Returned for East Looe on the Trelawny interest, Trelawny was given a job in the victualling office. He spoke on the Government’s side in a debate on supply on 21 Feb. 1727, but voted against the Administration on the civil list arrears in 1729, the Hessians in 1730, and the army in 1732, writing subsequently that he would not be thought of ‘as a party man, which I think I am as little as any one, perhaps too little to please any one’.
The elections, you know, are void of course upon account of my place. If Sir Charles does not get me out before a new election can be made, I can’t receive the benefit of the Looers’ favour so voluntarily bestowed on the mad volunteer: but I have left everything to Sir Charles Wager and whether I am to be senator, commissioner, or neither, I shall be easy under his decision and management.
Add. 32791, f. 202.
Both elections were declared void. In November 1735 his elder brother, Sir John, being deeply in debt, Edward gave £5,000 of his own money to pay the creditors, Wager putting up the rest of the sum required by way of mortgage, on the security of Trelawne and other Cornish estates, including the properties at East and West Looe, which were made over to Edward.
Trelawny took part in the campaign in the West Indies with Admiral Vernon, to whom Pulteney wrote (27 Mar. 1740):
Pray make my compliments to Mr. Trelawny: when I consider how my country has been used for many years, and what a poor figure she has made, it is the greatest joy to me to consider that her honour will be retrieved and her trade restored, by the union of two such worthy men as he and you, similar in your characters, for honour, bravery and disinterestedness.
In the summer of 1742, he had a violent quarrel with Sir Chaloner Ogle, during which Vernon reported, he ‘drew his sword, turned as pale as the wall with rage, and looked as wild as a madman’.