TRELAWNY, Jonathan (Jonathon) (1650-1721)

Trelawny was one of the youngest ever Anglican bishops, being aged just 35 at the time of his elevation. BL, Verney, ms mic. M636/40, J. Verney to Sir R. Verney, 10 Aug. 1685. He might have been thought more likely to follow his father and brothers into the army; the military traditions of his family certainly lent him a decidedly secular, rather bullish edge. For one contemporary observer he was a ‘spiritual dragoon’ who, unable to offer much in the way of religious fare, could wield a sword until ‘glutted with blood’. J. Tutchin, The Tribe of Levi (1691), 11. His temper was famous: Lancelot Blackburne^†, later bishop of Exeter and archbishop of York, in October 1705 referred to ‘the strange quickness and openness of his temper’. Christ Church Lib. Oxf. Wake mss 17, f. 107. From his family seat at Trelawne, Trelawny exercised extensive control over parliamentary elections at East and West Looe and Liskeard and could wield a heavy hand in numerous others. That two-fifths of Cornwall’s 44 Commons’ seats were located within a small radius of the Trelawny estate explains why his interest was so significant in the political control of the south-west. His interest (coupled with that of his immediate kin) was undoubtedly strengthened by his alliances with families such as the Godolphins and assisted by the progressive decline in power of John Granville, earl of Bath, and he ruthlessly exploited his interest to become the archetypal ‘borough-monger’. Smith, Fighting Joshua, 113-14; HP Commons, 1660-90, i. 167, 169; HP Commons, 1690-1715, i. 206, ii. 84, 86-87.

Trelawny’s political career up to 1715 has divided historians. Smith, Fighting Joshua; S. Taylor, ‘Church and Society after the Glorious Revolution’, HJ, xxxi. 973-6; Oxford DNB. He was a defender of passive obedience who rebelled against his king; a high Tory and patron of highflier Francis Atterbury, later bishop of Rochester, but also an ally of the duumvirs (and tangentially to the Whig Junto); he finally sought an electoral deal with the ministry of Robert Harley, earl of Oxford only to turn whimsical and throw in his lot with the Hanoverians. His political flexibility perhaps reflects his relative independence as the wielder of a great interest in his own right. Yet there are underlying consistencies throughout Trelawny’s long political life that lend coherence to his apparently erratic political and parliamentary behaviour: his conservative churchmanship, his fiercely Protestant patriotism and finally his political loyalty to particular individuals, especially to fellow Cornishman Sidney Godolphin, later earl of Godolphin.

Trelawny’s royalist father (imprisoned nine times and sentenced to death on three occasions) became a favoured courtier after the Restoration and served James Stuart, duke of York, in both a household and military capacity. Trelawny Pprs. ed. W.D. Cooper (Cam. Misc. II), 11; HP Commons, 1660-90, iii. 592-5. As a younger son, Trelawny had anticipated neither his baronetcy nor responsibility for the family’s shaky finances. The Trelawnys were said to have lost at least £1,200 as a result of their royalism and were still dangerously close to bankruptcy by the time that Trelawny succeeded his father in 1681. Oxford DNB ; Smith, Fighting Joshua, 16. Throughout his career, Trelawny’s income bore little relation to his lavish spending on land, refurbishments and socializing (the West Looe custom house liquor account for 1681 is testament to Trelawny’s bacchanalian tastes). Cornw. RO, BWLO/50. By 1688, he claimed that three years’ expenses as bishop of Bristol exceeded his income by £1,500. Bodl. Tanner 28, f. 10. Trelawny seems to have been in financial difficulties throughout his career. Even the handsome annual revenues at Winchester (at least £4,000) failed to ameliorate a dire financial situation that was exacerbated by the costs of electioneering and providing for 11 children. In 1713 he re-mortgaged all the family estates for £9,000; between 1713 and his death in 1721 he generated as much income as possible by exploiting his episcopal property and alienating many of its tenants. Hirschberg, ‘Episcopal Incomes’, 213, 216; Oxford DNB.

Early career

The future bishop went up to Oxford where he became close to William Jane, stalwart Anglican and fellow Cornishman, came under the patronage of John Fell, the future bishop of Oxford, and alarmed many with his colourful language and swaggering behaviour. Humphrey Prideaux (a future dean of Norwich) found that Trelawny ‘talks so madly that I know not whom to compare him to but Oates’. Oxford DNB; Prideaux Letters (Cam. Soc. n.s. xv), 94. His behaviour later generated rumours that he had been guilty ‘for doing what was scandalous in one that was his majesty’s chaplain’. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iv. 450. Trelawny had made an inauspicious start to his career in the Church; in possession of the rectory of St Ive and the family parish of South Hill, he chafed against what he saw as two inadequate livings and wrongly assumed that the king would supply more attractive preferment to shore up the Trelawny patrimony. Oxford DNB. At some point after he succeeded to the baronetcy Fell approached Thomas Thynne, Viscount Weymouth, on Trelawny’s behalf, suggesting that Trelawny replace George Hooper, future bishop of Bath and Wells, on the Exeter cathedral chapter; then Trelawny could use his own interest to secure a vacancy in the chapter at Christ Church, Oxford, for Hooper. Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs. 12, f. 240. Nothing came of Fell’s proposal because the expected vacancy at Christ Church did not occur.

Following the death of his brother in October 1680, Trelawny became heir to the family baronetcy, to which he succeeded early in 1681, five years after being ordained. Henceforth, he based himself at the family seat of Trelawne and immersed himself in Cornish political and military governance. His electoral influence over Liskeard and the twin boroughs of Looe was such that one inhabitant of Looe complained in 1722 that Trelawny ‘kept us in captivity 40 years and kept magistrates over us for taskmasters, who are officers, which art contrary to law and charter’. Even when William III granted control of the duchy manor of East Looe to John Somers, Baron Somers, Trelawny retained his dominant interest there. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 83-88. The Tory reaction provided Trelawny with an opportunity to consolidate his interest in Cornwall and Devon. With a rash of charter surrenders in 1684 and re-grants in 1685, Trelawny was nominated to many corporations in Devon and Cornwall. He advised one Cornish deputy lieutenant not to weed out unsuitable nominations for the bench in Fowey but to accept all-comers, regardless of merit, and allow the king to take the responsibility for any rejections. HP Commons, 1660-90, i. 161-2.

The reign of James II and elevation to Bristol

With the accession of James II, Trelawny relished the opportunity to prove his loyalty. Asked by Robert Spencer, 2nd earl of Sunderland, to use his influence in the coming parliamentary elections, Trelawny replied with extravagant expressions of his personal and dynastic allegiance to the king, ‘where my inclinations as well as my blood do guide me with the most resigned devotion’. He would employ his interest with ‘such full measures as may be of use in those corporations where I have an helping influence, as well as in such where my authority is absolute’. The rebellion of James Scott, duke of Monmouth, provided another opportunity for Trelawny to show his mettle. On 8 June 1685, already a well regarded vice-admiral, he was instructed by the king to organize resistance, since the lieutenancy was spread too thinly. CSP Dom. 1685, pp. 21, 36, 185. Three days later Monmouth landed in Dorset. Trelawny had summoned the available deputy lieutenants to assist him but found them either apathetic or quibbling over the extent of their legal powers; only Jonathan Rashleigh^‡ agreed with Trelawny that the greater imperative was to quash any rebellion against the king. When Rashleigh was put out as a deputy lieutenant after the rebellion, Trelawny drew attention to the fact noting to Sunderland that ‘how far such things conduce to the king’s service your lordship can best judge’. CSP Dom. 1686-7, p. 170; Trelawny Pprs. 16-17; HP Commons, 1660-90, iii. 314-15. At the same time tensions were growing between Trelawny and the earl of Bath, exacerbated by the latter’s jealousy over Trelawny’s role in crushing the Monmouth Rebellion. By July 1685, Trelawny was forging a political alliance against the earl, using the Godolphins and militia officers to frustrate Bath’s intention to use the Cornish militia as a source of men for a new regiment granted him by the king in the regular army. Trelawny advised his friend Colonel Sidney Godolphin^‡ (another hard-drinker with whom he could share a military joke) to alert his forces to Bath’s plan before they marched for Launceston. Add. 28052, f. 96; Smith, Fighting Joshua, 115.

James II, ‘well apprized’ of Trelawny’s ‘great zeal and concern’, wanted to elevate him to the see of Exeter, but Thomas Lamplugh, bishop of Exeter, would not accept translation, and Trelawny was appointed to the impoverished bishopric of Bristol instead. Tanner 31, f. 117; CSP Dom. 1685, p. 244. With finances always close to his heart, Trelawny begged Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester, for a more lucrative bishopric, claiming that Bristol was worth a paltry £300 a year. Clarendon Corresp. i. 146; Plumptre, Life of Ken, i. 306. His lack of gratitude rankled with William Sancroft, archbishop of Canterbury and Trelawny used one of his contacts at court, Francis Turner, bishop of Ely, to grovel to his metropolitan. He continued to grumble that ‘the income of Bristol is too mean to give a man credit for so large a sum as is required before I can be seated there and the condition of my estate will not easily help me to it’, but, he told Turner, he had managed his affairs ‘as to be able shortly after Michaelmas to master the expenses at ... the consecration, so that now the sharpest pain I am under is the sense I have of his grace’s resentments’. Tanner 31, f. 207.

The day after the issue of the congé d’élire to Bristol, Sunderland sent an urgent summons to Trelawny to come to London and complete his consecration before Parliament re-assembled. Trelawny was consecrated on 8 Nov., did homage and received his writ of summons on the same day. CSP Dom. 1685, pp. 354, 356, 370; Add. 72481, f. 68; PA, HL/PO/JO/19/1/255. On 9 Nov. 1685 he took his seat in the Lords. Careful of his position with a Catholic monarch, he claimed that his ‘only qualification... [was] an honest heart to do the king the best and most faithful service’ and that if he failed to do the king’s bidding ‘in any particular debate and voice’, it would be the fault of his ministers for failing to provide adequate instructions. Add. 72521, ff. 77-78; HMC Downshire, i. 49. During his first session in the Lords, he attended on ten of the 11 days before the abrupt prorogation on 20 November. The previous day the king, ‘disposed to gratify’ Trelawny, agreed to the latter’s request to remit his first fruits of nearly £300. CSP Dom. 1685, p. 416. Trelawny’s first test of electoral strength outside Cornwall came at the Bristol by-election in December 1685. He joined Henry Somerset, duke of Beaufort, in backing the town clerk, John Romsey, and circulated the clergy demanding their support. In spite of this Romsey was forced into third place. The seat went to Sir Richard Hart^‡, who had previously represented Bristol in the Oxford Parliament of 1681 and led the opposition to the surrender of the city charter in 1683. HP Commons, 1660-90, i. 239; HMC Ormonde, n.s. vii. 404-5.

Trelawny began in his new diocese with a thorough examination of the accounts. Tanner 129, f. 90. During the summer of 1686 he conducted his primary visitation of Dorset in line with royal ecclesiastical policy: at Cerne, in consultation with Sir Winston Churchill^‡, he released 12 Catholics and chastised the preacher of one anti-Catholic sermon on the grounds that to criticize the king’s religion would ‘insinuate to the ignorant people that the king, being a papist ... ought to be dreaded’, whereas the king was tolerant of those who did not share his own beliefs and supported the establishment of the Church of England. Still complaining to Sunderland of his ‘despicably poor’ bishopric, he promised that if translated to a ‘dignity of larger value and extent’ he would ‘render a proportionable service’. CSP Dom. 1686-7, pp. 134-5; Trelawny Pprs. 14-15. Back at Trelawne by the start of June 1686, he sent Sancroft an account of part of his primary visitation. Tanner 30, f. 50. One observer maintained that he had been ‘very severe’ against Dissenters who were required to produce three testimonials from ‘loyal gentlemen of the county’; if they could not, they were held to have confirmed their disloyalty to Church and state. Trelawny also criticized one clergyman for spending too long over catechizing, but according to Roger Morrice (albeit a biased observer), he made no enquiries about the extent of catholicism. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iii. 140-1.

