A ‘demi-island … besieged … with the ocean’, early seventeenth-century Cornwall largely depended economically on its proximity to the shipping routes between Wales, Ireland, Spain, France and the Netherlands. Despite its poor agricultural land and insubstantial towns, this most westerly of English counties boasted two major trading commodities. The waters around its extensive coastline teemed with pilchards, the bulk of most catches being packed for sale in France and Spain. Equally significant was the mining of tin, England’s most important export after cloth at this period. As Richard Carew† noted at the turn of the century, through tin Cornwall’s ‘inhabitants gain wealth, the merchants traffic, and the whole realm a reputation’.
Cornwall during the early Stuart era lacked a dominant electoral patron. The county had no resident peers until 1625, when a gentleman-moneylender, Sir Richard Robartes, purchased a barony. The greatest landed interest lay with the Crown, consisting principally in the 42 local manors held by the duchy of Cornwall. As the duchy appointed the county sheriff, and also controlled the tin industry through its stannary administration, it might have been expected to wield considerable influence at elections. However, even in 1620 and 1624, when Prince Charles’s Council actively exercised its political leverage, nominations were made only to 13 Cornish boroughs where the duchy owned property. The lord warden of the stannaries, the 3rd earl of Pembroke, who was also Cornwall’s lord lieutenant, likewise normally limited his attention to borough seats, although his vice-warden and leading client, William Coryton, presumably enjoyed his backing when he became a knight of the shire in 1624 and 1626.
In the absence of significant external pressures, the leading Cornish gentry jockeyed among themselves for the honour of representing their county. Most candidates were both wealthy and active in local government, and were typically drawn from the ranks of the deputy lieutenants, but a lengthy pedigree was also a marked advantage. All but three of the county Members during this period came from families resident in Cornwall since at least the fourteenth century. Of the exceptions, Richard Carew’s ancestors had arrived in the 1400s, while Sir Anthony Rous came from ancient Devon stock with estates straddling the county border. Only Sir John Eliot, who owed his fortune to his great-uncle, a Plymouth merchant, could be accounted a genuine newcomer to this elite circle.
Although Cornwall was effectively split into Eastern and Western divisions for administrative purposes, this pattern was not automatically replicated in the choice of Members. Each half of the county was indeed represented in 1614, 1621 and 1626, but both Members in 1604, 1624 and 1628 came from eastern Cornwall, while the west dominated in 1625.
The surviving election indentures from this period were generally signed only by those gentry who lived close to Lostwithiel, where the county court assembled. The exception to this rule is the indenture for 1628, which was signed by many supporters of Coryton and Sir John Eliot who had come from much further afield for what may have been a contested election. This contrast with normal practice tends to confirm that ordinarily the outcome was a foregone conclusion.
The 1604 election saw the return of two men prominent in local government, the Cecil client Sir Jonathan Trelawny, who had already represented Cornwall in 1597, and the notably pious Sir Anthony Rous. When Trelawny died suddenly during the Parliament’s first session, he was replaced by another Cecil protégé, the young Sir William Godolphin, whose electoral success may partly have stemmed from the fact that his father, Sir Francis, was the current sheriff and returning officer.
The onset of war with Spain changed the dynamic of Cornish politics. In 1625 the county was represented by the courtier Sir Robert Killigrew, who was also captain of a vital coastal fort, Pendennis Castle, and Trevanion, whose home lay close to the English Channel. Arundell, who had recently been removed from the Cornish bench, also attempted to stand, possibly as Trevanion’s partner, but was unable to muster enough support.
Following the 1626 Parliament’s dissolution, Coryton was replaced as vice-warden by Buckingham’s client John Mohun, and also stripped of other local offices. In the following year he and Sir John Eliot were imprisoned in London for opposing the Forced Loan, attracting considerable local sympathy for their resistance to arbitrary taxation.
These are to give you notice that the day for the election of our shire knights is at Lostwithiel on Monday the tenth of March by eight of the clock in the morning, that the freeholders ought to be there to give their voices, those that have forty shillings yearly of inheritance, or for term of their own lives, or for another’s life, to which they are requested that there may be a due election.
Perhaps aware that the Mohun faction hoped to cow the voters by summoning the trained bands to Lostwithiel, Coryton and Eliot also arranged for their friends Arundell, Grenville and Trevanion to bring hundreds of their tenants to the election. In the event, Mohun and his associates stayed away from the county court, presumably recognizing that they would not win a poll. Consequently it is not clear whether this election was ultimately contested.
Three days into the new parliamentary session, Coryton produced in the Commons correspondence illustrating the attempt by Mohun and his friends to influence the election’s outcome. On 21 Mar. the House agreed that the offenders should be sent for, but it was early May before they finally reached Westminster, by which time several of the group had been spared, and Mohun himself had evaded the Commons’ jurisdiction by securing a peerage.
Number of voters: at least 1500 in 1628