The borough of Penryn, together with the manor of Penryn Foreign, belonged to the bishops of Exeter. The leading family of the district, the Killigrews of Arwennack, had a lease of Penryn Foreign and a disputed lease of the fee farm of the borough. There was a portreeve and burgesses, but the borough was not incorporated until the reign of James I. Judging by the surviving Elizabethan returns, elections were conducted by the portreeve, in the presence of up to a dozen burgesses. Towards the end of the period, probably in 1588-9, the borough began to make separate returns for each of its Members. The returns for the 1601 Parliament are dated a week apart.
The representation of Penryn during this period was dominated by the Killigrew family, to whom, directly or indirectly, all the MPs owed their seats with the possible exceptions of Richard Massinger, an Exchequer official, and Edward Jones, a London lawyer about whom nothing further is known.