Hostilities between Trelawny and Bath, then lord warden of the stannaries, deepened further over elections to the stannary parliament, the representative legislature for the tin industry. Smith, Fighting Joshua, 116. Around July 1686 Trelawny, Sir John Carew^‡, 3rd bt. and John Arundell^* [151], later 2nd Baron Arundell of Trerice, urged the king to summon a convocation of tinners to reform the stannaries. HP Commons, 1660-90, ii. 11. In November Bath suspected that Trelawny was undermining him by promising to secure good tin prices, liberally referring to his connections to Rochester, the lord treasurer, and unrealistically raising tinners’ expectations. CTP, 1556-1696, pp. 19-20. As a further provocation to Bath, Trelawny offered himself as a candidate for the stannary parliament. Bath, with (according to Trelawny) ‘a violence of passion’, explored every avenue to block Trelawny’s election, but failed to prevent his return for the district of Truro. As Bath had feared, Trelawny proposed to Godolphin that he could use his new authority to fix tin prices and defeat the power of local merchants. Bath retaliated by ousting from the commission of the peace all who had voted for Trelawny. He was losing the wider battle for Cornwall, however, as the Trelawnys and Godolphins developed an even closer political alliance. In 1688 Godolphin stood godfather to Trelawny’s eldest child, Charlotte. Trelawny later wrote that he had offered his electoral interests to Godolphin long before the latter became a minister because he found in Godolphin ‘a person of great wisdom and integrity and that as to the public, our principles suited though our fortunes and stations did not’. Smith, Fighting Joshua, 117.

If Trelawny was indeed a ‘royal watchdog’ during the stannary parliament of 1686, he was also learning the consequences of failing to deliver the correct electoral result. Ibid. 50. He wrote to Sunderland at length in June 1686 to defend his efforts at Bristol the previous December. He told him how he had publicly ‘slighted’ Sir John Knight ^‡ after ‘hearing how busy he was in promoting ill apprehensions of the government’, had set spies onto him and forwarded intelligence to the king through his brother, Charles Trelawny. Knight, who was now accusing Trelawny of being a closet Catholic, assumed that the bishop had been elevated for exactly that reason and complained formally of his charge to his clergy to follow a strictness of life similar to Roman Catholics. Trelawny protested that he had merely followed royal instructions, and had been aware of traps being set to ensnare him. He told Sunderland that he should consult Sir Winston Churchill to discover how leniently he had in fact behaved towards the Catholics in his visitation in Dorsetshire. CSP Dom. 1686-7, pp. 184-6.

Opposition to James II

Boasting to Sancroft of healthier diocesan accounts in January 1687, Trelawny enforced injunctions in his diocesan visitations and an altar policy that would have been worthy of William Laud^†, archbishop of Canterbury. Oxford DNB; Tanner 29, f. 42, Tanner 30, f. 173. He maintained the delicate balancing act between the king’s religion and his own Protestant (if ‘high’) churchmanship until 1687 when he clearly began to struggle with the king’s more aggressive Catholicising, especially the proposed repeal of the Test Act. Trelawny’s name appeared on all four lists of those expected to oppose repeal of the Tests or of James II’s policies more generally, as well as on Danby’s list of the king’s opponents in the Lords. Following a visit to Bristol from his friend, Thomas Ken, bishop of Bath and Wells, Trelawny reassured Sancroft that he was praying ‘for the preservation of our threatened church and...for the keeping this city very firm to its establishment’, and was resisting the installation of a Catholic priest in the diocese (at the recommendation of Father Petre) as it was ‘not a time to make gaps for a busy enemy, who is too forward to force breaches where he has no invitation’. He proclaimed his readiness to leave the Church of England only through a baptism of blood. Tanner 29, f. 147.

Despite his notorious hostility towards nonconformists, Trelawny received from Sunderland instructions that the king expected him to issue formal thanks for the 1687 Declaration of Indulgence. Trelawny drafted several replies to Sunderland, one claiming, disingenuously, that he had summoned his clergy to recommend an address of thanks and tried to talk them out of their subsequent refusal. He then suggested that, after careful consideration, he found that he agreed with his clergy that the demanded address of thanks would only dishonour the Church and prejudice the people against the king, a situation which, as the descendant of ‘loyal ancestors’, he could not countenance. Trelawny Pprs. 17-20. Trelawny declared to Sancroft that he would not be forced from the Church ‘by the terrors of displeasure or death itself’ (he hinted that his mentally unstable younger brother, Chichester, who had made several attempts on his life, had been set at liberty deliberately as a threat). He proceeded to defy the ecclesiastical commission by presenting one of the expelled Magdalen College fellows to a living in his diocese. Tanner 29, f. 42; Smith, Fighting Joshua, 46-47.

On 22 Oct. 1687 Trelawny’s chancellor informed Archbishop Sancroft that the bishop had gone to Cornwall, and would not be back in his diocese for at least a month. Tanner 29, f. 107. His visit may have related to his efforts to combat the king’s plans in the south-west. Certainly, in the spring of 1688, Trelawny reported to Sancroft that he had been down to Cornwall as a result of his fears that the lord lieutenant, Bath, would attempt to secure the election of Members from sympathetic to the king’s aims. He reported that

knowing myself to have a good interest in the gentry, I was resolved to see what inclinations they had, and what courage to support them, in case of an attack from the lord lieutenant and I was glad to find the gentry unanimous for the preserving the Test and our laws and what pleased me as much, resolved to appear in their several corporations and not suffer so many foreigners to be put upon them.

He had told them that they should not give a plain answer to the ‘three questions’, ‘for should they say downright they would not take off the laws and the Test, there would be a positive command that all such as had declared themselves of that opinion should not be chosen’. Tanner 28, f. 139.

The parliamentary elections never took place, though, and as the king resorted to a second Declaration of Indulgence to secure his religious aims, Trelawny was drawn into the bishops’ plans to resist it. At a Lambeth meeting on 12 May 1688 it was resolved that Trelawny be summoned to London immediately and after arriving on the evening of the 17th, he signed the petition of the Seven Bishops against the reading of the declaration. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 171-2; Tanner 28, f. 35; LPL, ms 4696, f. 10. He was one of those who attended the king the following day to present the petition. Add. 72516, ff. 65-66; HMC Downshire, i. 293; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iv. 269-70. The king called Trelawny the ‘most saucy’ of the bishops for protesting his loyalty on his knees whilst conducting an argument. Hart, William Lloyd, 99. On 27 May the bishops were summoned to appear before the king in Council on 8 June. CSP Dom. 1687-9, p. 203. Charged with seditious libel they were imprisoned in the Tower. According to Gilbert Burnet, the future bishop of Salisbury, and a hostile witness, Trelawny blustered that the prince of Orange would arrive soon to release him. Smith, Fighting Joshua, 48-9.

On 15 June 1688 the Seven Bishops were brought before king’s bench where they pleaded not guilty to all charges except that of drawing up the original petition. They pleaded that they were ‘peers of Parliament, bishops by their order’ and entered their plea ‘according to the privileges of Parliament’. They were discharged on bail (Trelawny on £100) after Henry Compton^* [1933], bishop of London had arranged sureties. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iv. 281-3; Tanner 28, f. 76. Following their acquittal on 30 June Trelawny was removed from his positions as a capital burgess in Lostwithiel and Liskeard. HP Commons, 1660-90, i. 167, 170. Over the summer, he kept the archbishop in close touch with affairs in the west, hoping to ‘do some good with the gentry of Devonshire and Cornwall’. He complained in no uncertain terms of his colleague, Bishop Lamplugh of Exeter, who, despite Trelawny’s advice, had given orders for the publication of the declaration, and had entertained the king’s judges, ignoring Trelawny’s telling him ‘what a malicious wicked instrument Justice Baldock [Sir Robert Baldock, counsel for the king in the Seven Bishops’ trial, and since appointed a judge in the king’s bench] was in our business’. Tanner 28, ff. 154, 158. Trelawny arrived too late in town on 28 Sept. to attend a meeting with the king with a group of bishops to offer him a petition, but he was with the same men when they were received ‘very graciously’ by James on 3 October. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 191, 193; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iv. 314-16; Clarke, Life of James II, ii. 188-9.

The Revolution and translation to Exeter

With the king now fearing imminent invasion along the south coast, it was seen as necessary to mend relations with Trelawny. In October 1688 he was included as one of the Cornish justices of the peace to be continued in office and on 15 Nov. he was translated to Exeter in place of Lamplugh (who had been promoted to York). CBS, D135/B1/4/1; Durham Univ. Lib. Mickleton and Spearman ms 46. f. 122. James later commented that he had hoped Trelawny’s translation would have inspired the bishop ‘to a sense of grateful loyalty and dutiful attachment’. CSP Dom. 1687-9, p. 354; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iv. 339; Oliver, Lives of Bishops of Exeter, 158. There is indeed no evidence that at this point Trelawny intended anything other than loyalty to the king despite the defection of his brothers Charles and Henry to the invading forces, although Burnet wrote that Charles Trelawny had drawn the bishop into the conspiracy. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. vi. 207; HP Commons, 1660-90, iii. 590-1; Burnet, iii. 266. By the third week of November, Trelawny was still in touch with the government, suggesting tactics for the defence of Bristol. CSP Dom. 1687-9, p. 359. On 5 Dec. he received via Charles Talbot, 12th earl of Shrewsbury, a message from the prince of Orange. In response he stalled, saying carefully only that he approved of steps being taken to preserve ‘the Protestant religion, and the laws and liberties of the kingdom’. Oxford DNB; CSP Dom. 1687-9, p. 374. He was still in Bristol in mid-December, his translation to Exeter having been overtaken by events, but by Christmas Eve had travelled to London to join in the meetings of peers and bishops held in the House of Lords. CSP Dom. 1687-9, p. 419. He also attended on Christmas Day, signing the address to William of Orange to take charge of a temporary government. Smith, Fighting Joshua, 48; Kingdom without a King, 158, 165-7. In the elections to the Convention, East Looe returned the bishop’s brothers, Charles and Henry.

On 22 Jan. 1689 Trelawny took his seat at the opening of the Convention, which he subsequently attended for 67 per cent of sittings. He was named to the episcopal committee to draw up special prayers of thanksgiving for the ‘great deliverance’ from catholicism and arbitrary power and to oversee those parts of the Book of Common Prayer to be omitted. It was reported that while reading prayers in the Lords the following day, Trelawny ‘skipped...over’ prayers for the king. HMC Portland, iii. 423; HMC Le Fleming, 234. This may have contributed to an order of the House on 28 Jan. to suspend prayers for the immediate future. Reports of Trelawny’s behaviour in the vote on the regency on 29 Jan. are conflicting: Morrice recorded that he left the chamber before the division, leaving Compton as the only bishop to vote against it, whereas another account maintained that Trelawny and Compton were the only bishops to oppose the regency, which was lost by 51 to 49 votes. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. iv. 504; HMC Portland, iii. 425; Carpenter, Protestant Bishop, 144. However, as division lists from 31 Jan., 4 and 6 Feb. make clear Trelawny was not in favour of agreeing that the crown was vacant or the offer of the crown to William and Mary. Indeed, on 6 Feb. he signed a protest against the resolution that James II had abdicated and that the throne was thereby vacant. That vote taken, Trelawny seems to have accepted the change of regime and de facto monarchy. On the 13th, he, Nathaniel Crew, bishop of Durham, and Peter Mews, bishop of Winchester, were the only bishops to attend the House for the proclamation of the new king and queen. It may have been as a result of efforts to secure his support that rumours circulated that he was to be translated to Salisbury. NLW, Kemeys-Tynte, C145. William had apparently promised the see to at least three people including Simon Patrick, the future bishop of Chichester, Trelawny and Burnet, with the latter prevailing. Clarendon Corresp. ii. 269; Hart, William Lloyd, 118-19. 133. On 2 Mar. Trelawny took the contentious oaths to the new monarchy. Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. v. 34. Two weeks later, his congé d’élire for Exeter, originally sent just before the Revolution, was re-issued. On 3 Apr. he took his seat for the first time as bishop of Exeter. CSP Dom. 1689-90, pp. 26, 51, 64.

Despite having honoured his delayed translation, the king was deeply wary of Trelawny. This perhaps makes it unlikely that Salisbury had ever been within his grasp; indeed Burnet’s jottings for a post-revolution regime had suggested Trelawny should be demoted to the Welsh see of St Davids. Add. 32681, ff. 317-18; R. Eagles, ‘“If he deserves it”: William of Orange’s pre-Revolution British Contacts’, PH, xxxii. 145. The Trelawny brothers had proven themselves loose cannons in the army and the bishop’s sister had been dismissed in 1685 from Princess Mary’s household in The Hague for transmitting information to James II’s ambassador. Trelawny was never accepted at William’s court. His deeply conservative churchmanship ensured that he opposed all legislation to accommodate Dissent and he never departed from his belief in a strong, exclusive and independent Church of England which could exercise strict discipline over its clergy and members. Smith, Fighting Joshua, 60, 119-20. Trelawny did not attend the coronation on 11 Apr. 1689. On 2 July (with a complement of Tory bishops, including Compton), Trelawny dissented from the resolution to proceed with the impeachment for high treason of Sir Adam Blair and his fellow conspirators. He attended the session for the last time on 20 July, when he was given leave to go into the country. He registered his proxy two days later in favour of Archbishop Lamplugh, which was vacated at the end of the session. The proxy was used on 30 July to vote in favour of adhering to the Lords’ amendments to the bill to reverse the judgments of perjury against Titus Oates.

