MOHUN, Reginald (c.1603-1642), of Boconnoc, Cornw.; later of Trewynnard, St. Erth, Cornw.

Mohun was still a child when a long-running dispute about the family estates began in 1613 between his father Sir Reginald and his older half-brother John. One of the principal bones of contention was the future provision for Sir Reginald’s younger children; a number of fraudulent deeds benefiting Mohun seem to have been drawn up around this time, but they were subsequently destroyed. A bill presented to the Commons in 1621 by Sir Reginald was largely designed to ensure that, should John die without a male heir, his property would pass to Mohun or his younger brothers, but this measure failed at the committee stage. STAC 8/208/27; CJ, i. 605b, 623b; HLRO, main pprs., 3 May 1621. In May 1622 Mohun was granted a licence for three years’ foreign travel, but he can have made little use of it, since he matriculated at Oxford seven months later. He presented Exeter College with a silver gilt bowl, and took his BA in June 1624. The Mohun estates Act, which had completed its progress through Parliament a few weeks earlier, confirmed the rights of John’s heirs general, to the detriment of Sir Reginald’s other children. APC, 1621-3, p. 233; H.C. Maxwell-Lyte, Hist. Dunster, ii. 484; LJ, iii. 399a; HLRO, O.A. 21 Jas.I, c. 64. Mohun, who entered the Middle Temple in the following year, may have seriously contemplated a legal career, since he remained at the Inn for at least 18 months. Half way through this period, he was returned to the 1626 Parliament for Lostwithiel, doubtless at the request of his father, the borough’s recorder. No trace of his activities in the Commons has been found. MTR, 700, 712.

The chronology of Mohun’s education allows him to be distinguished from his cousin and namesake, a mariner who was summoned before the Privy Council in 1622, and who captained several ships in the mid-1620s. APC, 1621-3, p. 350; E351/2264; CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 255. However, the captain Reginald Mohun who served in the expedition sent to relieve Ré in September 1627 may have been this Member. Mohun’s marriage in 1634 at last brought him the real prospect of an independent estate. Although in the short term the settlement provided him only with a house and an annual allowance of up to £240, it specified that he would inherit three manors when his father died, and a further two should he outlive his mother. This arrangement explains the token sum of 20s. which Sir Reginald bequeathed him in 1639. Mohun himself died three years later. His wife had presumably predeceased him, since administration of his estate was granted to his sister Bridget, preserving the rights of his mother Dorothy, who had survived him. C142/594/65; PROB 11/182, f. 378v; PROB 6/18, f. 145v.