to Parliament in March.62Coate, Cornw. 230-3. On 28 March the Commons passed a resolution agreeing to accept a fine of £600 from Vyvyan, under the terms of the Exeter Articles, and in return promised him a pardon; on the same day the House ordered that the Cornish committee account to the Compounding Committee for £300 raised from the estate from goods seized and sold in 1646.63CJ v. 516a, 518a. The Lords passed the ordinance for the pardon on 3 April 1648, and ruled that the £300 would be discounted from the fine.64LJ x. 171a, 172b. This interference caused uproar in the west country, and Vyvyan’s case was held up as an example of injustice: ‘O happy malignants’, opined one pamphlet, ‘that can find such patronage!’65Practicall Law, Controlling and Countermanding the Common Law (Exeter, 1648), Sig. A2v.

During the 1650s, Vyvyan retired to Trelowarren to reconstruct his shattered estates, and there are only occasional glimpses of his activities over the next few years. In April 1651 he appointed new trustees for his estates, and in October and November 1652 he visited London to sign a bond to allow a dispute with his uncle Jonathan Rashleigh* to proceed to arbitration.66Cornw. RO, V/T/2/19; RS/1/59; R/4482. In 1653 Vyvyan invested in the Society of Mines Royal, being granted a share of the profits and the right to search for unauthorised mine workings in Cornwall.67Cornw. RO, X78/7-8. From 1656 he served as assistant in the society.68HP Commons 1660-1690. In January 1659 there are signs that Vyvyan was present at the election at Penryn, as the corporation gave him a gift of gloves at that time.69Cornw. RO, B/PENR/411, f. 29v.

After the Restoration, Vyvyan tried in vain to secure compensation for his losses in the king’s service over the previous decades, which he claimed amounted to £9,982. His only material reward was the governorship of St Mawes Castle, which had been held by his father until 1632. Vyvyan was returned for St Mawes in a by-election in 1663, and served as MP for the borough until his death in October 1665. In his will, written in the previous August, Vyvyan left £1,000 to each of his five surviving daughters, and £550 to his second son, Charles.70PROB11/322/197. His son and heir, Sir Vyell Vyvyan†, sat for Helston in 1679.71HP Commons 1660-1690.