Having completed his first visitation of Exeter, in September 1689 Trelawny travelled home to Cornwall. His activities left him unable to provide a full response to the demand for a self-assessment, though he undertook to pay what he owed as soon as he was able. Chatsworth, Halifax Coll. B.54. Though appointed to the commission for the revision of the liturgy, he was absent in Cornwall when the commission opened in the Jerusalem chamber on 10 Oct.; Trelawny in any case regarded it as a wrong-headed undertaking. Carpenter, Tenison, 101. He was still absent when the Convention re-convened on 23 Oct. 1689. On the 28th he was registered at a call of the House as having been excused attendance. He first sat on 8 Nov. and attended only 18 sittings in total. He was added to the select committee on the small tithes bill on 9 Nov. and to the committee on the prevention of clandestine marriages on the 15th, but on 16 Dec. he attended the session for the last time. On 17 Dec. he was given leave to go into the country and registered his proxy in favour of Thomas Sprat, bishop of Rochester, for the rest of the session. He returned to Exeter and spent Christmas at Trelawne. Smith, Fighting Joshua, 80.

Following the dissolution of the Convention, Trelawny threw his Cornish electoral interest behind the Tories. He was only partly successful; the county returned Francis Robartes^‡ (uncle of another Cornish magnate, Charles Bodvile Robartes, 2nd earl of Radnor) and Hugh Boscawen^‡ despite Trelawny’s vigorous opposition to the latter. In his circular letter to the clergy he had backed Robartes and John Speccot^‡, probably on the grounds of their staunch Anglicanism. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 68, iv. 83-93; HMC Portland, iii. 445; Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 51; ‘Collectanea Trelawniana’, 268 (Horwitz trans.). Trelawny’s efforts at Tregony were also unsuccessful, as he failed to prevent the return of Sir John Tremayne^‡ and Hugh Fortescue^‡. In his own boroughs of East and West Looe, the Trelawny interest proved more resilient. At East Looe he successfully installed his brothers Charles and Henry Trelawny and three days later at West Looe his kinsmen, Edward Seymour^‡ (son of the powerful Devon magnate Sir Edward Seymour^‡, 4th bt.), and Jonathan Trelawny^‡, from a cadet branch of the family. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 86, 87, 104; Add. 70014, f. 298. In Fowey, Jonathan Rashleigh was returned and within days of the election, a new charter named Rashleigh as recorder and Trelawny as one of the town’s justices. HP Commons, 1690-1715, v. 257.

The Parliament of 1690-95

Trelawny failed to attend the first session of the new Parliament, being excused attendance on 31 Mar. 1690. He did appear at the prorogation of 7 July, when he took the oaths. His absence from Westminster may have been due to his activity in the West Country. The secretary of state, Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham thanked him for at least two letters providing intelligence about the locality and alluded to the bishop’s information in another of 11 June. The rivalry between Trelawny and Bath persisted through the summer of 1690. Bath’s influence was eroded by his difficulties with rioting tinners suffering the effects of an economic recession. Trelawny, in contrast, as well as providing anti-Jacobite intelligence, seized every opportunity to criticize the lieutenancy in Devon of Bath’s eldest son Charles Granville, styled Viscount Lansdown (later 2nd earl of Bath). By 1692, Trelawny was dropping heavy hints about the Granvilles’ own Jacobite leanings. CSP Dom. 1690-1, pp. 16, 30; HMC Finch, ii. 294, iii. 379, 441, iv. 143; Smith, Fighting Joshua, 118-19.

On 17 Sept. 1690, in anticipation of the new session, Trelawny registered his proxy in favour of Bishop Sprat. It was vacated on 27 Oct. when he arrived at the House. Thereafter he attended 42 per cent of sittings. On 30 Oct. he and Sprat were the only bishops to protest against the passage of the bill to clarify the powers of the Admiralty commissioners, which was related to attempts to court martial Arthur Herbert, earl of Torrington. He last attended on 31 Dec., shortly before the end of the session. Trelawny failed to attend the 1691-2 session of Parliament; on 27 Oct. he registered his proxy in favour of Sprat once again. It was vacated on 21 Jan. 1692 when Sprat registered his own proxy in favour of Bishop Compton. From Bishop Sprat’s comments in a letter to Trelawny earlier in January, that on the divorce bill for Henry Howard, 7th duke of Norfolk, the ‘old bishops’ voted in complete opposition to the ‘new’, it would seem likely that Sprat assumed that Trelawny would also have opposed the bill. Smith, Fighting Joshua, 60.

Trelawny continued to furnish Nottingham with intelligence against Jacobites (and presented a clergyman for the ‘unadvised’ action of baptizing a child ‘James the Just’), but his alliance with Nottingham made him vulnerable to manoeuvring by the Granvilles. On 11 May 1692 Trelawny reported that local Jacobite suspects included Hugh Clifford, 2nd Baron Clifford of Chudleigh, but that he could do nothing towards making an arrest since Lansdown had been ‘so kind’ as to strike his own name out of the commission. His cathedral city, in contrast, was so fearful of Jacobites and the intentions of the French fleet that it gave him total support; the city fathers had their own grievances against Lansdown for his apparent lack of political will in dealing with suspects. HMC Finch, iii. 441, iv. 143-4. One week later, it was reported that Trelawny had seized Clifford and his papers, though the reporter admitted ‘here are so many lies that I know not what to write of a truth’. Verney, ms mic. M636/45, J. Verney to Sir R. Verney, 18 May 1692. Nottingham early the following month promised to arrange payment for services rendered. CSP Dom. 1691-2, p. 308.

Trelawny was absent from the opening of the new session on 4 Nov. 1692, and on 21 Nov. he was excused attendance. He first sat on 29 Dec. and attended thereafter for 47 per cent of all sittings during the session. On 31 Dec. he voted to commit the place bill and on 3 Jan. 1693 he voted for its passage, joining Sprat and Thomas Watson, bishop of St Davids, in dissenting from its rejection by the Whig majority. Ranke, History of England, vi. 198-200; HMC 7th Rep. 213. At the turn of the year, Thomas Bruce, 2nd earl of Ailesbury, had forecast that Trelawny would oppose the duke of Norfolk’s divorce bill, and on 2 Jan. he indeed voted against reading the bill. On 19 Jan. he dissented from the resolution not to refer to the committee for privileges the Lords’ amendments to the land tax bill and on the 25th voted against the bill to prevent dangers from disaffected persons. On 1 Feb. Trelawny withdrew from the chamber before the debate on the trial of Charles Mohun, 4th Baron Mohun. During February he reported from two private bills: for Sir Thomas Wroth^‡, 3rd bt. (10 Feb.) and for Anthony Danby (13 February). On 17 Feb. he received Sprat’s proxy (vacated at the end of the session). The following month he was said to have been responsible for having one of the clerks sent to Newgate for ‘rudely denying’ a paper to Colonel Fitzgerald during the hearings on the state of Ireland, notwithstanding the intervention on the clerk’s behalf of two peers and the colonel himself. This presumably referred to the case of Henry Lord, who was committed to the Gatehouse on the House’s order on 2 Mar. for affronting Fitzgerald. He was released the following day having made submission. Luttrell, Brief Relation, iii. 47.

Trelawny missed the first two weeks of the following session, returning to Westminster on 20 Nov. 1693; thereafter he attended for nearly half of all sittings. On 17 Feb. 1694 Trelawny voted not to reverse the Chancery dismission in the cause Montagu v. Bath. In another legal dispute, a writ of error was brought into the House on 22 Feb. 1694 in the case of the Bishop of Exeter v. Sampson Hele, patron of the rectory of South Pool. Three years previously, Trelawny had refused to institute Hele’s clerical candidate on the grounds of ignorance; Hele had successfully obtained a writ of quare impedit in common pleas which was subsequently confirmed in king’s bench. The Case of Sampson Hele, Esq; against ... Jonathan, Lord Bishop of Exon, and Gawen Hayman, Clerk (1692); CSP Dom. 1694-5, p. 23; HMC Lords, n.s. i. 350-1. On 15 and 16 Mar. the Lords finally heard Trelawny’s successful petition for a writ of error, 18 bishops attending the House. The concern of the episcopal bench to retain its right of supervision over prospective clergy was almost certainly sufficient to ‘neutralize the Whig lords’. LPL, Gibson mss 933, f. 54; Smith, Fighting Joshua, 92. He attended the session for the last time on 29 Mar. and on 31 Mar. registered his proxy in favour of Bishop Sprat; it was vacated with the prorogation on 25 April.

Trelawny was present in the House on 12 Nov. 1694 for the start of the next session (which he attended for 54 per cent of sittings). Meanwhile, a long-running dispute between Trelawny and Dr Arthur Bury, the rector of Exeter College, Oxford (of which Trelawny was visitor), reached the Lords. Bury had attracted attention for his composition of The Naked Gospel, which was ordered to be burned by the university authorities, but it was his decision to deprive a number of the college fellows that attracted Trelawny’s critical visitation that summer. Bury reacted to Trelawny’s visitation by having the college gates slammed in Trelawny’s face. Trelawny had recourse to the Privy Council, but they advised using the common law. Trelawny returned to Oxford, forced his way into the college, ejected Bury from office and excommunicated him. After numerous legal wrangles, Trelawny’s powers as visitor came before the king’s bench in 1693 in the guise of a suit by Robert Philips, who had rented the rector’s lodgings at Exeter from Bury’s successor, William Paynter, who now sought to take possession of them. The king’s bench found in favour of Bury on 16 June 1694, whereupon the lord chief justice, Sir John Holt^‡, brought a writ of error into the Lords on 20 November. On 10 Dec., the Lords reversed the king’s bench ruling in Robert Phillips v. Arthur Bury ‘without coming to a division’, though Edward Fowler, bishop of Gloucester, was one of three to sign a protest. In a coda to the ruling on 31 Jan. 1695 Trelawny petitioned the House to clarify its judgment on the issue of costs. On 5 Feb. the House ordered a search of precedents ‘where the judgment in the court below was for the defendants, hath been reversed by this House’. Two days later, having found no precedent, the Lords ordered that its judgment should include the provision that ‘the plaintiff recover his term, with his costs and damages’. Smith, Fighting Joshua, 79-91; HMC Lords, n.s. i. 393-6; Verney ms mic. M636/44, Dr W. Denton to Sir R. Verney, 25 June 1690; M636/48, J. Verney to same, 12 Dec. 1694. Atterbury was later to laud Trelawny’s victories in the cases of Hele and Bury, the one for fixing ‘the power of visitors (not till then acknowledged final) upon the sure foundation of a judgment in Parliament’, and the other which ‘unalterably confirmed’ the ‘bishop’s sole right to judge of the qualifications of persons applying for institution.’ Atterbury Epist. Corresp. ed. Nichols, ii. 281-2. Aside from the case, on 23 Jan. 1695 Trelawny dissented from the resolution to postpone for three years the implementation of the bill to regulate treason trials. On 13 Feb. he reported from the private bill for Thomas Tufton, 6th earl of Thanet. He attended the session for last time on 11 April.

Trelawny now prepared to fight a new round of elections on behalf of the Tories. Enjoying a clear run in Cornwall thanks to Bath’s apparent apathy towards the Cornish boroughs, Trelawny’s former candidate Speccot was this time elected for the county together with Boscawen. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 68-72. During the previous summer he had been approached by Sprat on behalf of Sir William Trumbull^‡. Add. 72521, ff. 66-67. However, even his patronage had limits and he was forced to turn down requests for assistance from from both Rochester, whom he ‘ought on all occasions to serve’ and from ‘our friend’, the late Speaker, Sir John Trevor^‡. Add. 72532, ff. 86-87; HMC Downshire, i. 455-6. At West Looe, Trelawny secured one seat for his protégé, the Tory John Mountstephen^‡, but in his cathedral city of Exeter, a violent and effective Whig campaign threw out the sitting Tory Members, including Trelawny’s cousin Sir Edward Seymour. Outbreaks of ‘fisticuffs and sticks’ and the arbitrary creation of freemen resulted in a controverted election, the successful Whigs increasingly convinced that Trelawny regarded Exeter as a mere extension of his Cornish estates. In Penryn, Trelawny was only partly successful. He successfully backed the Tory Alexander Pendarves^‡, obtaining the mayor’s ‘vote and interest’, but was unsuccessful in his support for Colonel Sidney Godolphin. Godolphin’s opponents circulated an inaccurate report of his death and an ‘interloper’, James Vernon^‡, the future secretary of state, took the second seat. Trelawny could do little but write to Godolphin expressing his disappointment at his failure but pleasure to know that he was not in fact dead. Add. 28052, f. 94; HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 87, 95, 142. East Looe again returned his brothers.

