The Vyvyans, one of Cornwall’s oldest families, improbably located their origins in the fabled Arthurian land of Lyonesse, off Land’s End. In the mid-thirteenth century they held property in St. Buryan parish in the far west of Cornwall, while their manor of Trelowarren was acquired through marriage some 200 years later. The medieval Vyvyans were frequently brigands and pirates; their Tudor descendants embraced respectability and local office. In the mid-sixteenth century another advantageous marriage brought them substantial estates in Devon. When he died in 1610, Vyvyan’s father Hannibal owned land in nearly 30 Cornish parishes, besides the Devon property and three Somerset manors. Active in local administration, in 1602 he combined the posts of captain of St. Mawes Castle, vice-admiral of South Cornwall, sheriff, and attorney-general of the duchy of Cornwall.
Vyvyan took over the captaincy of St. Mawes in 1603, and in the following year entered Parliament. His father had twice represented Helston, the borough nearest to Trelowarren, but in 1604 both Helston and Penryn, the next closest constituency, were controlled by Sir William Killigrew I*. Instead, Vyvyan found a place at Fowey, undoubtedly through the Rashleigh family, into which he married two years later. Though he left virtually no trace on the Parliament’s records, as a Fowey burgess he was entitled to sit on 32 legislative committees during the course of the first three sessions. Those which are likely to have interested him the most dealt with the maintenance of the navy (10 May 1604) and, in view of his recent appointment as vice-admiral of South Cornwall, mariners (1 May 1607).
Vyvyan took his father’s place as a Cornish j.p. and in February 1612 added the duchy of Cornwall’s maritime jurisdiction to his existing responsibilities as vice-admiral. However, by November of that year he had fallen foul of the growing clamour in the West Country for effective anti-piracy measures. Like the former vice-admiral of Devon, Sir Richard Hawkins*, who had been sacked three years earlier, he was accused of harbouring and assisting pirates, and dismissed from his Admiralty post. He was pardoned, but not reinstated, in the following year. It is a measure of his local standing, or of a lack of government resolve, that, apart from his place on the Cornish piracy commission, Vyvyan retained all his other offices.
Vyvyan was pricked as sheriff in 1617, and in December 1618 applied for reappointment as vice-admiral. Although he was turned down, he received a knighthood shortly afterwards.
The final drama of Vyvyan’s tumultuous public career now unfolded. In about 1628 the garrison of St. Mawes Castle had begun stopping ships in Falmouth Bay, thereby usurping a right previously exercised only by Pendennis Castle on the cliffs opposite. Pendennis was controlled by the Killigrew family, who complained to London, but Vyvyan ignored the Admiralty’s orders to desist. During 1631 Sir William Killigrew II* raised the issue with the king, but by now attention was shifting to Vyvyan’s general conduct at St. Mawes.
Vyvyan made his will in July 1633. Its lengthy religious preamble expressing supreme certainty of salvation repeated almost exactly the formula used by his father 25 years earlier. Bequests included sums of £1,000 each to Vyvyan’s two daughters, and £500 to his second son Robert, a London apprentice, ‘because money is more fitter for merchants than land’. A terse codicil drafted after the final loss of the St. Mawes captaincy cancelled charitable bequests to the town and its local parish.