High Church opposition to the Junto ministry

Trelawny did not attend the first session of the 1695 Parliament, being excused from attending the House. He therefore avoided signing the Association on 27 Feb. 1696. HMC Lords, n.s. ii. 205-6. Trelawny was also absent from the opening of the next session, and was still absent when the House was called on 14 Nov.; he was summoned to attend on 7 December. He duly arrived and attended thereafter for 41 per cent of sittings. On 15 Dec. he protested against the decision that Goodman’s evidence should be read to the Lords. On 18 Dec. he voted against the second reading of the bill for the attainder of Sir John Fenwick^‡, and signed the protest against it. On 23 Dec. he voted against the bill’s passage and signed the protest against it. On 17 Mar. 1697, he attended the House for the last time that session, again registering his proxy in favour of Bishop Sprat.

Trelawny was at the forefront of the continuing struggle for political domination in Plymouth. When Bath lost the governorship in 1697 and was replaced by Charles Trelawny, the latter also sought command of the Plymouth militia. To the local Whigs, led by Sir Francis Drake^‡, 3rd bt., this threatened to concentrate political power in the wrong hands. HP Commons, 1690-1715, i. 192, ii. 148-51. Drake’s wife complained bitterly to Somers of Trelawny’s tactics in the city and claimed that her husband would secure the return of Whig candidates at the next election ‘to make a breach in the new establishment at Plymouth’ where the bishop and his two brothers had tried to rig the election of a new mayor with:

a villainous preparatory sermon ... and a threatening letter sent to one of Sir Francis’s most active friends, but Sir Francis did so timely break their measures that there was no room for their appearing and the person was unanimously chosen which they would have opposed. If that violent family have their desires granted there, all will be turned again and we I fear upon so powerful an addition to this neighbourhood of Tories be forced to seek for a more quiet settlement. Surr. Hist. Cent. Somers mss 371/14/E8.

Somers warned the secretary of state, Shrewsbury, that to appoint Trelawny’s brother as commander of the militia would jeopardize Whig gains throughout the whole county and ‘notwithstanding the diligence and violent temper of the bishop, if a new Parliament be chosen, it will appear to have a great effect’. In the event, Drake formed an alliance with Somers, Shrewsbury and the new lord lieutenant of Devon, Thomas Grey^* [1237], 2nd earl of Stamford, in opposition to the formidable Trelawny partnership. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 148-51, iii. 915-16.

Trelawny missed the first two months of the December 1697 session, not returning to his place in the House until 4 Feb. 1698. Thereafter he was present for 41 per cent of sittings. On 4 Mar. he signed a protest against the second reading of the bill punishing Charles Duncombe^‡ for falsely endorsing exchequer bills. On 15 Mar. he voted against the committal of the bill, which fell at that stage. CSP Dom. 1698, p. 145; Beinecke Lib. Osborn coll. Blathwayt mss, box 19, Vernon to Blathwayt, 19 Mar. 1697-8. During this session, Trelawny became more active in parliamentary business: he reported from the committees on bills for the naturalization of Dudley Vesey (21 Feb.), on erecting hospitals, workhouses and houses of correction in Crediton (1 Apr.), on the Whitbourne rectory (7 Apr.) and on the private bill for Sir Edward Turnor^‡ (2 May). On 11 May he was named as one of the managers of the conference on amendments to the bill to erect hospitals and workhouses in Colchester. Committed to reviving the Exeter economy through the protection of its woollen industry, Trelawny attended the House in March 1698 when the Lords heard petitions from the corporations of Exeter, Tiverton and several other Devonshire towns in favour of the bill to encourage English woollen manufacture and to restrict the export of English and Irish wool overseas. He attended on 30 Mar., the day the bill was committed to the whole House. Following the debate, he was named to the committee on the bill which would examine the state of trade between England and Ireland and for establishing a linen manufacture in Ireland. He quit the session on 16 May, six weeks before the prorogation, registering his proxy in favour of Compton on that date.

The elections following the dissolution of 1698 saw the Trelawnys successfully renew their political assault on Plymouth. On 30 July, Charles Trelawny and a local Whig merchant, John Rogers^‡, were returned, defeating one of the sitting members, George Parker^‡ and a (probably) Tory challenger, Josias Calmady. The creation of Tory freemen was said to have so ‘displeased Sir Francis Drake ... that he abdicated the town and came not near it in several years’. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 150; Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 171-2 and n.9. In Exeter, too, Trelawny was triumphant, his support in Parliament for the city’s woollen industry not going unnoticed; he and the cathedral clergy helped to overturn the Whig sitting Members and secure the comeback of Sir Edward Seymour and Sir Bartholomew Shower^‡, for whom Trelawny and his clergy were said to be ‘sticklers’, despite Shower’s role as prosecuting counsel at the trial of the Seven Bishops. In his speech at the Exeter Guildhall, Shower praised Trelawny’s ‘utmost endeavours for the promotion of the wool bill’. CSP Dom. 1698, p. 381; HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 142, v. 477; The Substance of Sir Bartholomew Shower’s Speech at the Guild-hall, Exon, August 19th, 1698 (1698). In his determination to run the city’s economy, Trelawny ousted from the Devon receivership Nicholas Wood^‡, who had ‘an absolute interest in the chamber of Exeter and…a mighty sway in that city’, but had refused to kowtow ‘tamely’ to the bishop. John Poulett, 4th Baron Poulett, alarmed by the actions of ‘that positive prelate’ maintained that Exeter was ‘too great a city to be treated at the vile rate of a Cornish borough, which our friend the bishop…through his warmth of temper does not distinguish’. HMC Portland, iv. 420. In Liskeard, Trelawny and his henchmen recommended Henry Darell^‡ and William Bridges^‡, campaigning robustly against John Buller^‡ (the bishop’s own great-grandson). According to Buller free liquor was offered to any freeman who promised to support Darell and Bridges; those who did not were threatened with having to provide quarters for Charles Trelawny’s regiment. Bridges and Darell were returned accordingly in dubious circumstances, but a subsequent appeal by Buller was unsuccessful.HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 84-85. Charles and Henry Trelawny were returned for East Looe, although Charles opted to sit for Plymouth.

Trelawny did not attend the first (1698-9) session of the 1698 Parliament. Nor was he present when the next (1699-1700) session began, first attending on the day Parliament resumed after the Christmas recess, 9 Jan. 1700, when he took the oaths. Thereafter he was present for 46 per cent of sittings. In February he was forecast as being in favour of the bill to continue the East India Company as a corporation and on the 23rd he voted to go into a committee of the whole to discuss amendments to the bill. On 8 Mar. he was one of six bishops to protest against the second reading of a new divorce bill for the duke of Norfolk, on the grounds that the divorce had not come before the ecclesiastical courts in the first instance. Conflict in Stuart Eng. ed. Aiken and Henning, 236. He last attended that session on 23 March.

During the autumn of 1700 Trelawny took advantage of ministerial alterations and the anticipation that Parliament was shortly to be dissolved to attempt to forge new alliances. While he had not enjoyed good relations with William Russell, duke of Bedford, patron of the borough of Tavistock, Trelawny sought to build bridges with his young heir, Wriothesley Russell, 2nd duke of Bedford. He wrote in October offering his services within Tavistock in promoting the Russell interest which in Trelawny’s opinion had been damaged by Drake and others. Chatsworth Muniments, 104.0. He continued to be active in Cornwall, working in conjunction with his brothers, as well as with Godolphin. Add. 28052, f. 100; HP Commons, 1690-1715, v. 670-2. The Cornwall county electorate returned the sitting members unopposed, despite Charles Trelawny’s assurances that if Francis Godolphin, later 2nd earl of Godolphin, appeared, he would be ^‘chosen by the unanimous consent of the gentlemen, a few canting rogues excepted’. Godolphin was accommodated at East Looe. At West Looe and Liskeard the Trelawny interest was maintained without opposition. In Plymouth, Trelawny predicted with confidence that his two brothers, Charles and Henry, would be chosen, despite ‘all the power and tricks of the Dissenters, Whigs and enemies of the Church ... quite broke the neck of the Whig interest’. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 69, 85-7, 150, v. 673.

In Church matters, Trelawny remained rooted in the high Tory clerical tradition. He introduced Atterbury to the earl of Rochester in November 1700 and installed him in January 1701 as archdeacon of Totnes, a position which gave him a seat in the lower house of Convocation. Bennett, White Kennett, 44; Bennett, Tory Crisis, 55. In January 1701 Atterbury was writing to Trelawny concerning organizing his supporters in Convocation. Atterbury Epist. Corresp. iii. 8-12. Trelawny even gave his proctors to London directions to oppose any prolocutor supported by Thomas Tenison, archbishop of Canterbury and the Whig clergy. Smith, Fighting Joshua, 101.

Trelawny missed the opening weeks of the 1700-1 sessions of both Parliament and Convocation, taking his seat in the Lords on 7 Apr. 1701. Thereafter he attended 37 per cent of sittings. He strongly supported the impeachments of the Junto peers from April to June, signing regular protests against the Lords’ proceedings. On 16 Apr. he registered two: against the resolution to draw up an address asking the king not to punish the four until the completion of the proceedings in Parliament against them, and then against the decision to expunge the reasons given in the previous protest on the grounds that it contravened privilege of peerage. On 3 June he signed two further protests concerning the impeachments, and on the 9th, he signed another against the refusal to agree to a joint committee of both Houses to settle the procedures for the impeachments. On 11 June (with Compton and Sprat) he protested against the resolution to put the question whether a lord being tried on an impeachment for high crimes should, on his trial, be without the bar. Three days later, again with Compton and Sprat, he protested against the resolution to send for a second conference on the impeachments before the first was determined, and then he protested again against the rejection of a committee of both Houses on the impeachments. On 17 June, he protested against the decision to proceed with the trial of Somers, voted against his acquittal, and protested against the verdict. He last attended on the day Parliament was prorogued, 24 June.

Following the dissolution of Parliament in November 1701, fresh elections were held for the Commons and an increasingly restive Convocation. Exeter (with Trelawny’s ‘very zealous’ clergy) returned the sitting members Seymour and Shower in the December election: the cathedral chapter wholly ‘in the measures’ of the bishop. At the by-election caused by Shower’s death almost immediately afterwards, a local alderman, John Snell^‡, was returned in his stead. The Trelawny brothers were again returned in their Plymouth stronghold; even Henry Trelawny’s death shortly after the elections became a propaganda coup when the ‘great funeral’ helped the Trelawnys to outmanoeuvre the corporation and replace him with another local Tory, John Woolcombe^‡. HP Commons, 1690-1715 ii. 142, 150; Wake mss 23, f. 13. The polls in Cornwall also resulted in an overwhelming victory for the Tories with Trelawny working increasingly closely with Godolphin. At East Looe, he ensured the return of Francis Godolphin and Henry Seymour although he had initially encouraged Godolphin’s son to stand for the county. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 69, 86. Following the elections, Godolphin directed Trelawny ‘to muster up his squadron’ and have them at Westminster by the end of the year. HMC Portland, iv. 28. When the Parliament opened on 30 Dec. 1701, Trelawny himself, however, was absent at Trelawne. In February 1702, he was said to be indisposed with gout, and while Sprat congratulated him on ‘the greatness of [his] service to the public in the late elections’, he and Compton also thought it ‘scarce worth your while to come up at all this sessions, especially if it shall happen to end, as is likely about Easter’. Sprat further informed Trelawny that the bill of abjuration of James II, designed by the Whigs to cause difficulty for Tories, had come up to the Lords, but had become ‘very severe…not well adjusted among our people in the House of Commons before it came in’; if, however, their ‘friends’ acceded to the oath, it would prove ‘a great defeat to the malice of our enemies’. Bodl. Rawl. letters 92, f. 80; ‘Collectanea Trelawniana’, p. 269 (Speck trans).

The reign of Anne to 1705

Trelawny did not take his seat in the House until 18 Apr. 1702, after the death of William and the accession of Anne. He attended the session for only 15 sittings before the prorogation on 25 May. Meanwhile, still closely involved in the high Tory ecclesiastical agenda, he was urged by Atterbury and Compton to support the call for a meeting of Convocation by issuing the controversial writ praemunientes to his clergy. This, Atterbury had argued, had been done regularly since the Reformation, but needed the example of Trelawny and Compton to bring in other bishops. It was, Trelawny was told,

of the utmost importance to the rights of the Church ... that the writ should be executed upon the inferior clergy ... the bishop of London, I believe, will execute it in his diocese ... [Sprat] says if your lordship and the bishop of London do it, he will do it also. Atterbury Epist. Corresp. iii. 11; Carpenter, Protestant Bishop, 188-9.

The elections to Anne’s first Parliament again revealed the strength of the Trelawnys’ alliance with Lord Treasurer Godolphin. In East Looe, Trelawny oversaw the return of two Tories; at West Looe, following pressure from the duumvirs and Rochester, Trelawny secured the election of Richard Jones^‡, earl of Ranelagh [I], and Sidney Godolphin^‡ (a relation of Godolphin). HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 85-7, iv. 520-7. As the mayor pointed out, Trelawny’s interest could not easily be challenged in West Looe; he had to be consulted before any corporation decision and without the bishop’s helping hand, the ‘poor corporation [had] little land worth anything’. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 87-8. Trelawny boasted to Nottingham in August that he had secured 11 Members for the Commons. The Trelawny-Godolphin alliance was effective in Cornwall, but Trelawny’s next goal was complete political control of Exeter. He began to court the local mercantile population by ensuring that no bill was introduced into Parliament to make the Exe navigable. He also renewed the attempt to secure his brother’s control over the Plymouth militia. Though Nottingham appeared to approve Trelawny’s scheme ‘for the militia of Plymouth being in the hands of the governor’ despite opposition from Poulett, the bishop complained that he had not, under the present ministry, expected to face the same level of opposition as he had during the previous reign when Stamford had tried to ‘break’ the Trelawny family interest. Add. 29584, f. 95; HP Commons, 1690-1715, v. 670-2; Smith, Fighting Joshua, 122.

Trelawny took his seat on 21 Oct. 1702, the second day of the new Parliament. He subsequently attended 30 per cent of sittings. He was appointed by royal proclamation to preach at the St Paul’s service of thanksgiving on 12 Nov. for the military victories of the campaign. Add. 61119, ff. 85-6; Add. 70073-4, newsletter, 5 Nov. 1702; Carpenter, Protestant Bishop, 192. According to one newsletter, Trelawny delivered an ‘excellent’ sermon. Add. 70073-4, newsletter 12 Nov. 1702; A Sermon Preach’d before the Queen,and both Houses of Parliament: at the Cathedral Church of St Pauls Nov. 12. 1702 (1702). Not everyone, perhaps, agreed, for although on the 13th the Commons ordered that he be given the thanks of the House for his sermon, the Lords declined to do so, ‘as thinking it not proper, being appointed to preach by the queen.’ Add. 70073-4, newsletter 14 Nov. 1702.

Trelawny’s ecclesiastical behaviour consistently reflected his high Tory churchmanship. In Convocation on the 25 Nov. 1702, together with Compton and Sprat, he dissented from the majority of bishops in the vote which denied the lower house of Convocation to sit as a house between sessions, a key demand of the Tory highfliers. On 15 Dec. ‘sharp repartees’ took place between Trelawny and Burnet in Convocation about the opinion of the attorney general, Sir Edward Northey^‡, and the two chief justices, Holt and Sir Thomas Trevor, (later Baron Trevor), over whether the lower house’s recent assertion of divine right episcopacy amounted to praemunire. Nicolson, London Diaries, 133, 144-5. Trelawny had previously damned Northey upon his appointment in June 1701 as the ‘creature’ of Somers and Stamford, maintaining that it had defied the interests of the Church. With characteristic swagger, Trelawny hoped that the ink used to sign Northey’s patent would fade quickly so ‘that in a few weeks not a syllable will be legible’. HP Commons, 1690-1715, iv. 1047.

Meanwhile, in the Lords, on 3 Dec. 1702 Trelawny was one of ten bishops opposed to the instruction to the committee proposed by Somers to restrict the bill against occasional conformity to those persons covered by the Test Act. The following day, in committee of the whole, another amendment was proposed that all office-bearers receive the sacrament four times a year; Trelawny agreed with John Sharp, archbishop of York, that this constituted ‘a further prostitution of the sacrament’ and again voted in opposition. He joined his fellow Tories on the 7th in voting against the amendment removing the bill’s financial penalties, a change which was sure to derail the bill in the Commons. Following the despatch of the bill back to the Commons on the 9th, news of the proposal to ‘tack’ the bill resulted in a resolution against the tack as unparliamentary and tending towards the destruction of the constitution, which Trelawny opposed. On 26 Dec. Trelawny joined 14 bishops at the St Stephen’s dinner at Lambeth. In January 1703, he was assumed by Nottingham as likely to continue in his support of the bill against occasional conformity. During the session, he also voted with his Tory episcopal allies on 11 Jan. against the motion proposed by Thomas Wharton, 5th Baron Wharton, for a resumption of the House from committee, so that a new bill might be ordered to clarify the rights of Prince George, duke of Cumberland, should he survive the queen. On 22 Jan. he registered his protest against the dismissal of the petition of Robert Squire^‡ and John Thompson (in a case involving Wharton). Nicolson, London Diaries, 137-42, 153, 166, 185. He attended the session for the last time on 27 Jan. and then left, presumably for Cornwall, as it was to Trelawne that Atterbury directed a letter on 4 Feb. 1703. Atterbury Epist. Corresp. iv. 355.

A by-election at West Looe on 31 Mar. 1703 saw the election of Trelawny’s cousin, Charles Seymour^‡, to replace the expelled Ranelagh. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 87-88. The ongoing struggles for dominance in Plymouth, much to the concern of John Churchill, duke of Marlborough continued when John Granville, later Baron Granville of Potheridge, tried unsuccessfully to wrest the post of governor from Charles Trelawny. Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 171-2 and n.9. Throughout the spring and summer of 1703, Trelawny received a running commentary on parliamentary and Convocation business from Atterbury, whose correspondence also encompassed Oxford politics and his archdeaconry business. Atterbury Epist. Corresp. iii. 77-107, iv. 355-410, 414-35; Trelawny Pprs. ed. Cooper, 20-21. Trelawny did not attend the 1703-4 session, despite a new attempt to pass legislation against occasional conformity. Indeed, in November and December, Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland, forecast twice that Trelawny would be a supporter of the renewed bill. Two division lists record that on 14 Dec. his proxy was used to support the bill, although it is not known with whom Trelawny deposited his proxy during his absence.

At the end of 1703 Trelawny became embroiled in a dispute with his predecessor (and Atterbury’s bête noire) George Hooper, who had been promoted to be bishop of St Asaph as a reward for his role in managing Convocation (he had been elected prolocutor in February 1701). Hooper had bargained for a number of commendams including the precentorship of Exeter. Atterbury Epist. Corresp. iii. 93-101; Carpenter, Tenison, 241, n.4. Eventually, Hooper overcame legal objections to his commendam in Exeter, and in October 1703 he was allowed it for three years from 1 Oct. 1703, until an act could be obtained for annexing to the bishopric of St Asaph, the archdeaconry thereof, and the rectory of Llandrinio or its equivalent. Atterbury Epist. Corresp. iii. 126-34; CSP Dom. 1703-4, p. 265. However, when Hooper was then translated to Bath and Wells, he attempted to carry over his commendam to the Exeter precentorship, which Trelawny challenged by entering a caveat at the secretary of state’s office in December 1703. Wake mss, 17, f. 82; CSP Dom. 1703-4, p. 262. Trelawny successfully lobbied both Nottingham and Godolphin, thanking the former ‘for the regard which has been shown to my caveat in your office, and for your lordship’s not giving way to his unhandsome suggestion against my right to the disposal of that dignity’, and also noting that he was ‘forced by my lord treasurer’s favour to wrest out of his hands the precentorship of my church here, which he would have carried over in commendam to a bishopric that never was thought before this time to need one’. Trelawny then took umbrage at Hooper’s interference in his diocese over a patronage matter. In July 1704 he complained to Robert Harley that Hooper was behaving in an ‘intolerable’ fashion, filling people’s heads ‘with a notion that my lord treasurer and I are to model the elections in our county for the next (to make it a court) Parliament; which if it be so, I hope this foreigner will not be helped to set himself up on any terms in opposition to us’. He said that he would not trouble Godolphin but was confident ‘of his protection when I am driven to call for it; but when I have taken the liberty to put it into your hands, I presume to conclude upon the safety of my honour and interest’. Add. 29584, f. 109; HMC Portland, iv. 101-2. Harley recommended to Godolphin on 17 July that Trelawny be appeased in a patronage dispute as it would have ‘a double advantage…[to] please a man of interest and mortify another who hath made her majesty very ill returns for her ... favours’. Add. 28055, ff. 94-95. At the end of the month Trelawny acknowledged his gratitude to his ‘good patron’ Godolphin. HMC Portland, iv. 105.

Trelawny again stayed away from Westminster during the 1704-5 session, his absence perhaps reflecting an increasing tension between the Tory ecclesiastical agenda and the ministry’s desire for domestic peace in order to secure a rapid supply for the war effort: the period 1704-5 has been seen as the point at which Trelawny was ‘weaned from his old high Tory allegiances’. Pols. in Age of Anne, 258. Trelawny was urged by Godolphin via William Lowndes^‡ on 17 Oct. to ‘hasten up’ the west country members in time for the new session, Godolphin fearing that they might be tempted by the fair weather to stay at home. CTB, xix. 378. On 28 Oct. 1704 Atterbury informed Trelawny that the Commons would almost certainly attempt to tack the occasional conformity bill to the land tax. Atterbury Epist. Corresp. iii. 252. On 9 Nov. Trelawny registered his proxy in favour of Bishop Compton. Godolphin betrayed some impatience with Trelawny in November, writing to Harley on some unspecified business, ‘I have burnt the Bishop of Exeter’s letter as you commanded, what art could anybody use to persuade him that was a secret.’ Add. 70285, Godolphin to Harley, 12 Nov. [1704]. At a call of the House on 23 Nov. Trelawny was excused attendance. When the untacked occasional conformity bill reached the Lords, William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle, recorded that Trelawny had supported it at second reading on 15 Dec. (presumably through Compton exercising his proxy). Nicolson, London Diaries, 253.

The death of James Gardiner, bishop of Lincoln at the beginning of March 1705, saw Trelawny’s dean, William Wake, marked out as one of the men for promotion. Trelawny’s chief concern seems to have been to ensure that a new dean would consolidate his control over the chapter. Trelawny’s candidate to succeed Wake, Blackburne, kept up a commentary on the manoeuvring both in Exeter, and on the rumours surrounding the vacancy at Lincoln, his promotion being dependent upon Wake acquiring the bishopric. Wake mss 17, ff. 85-88, 91, 93-95. By May Trelawny had received from Blackburne assurances ‘from the Great Man [Godolphin] without whom we think this affair cannot be well concluded’ that Godolphin would use his interest to Blackburne’s promotion to dean if Wake were indeed elevated, ‘without any other motive than the satisfaction he should have in doing a thing which he perceives would give my Lord [Trelawny] a great deal of ease’. Ibid. f. 95. Trelawny rejected Harley’s recommendation of Atterbury to succeed Wake at the deanery. Trelawny continued to cultivate his relationship with Godolphin, hoping in May he hoped to secure a prebend for one John Penneck, son of a steward of Sir William Godolphin^‡, who was instituted in succession to Wake on 15 Nov. 1705. With the 1705 election seeing a campaign against ‘tackers’, Blackburne joked to Wake that if Trelawny had now become a Whig, they must shoulder the responsibility. Ibid. ff. 93-94. On 19 July Trelawny was able to wish Wake well in his new bishopric and also to thank him for securing Blackburne’s appointment as his successor as dean, due acknowledgment being given to Archbishop Tenison ‘for countenancing and moving at your instance my request in behalf of Mr Blackburne.’ Ibid. f. 48.

During the 1705 election campaign Trelawny secured for his close friend George Clarke^‡ one of the seats at East Looe after Clarke determined not to stand at Oxford. At West Looe, the bishop found a sanctuary for the beleaguered secretary of state Sir Charles Hedges^‡. Eg. 2618, f. 191; HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 86-7, iii. 600. That Godolphin had now become lord lieutenant of Cornwall and had determined to rid the county of ‘tackers’ forced a growing rift between Trelawny and his former high Tory allies. Divisions amongst the Cornish clergy were ‘hotly fomented by the gentry ... chiefly on the account of [Trelawny’s] very vigorous acting in favour of Mr Boscawen – [Hugh Boscawen^†, Viscount Falmouth] who is represented by ’em as a bitter Whig’. The Tory clergy even blamed Trelawny for the numerous alterations that had wrecked the bill against occasional conformity. In the event, Boscawen topped the poll, Trelawny having turned the election in Boscawen’s favour, after persuading ‘his friends ... to desist’. Wake mss 17, ff. 97-8, 102; HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 69-70. The elections in Exeter were, if possible, even more fiercely contested between the sitting members (both tackers) and government candidates, Francis Godolphin and a local merchant. Trelawny again had to choose between his original Tory principles and loyalty to Godolphin, a problem highlighted by his increasing distance from the highfliers on the Exeter chapter (encouraged by Hooper). He now faced opposition not only from Atterbury but also by a sabre-rattling Sir Richard Vyvyan^‡ who threatened to head a delegation of Cornish clergy at the Exeter hustings to oppose the bishop and the government candidates. Wake mss 17, f. 97. Godolphin provided the solution by withdrawing his son from the poll, leaving the field clear for Sir Edward Seymour and John Snell^‡. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 143. Plymouth proved equally volatile. Trelawny had been warned the previous year that Drake and Stamford would try to ‘turn the election’ there. Despite some corporation meddling by Stamford’s allies, Charles Trelawny managed to hold onto his seat but the other went to the Whig Sir George Byng^‡, the future Viscount Torrington. HMC Portland, iv. 166-7; HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 150. The 1705 elections marked a watershed in relations between the majority of Tories and the duumvirs, and Trelawny’s willingness to stick by Godolphin was interpreted as apostasy by many Tories, such as Thomas Hearne, who in February 1708 described it as ‘betraying the interest of old England, and promoting the designs of the lord treasurer and the base corrupt court’, presumably for personal gain. Hearne, Remarks and Collections. ii. 94.

Translation to Winchester

Trelawny left for London in mid-October 1705. Though he was initially ‘prevented of waiting on my lord treasurer by a great cold he brought to town with him or caught since he came to it’, he took his seat on 29 Oct. 1705, the fourth day of the new Parliament, attending thereafter for 48 per cent of sittings. Wake mss 17, ff. 107-9, 111-12. By early December, he was said to be ‘losing himself in the opinion of his clergy’, and despite his High Church views, on 6 Dec. he voted for the motion that the Church was not in danger under the queen’s administration. Nicolson, London Diaries, 316. On 30 Jan. 1706, he was present in the abbey for the martyrdom sermon. Nicolson, London Diaries, 367. It was expected that either he or the lord lieutenant would in February 1706 present the mayor to the queen with a petition relating to an unpaid debt due to the corporation. HMC Exeter, 220. On 28 Feb. he was appointed to the committee for drawing up reasons to be offered at a conference with the Commons for the Lords’ amendments to the bill for Francis Seymour Conway, Baron Conway, and on 11 Mar. he was nominated a manager of both conferences on Sir Rowland Gwynne’s Letter to the Earl of Stamford. He was then named to the committee for drawing an address to the queen concerning the petition of the gentry of Lancashire regarding the growth of popery. Nicolson, London Diaries, 367. The following day he reported from the committee on the Viccary estate bill. He attended the session until the prorogation on 19 March.

Towards the end of 1706 Trelawny saw the opportunity to satisfy his longstanding ambition for a wealthy bishopric. His ambitions had been centred on Winchester, and it was thought that Godolphin had favoured his pretensions. However, there was growing pressure from the Whigs, upon whom Godolphin was increasingly reliant, for ecclesiastical preferment to be given to allies of the Junto. The death of Bishop Mews of Winchester in November 1706 led to rumours that Trelawny would be promoted, but Godolphin was faced with an awkward dilemma. Luttrell, Brief Relation, vi. 106. He fretted on 9 Nov. that Trelawny would ‘never forgive me if anybody has it but himself. I will endeavour to keep the queen from coming to any resolution upon it till we have advised with all our friends’. His instinct was to keep his promise to Trelawny, but not to announce it, at least during the parliamentary session, there being ‘no other expedient but to keep it vacant, at present’. Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 733-4. On 4 Dec. Tenison was reported to be ‘disturbed’ by the prospect of Trelawny’s advancement to Winchester, as were many Whigs who thought they had Godolphin’s agreement to promote Whig clerics. Nicolson, London Diaries, 396, 400; G. Bennett, ‘Robert Harley, the earl of Godolphin and the Bishoprics Crisis’, EHR, lxxxii. 735-6. However, by 19 Jan. 1707 Tenison must have been resigned to Trelawny’s advancement because he was in discussion with Somers about the choice of his replacement at Exeter, an appointment that would cause even greater trouble for Godolphin. Surr. Hist. Cent. 371/14/D11-12. When another vacancy arose at Chester, White Kennett^†, later bishop of Peterborough, on 13 Feb. wrote that ‘we must take it for granted that the Bishop of Exeter [Trelawny] is still in the road to Winchester, tho’ it is possible for some reasons he will not have his translation till the Parliament rises’. Lansd. 1013, ff. 95-96. According to Burnet, Trelawny’s appointment

gave great disgust to many, he being considerable for nothing but his birth and his interest in Cornwall. The lord treasurer had engaged himself to him, and he was sensible that he was much reflected upon for it; but he, to soften the censure that this brought on him, had promised, that, for the future, preferment should be bestowed on men well principled with relation to the present constitution, and on men of merit. Burnet, v. 337-8.

Meanwhile, Parliament had met on 3 Dec. 1706, with Trelawny in attendance. He was present more regularly than usual—at 60 per cent of sittings—and involved himself in broader ecclesiastical business. He attended the court of delegates at Doctors’ Commons on the morning of 14 Dec. and the Lords in the afternoon. LPL, ms 1770, f. 32. On 18 Dec. at a meeting of Queen Anne’s Bounty, Atterbury (who still regarded himself as one of Trelawny’s close friends) opposed Tenison’s motion for a halt to all episcopal promotions until tenths and first fruits had been cleared, ‘affirming that everybody might see at whom ... this was levelled’—meaning Trelawny. He was the only bishop in London not to attend the St Stephen’s dinner at Lambeth, but on 1 Jan. 1707 attended St James’s with Sharp and Nicolson. Nicolson, London Diaries, 403, 406. During the debate of 3 Feb. 1707 on Archbishop Sharp’s clause to incorporate the Test Act into the bill for the security of the Church of England, Trelawny ‘the knight from Exeter’, did not vote with his usual Tory allies in favour of the amendment, but with the court, a vote interpreted as connected to his imminent translation. On 9 Feb., however, Kennett told Nicolson that he thought Trelawny’s promotion unlikely. Ibid. 393, 416. On 8 Mar. Trelawny managed to attend the queen’s birthday, loitering in the vestry at St James’s, and the Lords where he reported the private bill for William Talbot, bishop of Oxford. Ibid. 423. Two days later, he reported from the private bill for the deceased Henry Darell^‡, formerly Member for Liskeard. He continued to attend until 7 Apr., the day before the prorogation, and then attended four sittings in the subsequent nine-day session from 14 to 24 Apr. 1707. He was also noted as examining the Journal on 23, 24, 28 and 30 April.

Despite his efforts, Trelawny failed to avoid controversy. The Rev. Ralph Bridges reported on 21 Apr. that Trelawny had ‘preached a sermon at court lately, which has given offence to several great men. I hope he won’t lose his bishopric of Winton by it, for if he does I don't know what we poor T---ys must do.’ Like the majority of Trelawny’s sermons, it was not printed, but circulated in manuscript form. The duchess of Marlborough thought some of it was directed at her, but ‘what gave most offence and what people seem more generally to agree in his having said was about “drinking” and “whoring”, that the one was the effect of mere nature and the other of good nature.’ Bridges thought this too shocking to be true ‘and so unlikely to come out of the pulpit and out of a bishop’s mouth, that charity would oblige one to think it next to impossible’. Atterbury, though, announced in May that he would make Trelawny ‘the patron of his sermons ... to be published as soon as ever Sir Jonathan is declared bishop of Winton’. Add. 72494, ff. 19-22, 27-30. On 30 Apr. Trelawny attended the House for the reading of the royal proclamation that continued Parliament as the first of Great Britain. During May, Bishop Crew confided in Sharp that it was still ‘not so easy to guess who shall succeed in Winchester notwithstanding the most ensured expectations a certain brother had. If there should be a retraction of this, the storm, wherever it falls, will be very violent and furious’. Hart, John Sharp, 337.

Trelawny’s translation was eventually announced in tandem with that of the translation of John Moore, bishop of Norwich, to Ely, immediately upon the death of the incumbent there, Simon Patrick, on 31 May. Add. 72494, ff. 33-34. On 2 June, Trelawny liaised with Harley as Godolphin had commanded him to attend the queen that morning, being ‘vain enough to believe I am so far in your favour that any affair of mine will never find any stop with you’. HMC Portland, iv. 416. On 3 June Trelawny wrote to Marlborough that ‘I am this day in full possession of the bishopric of Winchester’, and acknowledged his debt to Marlborough and Godolphin, for which he would ‘breed up [his] whole family in the sense of what we owe to so great protection’. Add. 61365, f. 126. Harley expedited matters; the royal directive to Winchester was finally sent out three days later, the royal assent given on the 10th and the translation confirmed by the archbishop on the 14th despite, as Trelawny later wrote, ‘all the bitterest opposition which envenomed and consecrated lies could thrown my way’. Smith, Fighting Joshua, 139. Indeed, on the day of Trelawny’s confirmation, Godolphin urged Harley to hurry to Windsor in case Sunderland refused to introduce Trelawny to the queen; that eventuality would make such ‘a great deal of noise’ that unless Harley intervened, ‘something [would] happen which may be shocking and uneasy to the queen’. HMC Bath, i. 173. Formalities accomplished, the new bishop of Winchester thanked Harley for his help, but was equally interested in how Harley could assist with the prompt restitution of his temporalities. Hants RO, Trelawny mss, 21M65/J9/1; Add. 70024, ff. 130-1; HMC Portland, iv. 421. Godolphin recommended that his revenue be backdated to the time of Mews’ death since it was ‘best not to oblige a man by halves’. HMC Bath, i. 175. In July, Marlborough, from his camp in Flanders, told Trelawny of his pleasure that the queen had shown ‘so just a sense of [Trelawny’s] merit’. Add. 61388, f. 40. Trelawny in return willingly ensured that a newly vacant living ‘in the pleasantest part of Wiltshire’, was ‘by the command’ of Marlborough at the service of Dr John Shaw. HMC Bath, iii. 436. Delighted with his new post, Trelawny anticipated maintaining a full social round, regarding ‘the visiting of friends to be an episcopal act as well as of visiting churches’. Eg. 2618, f. 197.

In September 1707 Atterbury duly published his volume of sermons with a fulsome and politically embarrassing dedication to Trelawny that was little short of a high Church manifesto. Trelawny was furious at being used in the highflier’s political manoeuvrings, and Atterbury was forced to seek assistance from Trelawny’s son to soothe the bishop’s legendary temper. Bennett, Tory Crisis, 93-94; Smith, Fighting Joshua, 107. Trelawny continued to put his electoral interest at Godolphin’s service, at the Liskeard by-election on 21 Nov. 1707, he recommended John Dolben^‡, an ardent supporter of Godolphin, and the son of an archbishop. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 85. On 4 Dec., six weeks after the start of the new parliamentary session, Trelawny took his seat for the first time as bishop of Winchester; he attended the session for only 31 per cent of sittings. On 19 Jan. 1708 Trelawny was called by the House to confirm that Dr Richard Kingston, ‘impudent writer’ of Remarks upon Dr Freind’s Account of the Earl of Peterborough’s Conduct in Spain, had not been ordained. Nicolson, London Diaries, 443-4. On 5 Feb. he and Talbot were the only bishops to vote with the court and against the Junto and the Tories in a division on the date set for the abolition of the Scottish Privy Council in the bill for improving the Union, the court wishing for the later date. Pols. in Age of Anne, 399; Nicolson, London Diaries, 448; Addison Letters, 89-90. On 7 Feb., (with 24 other lords, including Godolphin and Marlborough), he registered his protest against the passage of the bill. Five days later he reported from the committee on the Plymouth workhouse bill.

Following the dissolution on 15 Apr. 1708, Trelawny was listed as a ‘court Tory’ in a printed list of the first Parliament of Great Britain. Despite the increasing closeness between Godolphin and the Junto, Trelawny nevertheless retained his personal loyalty to the lord treasurer. During May, he travelled to Cornwall to ‘use his interest that as good men may be chosen in this election as were in the former’. At East Looe, Trelawny was forced to sacrifice George Clarke since the latter had become estranged from the Godolphin ministry, but he returned instead his nephew Harry Trelawny^‡. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 70, 86; iii. 601. The Lostwithiel contest proved more contentious. At the poll in May the Whigs Joseph Addison^‡ and James Kendall^‡ were returned in preference to two candidates from Radnor’s family. Kendall’s death in July seems to have precipitated both the losers into petitioning against the result before Trelawny or Godolphin could intervene with an alternative of their own. George Granville, later Baron Lansdown, was also eager to intervene in the election, informing Harley that he was in the process of securing an interest for Henry St John, the future Viscount Bolingbroke, in anticipation of opposition from Trelawny and Godolphin. Atterbury, despite the attempt to repair his relationship with Trelawny, sided with Granville and St John, using his own interest with the clergy, but feared ‘that way is barred up by the two great men’. HMC Portland, iv. 495-6; HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 89-90. The ultimate result was a reversal of the original poll towards the end of 1709.

Trelawny attended the House on 16 Nov. 1708 for the start of the new Parliament, but attended the session for less than a third of sittings. On 28 Dec. he reported to Sunderland news of a ‘popish seminary’ at Warnford in his diocese, suggesting that ‘if your lordship or the council won’t think fit to be concerned in the dispersing and breaking this pernicious seminary I hope I may have leave to complain of it in Parliament, by myself in the House of Lords, and my friends in the House of Commons that measures may be found for having it effectually done.’ Having laid the matter before the queen, Sunderland forwarded it on 3 Jan. 1709 to the crown’s legal officers to investigate further and to institute a prosecution. Add. 61594, ff. 70-1; Add. 61652, f. 109. On 21 Jan. Trelawny voted in favour of permitting Scots peers with British titles to vote in the elections for Scots representative peers, a pro-ministerial position. On 15 Mar., though, still consistently in favour of economic protectionism and the Tory ecclesiastical agenda, he protested against the committal of the bill for general naturalization. When the House went into committee on the bill later that day, Trelawny supported the amendment of William Dawes, bishop of Chester that would have insisted that all newcomers worship in the Church of England and not in any other Protestant congregation. He was absent for the debate and division on the bill for improving the Union on 22 Mar., but three days later he voted (in company with Somers, Sunderland and Thomas Sprat, the bishop of Rochester) against a resumption of the House, and therefore against allowing more time for consideration of the impact of the legislation on Scottish marriage settlements. Nicolson, London Diaries, 486, 488-9. Trelawny was present on 21 Apr., the day of the prorogation. He then remained in London and attended the prorogations of 19 May and 23 June 1709.

Trelawny was back at Westminster on 22 Nov. 1709, one week after the start of the parliamentary session; he thereafter he attended only on 13 and 16 Jan. and 6 and 9 Feb. 1710. His attention seems to have been initially taken by the Hampshire by-election in December 1709, a vacancy caused by Henry Bentinck, Viscount Woodstock, succeeding his father as 2nd earl of Portland on 23 November. Trelawny was much courted for his interest for Thomas Jervoise^‡ and both Charles Powlett, 2nd duke of Bolton and his brother Lord William Powlett^‡, sought Godolphin’s assistance in ensuring that Trelawny supported Jervoise. Hants RO, Jervoise mss, 44M69/08. His absence thereafter may have been connected to the prosecution of Dr Henry Sacheverell. The chaplain of St Saviour’s, Southwark, within Trelawny’s diocese, Sacheverell’s inflammatory sermon was preached before the lord mayor, and therefore outside Trelawny’s jurisdiction. Trelawny’s views made it anyway unlikely that Sacheverell would be prosecuted by his diocesan, so a parliamentary impeachment was instituted. Holmes, Trial of Doctor Sacheverell, 82. Ironically, this was moved for in the Commons by John Dolben, the Member for Liskeard, and as such beholden to a large extent to the bishop for his election. On 21 Dec. 1709 Dr William Stratford reported that Trelawny ‘storms at Jack Dolben’, whom he had asked not to involve himself in the prosecution. Dolben had opened the debate against Sacheverell in the Commons on 13 Dec. and had excused himself to the bishop on account of his obligations to ‘great men’. Trelawny told him that he would not use his interest again to bring Dolben into the Commons. HMC Portland, iv. 531. Trelawny did step in to prevent a ‘firebrand’ sermon by one of Sacheverell’s acolytes, threatening to appoint his own preachers if Sacheverell refused to toe the line. Lansd. 1024, f. 201; Holmes, Trial of Doctor Sacheverell, 96-97. Having petitioned the House on 26 Jan. 1710, for a bill to enclose 500 acres of Ropley Commons in the Hampshire manor of Bishop’s Sutton, leave for this measure was granted on 23 Feb., and it received the royal assent at the end of the session. Trelawny missed watching its progression through the House, having taken ‘the excuse of his Lady’s death to withdraw to Farnham’ and left his proxy with Compton, thereby avoiding the Sacheverell trial. Add. 72494, ff. 157-8; State Trial of Sacheverell ed. Cowan, 267. His name is recorded on one division list on the guilt of Sacheverell on 20 Mar., as being ‘in the country.’ On 3 Apr. Rev. Ralph Bridges reported that although Trelawny ‘went down to Farnham to bury his wife’, as soon as the trial was over he returned to Chelsea: ‘but the dean of Carlisle [Atterbury] tells us how he caused rejoicings to be made at Farnham for Sacheverell’s escape and how much he is his friend’. Add. 72495, f. 1.

The Harley ministry

Trelawny attended the House on three occasions on 4 and 18 July and 1 Aug. 1710 for prorogations. Shortly after the last came the dismissal of Godolphin and the institution of a new ministry under Harley’s leadership; Parliament was eventually dissolved on 21 Sept. allowing a long-anticipated election campaign to begin in earnest. During August, Trelawny had been included on the freeman roll in Winchester and ‘strenuously promoted the Whig interest in Surrey and Hampshire’. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 253-6; Longleat, Bath mss Thynne pprs. 47, ff. 33-4. Agreeing to direct the Surrey clergy in the county election, he produced a notice to be nailed to all church doors to the effect that the Whig Sir Richard Onslow^‡, 3rd bt. was ‘a man of great honour, and affection to our happy constitution’ and duly commended Onslow and Sir Francis Vincent^‡, 5th bt. to the electorate. According to Heneage Finch, Baron Guernsey, the bishop ‘does all he can for Sir Richard Onslow: but I hear he gains but few or none’, and Onslow was duly defeated. Bodl. Ballard 9, ff. 69-72; Leics. RO, DG7, box 4950, bdle 23, letter E20. Harley was informed that Trelawny intended to set out for Cornwall on 21 Aug., where he was expected to oppose the new ministry’s candidates. Add. 70204, A. Pendarves to Harley, 20 Aug. 1710. The Trelawny interest was compromised, though, by the dismissal of Godolphin as lord lieutenant and his replacement by Rochester during the minority of the earl of Bath. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 68-72. Self-interest might have dictated that Trelawny dispense at this point with the electoral pact with the duumvirs; instead he campaigned in his own boroughs as though Godolphin were still in post, to the dismay of the highfliers. Smith, Fighting Joshua, 107. At East Looe, he was already obliged ‘by a very considerable debt’ to find a seat for Sir Henry Seymour, despite their political differences, but he also returned Thomas Smith^‡, the son of a loyal Godolphin ally. At West Looe, he supported the archetypical Whig and friend of the duchess of Marlborough, Arthur Maynwaring^‡. Verney, ms mic. M636/54, R. Palmer to Ld. Fermanagh, 10 Oct. 1710; HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 858, v. 444-5. The county, however, was beyond his influence; in the grip of Sacheverell fever, the electorate returned Granville and John Trevanion^‡ on a ‘queen ... Church and Sacheverell’ ticket. Smith, Fighting Joshua, 133. Trelawny does not appear to have made his presence felt at the county hustings but at Liskeard, despite evidence that the town was set to ‘revolt’ against ‘the colonel’ (John Trelawny^‡) the Trelawny interest prevailed. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 83-5.

Harley in a list compiled on 3 Oct. 1710 classed Trelawny as likely to oppose the ministry, a suspicion confirmed when, early in November, Trelawny duly discouraged his clergy (without success) from presenting a loyal address to the queen. Longleat, Bath mss Thynne pprs. 47, ff. 71-2. On 27 Nov., he attended the House on the third day of the new Parliament, after which he was present for 36 per cent of sittings. He attended the St Stephen’s dinner at Lambeth where he spoke in ‘private’ with Nicolson, Charles Trimnell, bishop of Norwich and Edmund Gibson^†, the future bishop of London. A meeting of the commissioners for Queen Anne’s Bounty on the 29th ordered that Trelawny’s ‘long arrears’ of tenths were to be paid within 12 months. Nicolson, London Diaries, 525-6.

By early January 1711, the ministerial campaign against the previous government’s conduct of the war was well underway. As one of the war’s most ardent supporters, Trelawny voted consistently with the opposition during the Lords’ post-mortem on the conduct of the campaign in Spain. On 9 Jan., he was one of nine bishops that voted against the motion that Charles Mordaunt, 3rd earl of Peterborough, had given a faithful account of the council of war held before the battle of Almanza. On 11 Jan. he signed two protests in support of Henry de Ruvigny, earl of Galway [I], Charles O’Hara, Baron Tyrawley [I], and James Stanhope^†, the future Earl Stanhope. On the 12th he protested against the censure of the previous ministry for approving a military offensive in Spain. Clavering Corresp. ed. Dickinson (Surtees Soc. clxxviii), 108. On 3 Feb. he signed two further protests against resolutions blaming the previous administration for neglecting the campaign, and two more on the 8th, on the retention in the proposed representation to the queen on the war of the heavily loaded statement that ‘vast sums of money’ had been given by Parliament for the war, and then on the vote to present the representation. He was the only person to sign the protests of 3 and 8 Feb. who also signed the protest on 5 Feb. 1711 against rejection of the bill to repeal the Whiggish Naturalization Act.

On 21 Feb. 1711 Trelawny was named to the Convocation quorum of Tory bishops that overtly undermined the authority of archbishop Tenison, although he was a more senior bishop than some of the other nominees. Sykes, William Wake, i. 129; Recs. of Convocation, ed. Bray, x. 65-67. Far from comfortable at what was in effect a defence of highflying ecclesiastical politics, he absented himself from Convocation on the 23rd, and aware that he would be ‘called on to assert the queen’s power of that nomination’ he resorted to legal precedent and asked Wake to provide examples of an archbishop appointing a president during his absence. Wake mss 17, f. 271.

On 1 Mar. 1711, a supporter of toleration for Scottish Episcopalians, Trelawny attended the House for the debate on Greenshields’ appeal. Following a lengthy debate, it seems that he and Talbot were among the minority voting in favour of an adjournment to the following day. However, on the main question of reversing the judgment against Greenshields, he joined all the bishops in favour. NAS, GD 124/15/1020/13; NLS, Wodrow pprs. Advocates’ mss, Wodrow Letters, Quarto. V, f. 148; Nicolson, London Diaries, 553. Trelawny remained on good terms with Marlborough, asking him in March to ‘receive’ one of his sons who was about to embark on a foreign tour, as he had ‘done the rest of my family’. Add. 61368, ff. 25-26. On 2 Apr. he hosted a dinner at Chelsea for Bishops Trimnell and Nicolson, Dean Blackburne of Exeter, Dean Kennett of Peterborough and Archdeacon Gibson, who were ‘nobly entertained as friends to the old establishment and ministry’. Nicolson, London Diaries, 566. Trelawny attended the House for the prorogation on 12 June 1711 and returned to his diocese.

During the summer of 1711, Trelawny entered yet another dispute over his rights of visitation, this time with Winchester College. The lord keeper, Simon Harcourt, Baron Harcourt, found in Trelawny’s favour. Trelawny Pprs, 21-23; Wake mss 17, ff. 279-80; Longleat, Bath mss Thynne pprs. 47, ff. 297-8. Trelawny was back in London by 13 Nov. for the brief prorogation two weeks before the opening of the 1711-12 session. His name appears on one of Oxford’s (as Harley had now become) calculations of about December, possibly of supporters for the opening of the session. On 7 Dec. he was present for the first day of the new session, after which he attended 40 per cent of all sittings. He voted for the addition of the ‘No Peace without Spain’ clause to the Address, and his name appeared on Oxford’s list of 10 Dec. of office-holders and pensioners who did so. He was marked (albeit with a query) on 19 Dec. as an opponent of the ministry in the Hamilton peerage division and on the 20th duly voted that Scottish peers could not sit in the House by virtue of a British title created after the Union.

Following the creation of 12 new peers over the Christmas recess to help buttress the Oxford ministry, Trelawny voted against the adjournment of 2 Jan. 1712. C. Jones, ‘Party Rage and Faction’, BLJ, xix. 159. On the 5th he hosted a party of opposition bishops at his Chelsea home, consisting of Bishops Nicolson, Burnet, Moore, Talbot, Trimnell, William Fleetwood, bishop of St Asaph, John Hough^*[2075], bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, and John Evans, bishop of Bangor. Nicolson, London Diaries, 576. Trelawny’s opposition to the ministry was reflected in his proxy-giving. On 9 May he registered his proxy in favour of Bishop Moore (vacated 20 May). On the 27th he again registered his proxy, this time in favour of Richard Cumberland, bishop of Peterborough (vacated on 2 June) and in turn, received Cumberland’s proxy on 4 June.

By the time Trelawny attended the adjournment of the session on 21 June 1712 the Tory ministry had weathered the storm in the Lords over the conclusion of peace, and there were signs that with the treaty agreed, Trelawny might be more amenable to the ministry’s blandishments. Dean Atterbury was one point of contact with Oxford (as Harley had now become). On 19 June Atterbury forwarded to Oxford a letter from Trelawny, in which the bishop had asked whether he might approach Oxford directly at the House regarding his application for an ecclesiastical preferment in his diocese. As Atterbury explained, ‘if it be favoured, [Trelawny] will certainly go on, till he is entirely our lordship’s servant. He has ... invited the Speaker [William Bromley^‡] to dine with him ... and is every day more and more changing both his language and his company’. On the 25th, Atterbury again reported to Oxford that Trelawny was very content with Oxford’s ‘kind manner of treating him’ in the matter of the preferment. It was also clear that Trelawny’s plan to transfer the management of his Cornish estates to his son, John Trelawny^‡ (later 4th bt.), when he returned from abroad, would affect the family’s electoral interest, an even more tempting morsel. HMC Portland, v. 184, 193; Smith, Fighting Joshua, 170-1. Trelawny remained in London, attending the House for the prorogations on 8 and 30 July. The death of Godolphin on 15 Sept. 1712 and the subsequent decision of Marlborough to remove to the continent could only weaken Trelawny’s ties to the opposition led by the Junto.

Despite Trelawny’s overtures, Oxford knew that he would need to be cultivated. His name appears on Oxford’s list of 26 Feb. 1713 of Lords he intended to contact or canvas before the next session. On Swift’s list of March-April 1713, amended by Oxford, Trelawny was still expected to oppose the ministry. Whilst ensconced in Cornwall at the end of February he wrote to Wake that ‘I can’t stir till the West Looe election is over, unless I resolve to abdicate the town now and on another occasion, which can’t be far off’, that is the general election due later that year. He hoped to be at Westminster at Easter and at Chelsea the week after; until then he hoped that the bishop of Ely would use his proxy to anything offered against the pretender. Exercised by the threat of the pretender and of the Catholics generally, he drew parallels with 1688, when the bishops

addressed in defence of our laws when King James had broke in upon [them] to make the quicker way for Popery which he was (and God be thanked that he was so) in haste to establish. I hope we shan’t address against a mischievous peace for ... that being the sacred prerogative of the crown its royal mount, we can’t touch it without being sure to die as Whigs and not as guardians of our religion. Wake mss 17, ff. 349-50.

Trelawny continued this theme in another missive to Wake on 3 Mar. 1713, advocating a:

humble and dutiful address to the queen for her authority on such measures as she shall think fit to take for her own safety and the interest of religion, both in such apparent danger by the troops of priests as the vanguard to him whom our laws, our oaths, our Church’s interest and the queen’s safety forbid ... we have of late been thought to be no better than dumb dogs by very good men, afraid to bark least we should unpardonably offend at home as well surely as provoke abroad ... I am now of an opinion ... that the address might meet the opening of the session and awaken those Members who have hitherto slumbered over the nation’s necessary way and means for the better security against popery ... At least ’twill let the nation see at one view that their bishops are not blind or afraid to appear when anything offers of weight enough to challenge their care, courage and integrity. I hope the address has been shown to all the bishops in town, and sent to those who are out of it ... to bear some act of their double, telling us they would have come with heart and hand to subscribe and attend had they known it while at the same time they whisper others they know and rejected it with scorn as pressed only by a parcel of Whiggish bishops to make the queen uneasy and her ministers odious, and on that calumny ’twill rest unless it has the assent and consent of the Church of England bishops ... For my part I have hardly had a quiet night, or a cheerful day, since by the advance of the peace to a certain party’s liking. I can’t but fear the pretender is next oars, if … the coffin is bespoke for the queen. For popery is always in haste to kill when they are sure of taking possession. Ibid. ff. 351-2.

Several months later, the House would divide (in Trelawny’s presence) on 30 June 1713 on an address in defence of the Protestant religion and the Hanoverian Succession which asked for the removal of the pretender from Lorraine.

Oxford meanwhile had attempted to secure Trelawny’s support, not least in the West Looe by-election, although Oxford’s employment of Lansdown as a mediator was unlikely to be very effective. Indeed the approach elicited one of Trelawny’s most vociferous rejections of a pact with the ministry if it entailed betrayal of Marlborough and Godolphin, particularly the latter: ‘for whose memory he must ever have all imaginable honour, and thinks himself obliged to express it in the best services he can to his family’. He was grateful, he said, for

the obliging overture of endeavouring to establish a friendship between my lord treasurer and him ... that he knows of nothing personal which he has done ... to make it otherwise, unless the friendship which he owes to the duke of Marlborough and the earl Godolphin be so understood which, if it be so, will in that respect make him very unhappy, since he can never allow himself to depart from it, as thinking the man, who can desert his friend in the day of adversity, not worthy the friendship or regard of any man of honour. HMC Portland, v. 279.

He returned his son, John Trelawny, now of age, at the by-election.

Trelawny first attended the House on 20 May 1713, six weeks after the start of the session. He attended for less than a quarter of all sittings. With the ministry under pressure from the opposition over the malt tax, on 4 June George Clarke promised Oxford that he would wait upon Trelawny ‘tomorrow morning, tho’ I cannot but hope there is no occasion to desire him not to join in so very ill a design.’ As it happened, on the 5th, Trelawny’s presence and vote was crucial in securing a second reading for the bill, which was carried by two votes, Ralph Wingate noting Trelawny’s vote specifically as one of two ‘who never gave them a vote since the change of the ministry’, as did Thomas Rowney^‡ who wrote that Trelawny, George Booth, 2nd earl of Warrington, and John Carteret, 2nd Baron Carteret were ‘come into the bill on the malt’. Add. 70279, ?G. Clarke to [Oxford], 4 June 1713; Bodl. Carte 211, ff. 135-6, Ballard 38, f. 194. About 13 June Oxford estimated that Trelawny would support the bill confirming the eighth and ninth articles of the French commercial treaty. On 5 July Trelawny went to the ‘bishops’ room by the House of Lords’ with Moore, Trimnell, Atterbury and Adam Ottley, bishop of St Davids, before travelling on the archbishop’s barge to Lambeth for Atterbury’s consecration as bishop of Rochester. SCLA, DR 671/89, diary 2, p. 26. He was present on the last day of the session, 16 July.

On 27 July 1713 Atterbury informed Oxford that Trelawny would ‘be glad of [an] opportunity of waiting on your lordship before he leaves Chelsea’, hinting at the bishop’s expected support in the ensuing elections. Bennett, Tory Crisis, 171-2; Add. 70031, f. 47. Harcourt also informed Oxford that Trelawny ‘expresses daily a great respect for your lordship, and an inclination to wait on you’ but that Oxford alone knew ‘of what use he may be, and whether it be not fit to lay hold on this occasion’. Add. 70230, Harcourt to Oxford, 6 Aug. 1713. Trelawny, true to form, was eager to ensure that his personal interest in Cornwall was respected and Oxford subsequently directed that Trelawny ‘should meet with no opposition at East Looe’; the Tory John Friend, who had been making an interest, obediently withdrew his challenge. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 85-87. On 11 Sept. Trelawny informed Oxford that he had followed the latter’s instructions and returned the Tory lawyer Edward Jennings^‡, ‘pleased to have an opportunity to remember to your lordship the great favour of your assisting me in obtaining the see of Winchester’. Add. 70031, f. 121; HMC Portland, v. 329. The West Looe electorate obeyed more traditional local patterns and returned John Trelawny together with a family friend, Sir Charles Wager^‡, but the county election reflected Trelawny’s deal with Oxford. On 16 Sept. John Trevanion^‡ and Sir William Carew^‡, 5th bt. were returned despite Boscawen’s Whig challenge. Trelawny had come full circle in helping to secure an overwhelming victory for the Tories in his native Cornwall. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 71, 88; HP Commons, 1715-54, ii. 479.

Trelawny attended the Lords on 16 Feb. 1714 for the opening of Parliament and attended its first session for 48 per cent of sittings. In spite of the electoral arrangement with Oxford he followed a typically independent line. Along with the Hanoverian whimsicals, he voted with the opposition on 5 Apr. in the division over the danger to the Protestant succession and again on the 13th, after the Lords considered the queen’s reply to the address on the pretender. N. Sykes, ‘Queen Anne and the Episcopate’, EHR, l. 463-4. Even Nottingham found it hard to predict Trelawny’s parliamentary behaviour and at the end of May of beginning of June he thought Trelawny ‘doubtful’ over the schism bill. Yet Trelawny was again loyal to his own Tory ecclesiastical values and on 11 June supported an extension of the measure to Ireland. Nicolson, London Diaries, 612. On 15 June, with the Lords set to vote on the third reading, Trelawny registered his proxy in favour of Atterbury, ensuring that it would be used to support the bill. His proxy was vacated on his return on the 23rd and he continued to attend the House until 8 July, the day before the prorogation. On 30 June he hosted a dinner attended by Atterbury and Rev. Henry Brydges. SCLA, DR 671/89, p. 24. He travelled back to Hampshire and conducted a visitation, but Queen Anne’s death necessitated his return to Westminster for the brief session that met in the wake of her death. Articles of Visitation … at the Visitation of the Diocess of Winchester, by … Jonathan, Lord Bishop of Winchester, 1714 (1714). He attended nine sittings of the 15-day session.

Faced with a change of dynasty, it was entirely in keeping with Trelawny’s political pragmatism that he should now support the new ministry. HP Commons, 1690-1715, ii. 68-72. His actions in the campaign for the new Parliament certainly disappointed Tories like Carte, who observed that Trelawny’s

conduct has never been very uniform but now it is more unaccountable than ever. To be so voluntarily warm for the [Tories] in Oxfordshire and yet to choose for [Whigs] ... in Cornwall, to make interest publicly for his son and thereby oppose two very honest gents who now serve for this county, and to set up that very son in opposition to two other [Tories] at Liskeard is what I can’t well reconcile and yet it is undoubtedly fact. Ballard 18, ff. 71-72.

Trelawny died suddenly at Chelsea in the early hours of 19 July 1721, from a ‘fast and violent’ abdominal pain that suggested a ‘twisting of the guts’ and a rupture. Add. 61612, f. 197; Wake mss 22, ff. 43-44. He was buried on 10 Aug. at Pelynt following his body’s removal from Chelsea with predictable show. According to one newspaper, paraded before his hearse were ‘the trophies and honours belonging to his quality and office… crown and cushion, mitre and crozier, great banner and bannerals’. Oxford DNB; Daily Post, 3 Aug. 1721. No will was found in either his Chelsea home or at Farnham palace and the bishop died intestate. Wake mss 22, f. 44. Administration of his estate was later granted to his heir, who succeeded as 4th baronet. Trelawny’s notorious spending habits meant that the estate was indebted to the tune of £16,000. Oxford DNB. The winding up of his estate required a private act of Parliament. PA, HL/PO/JP/10/3/218/2. Trelawny left a large family. In 1711 he had forbidden a love match between one of his daughters and his nephew ‘Captain’ Harry Trelawny, threatening Trelawny ‘as one pretending boldly and wickedly too to rob me of my daughter, so dear as she has been to me, and must expect to be treated as such with the deepest and justest resentments’. Unusually, Trelawny was forced to back down five years later. HP Commons, 1690-1715, v. 672. He also had no qualms about marrying off his daughters against their wishes (as in the case of his daughter Rebecca to John Francis Buller^‡) for personal gain. Smith, Fighting Joshua, 135. His fourth son Edward Trelawny^‡ became governor of Jamaica. HP Commons 1715-54, ii. 479.

Even Trelawny’s contemporaries recognized that he was no ordinary bishop; he was satirized in an anticlerical poem as a ‘Fighting Joshua’ who spilled blood for the king in 1685 only to turn rebel himself three years later. Tutchin, Tribe of Levi, 11. An equally jaundiced observer found Trelawny an ‘illiterate, mean, silly, trifling and impertinent fellow’, guilty of ‘a great many more’ bad services to the Church than good ones. Hearne, Remarks and Collections, i. 315, ii. 94. One coherent theme to his career was a determined opposition to popery, and it was fear of this that coloured his attitude to such diverse matters as James II’s policies and to the Oxford ministry’s foreign policy. Trelawny’s parliamentary career was not marked by high levels of attendance. In the 30 sessions held between 1685 and 1715, he attended all but six but rarely for more than a half of all sittings; he attended eight for less than a third of the time. Named to some 250 select committees in the course of his parliamentary career up to 1715, he reported from select committees on 14 occasions. Much has been made of Trelawny’s transition from Tory to ‘Church Whig’ after 1710, although the key determinant of his political allegiance in Anne’s reign appears to have been his friendship with Godolphin. Only after Godolphin’s death in 1712 did he begin to lean back towards the Tories, but fear of the Pretender ensured that he remained pro-Hanoverian in 1714-15.