TREGONAN, Otto (d.1439), of ’Tregonan’, Cornw.

Otto, a Cornishman by birth, was sometimes described as being ‘of Tregonan’, but he also held property in Mayon in the parish of Sennen near Lands End, and farmland at Trethewy and Helligan in central Cornwall.Feudal Aids, i. 220; KB27/571 rot. 43. In his practice as a lawyer he was concerned principally with the local affairs of Cornish landowners, and among his clients were several men of influence in the region. At the parliamentary elections of 1417, when he himself was returned for Bodmin for at least the fifth time, he stood surety for (Sir) John Arundell I of Lanherne who was to represent the shire. His association with Arundell continued for many years: he assisted in legal transactions in aid of Sir John’s foundation of a chantry at St. Columb Major, served as an executor of his will (for which task he was left a bequest of £5), and was present at the completion of a grand daughter’s marriage settlement.C219/12/2; CCR, 1429-35, p. 37; CAD, iv. A10006; Reg. Lacy (Canterbury and York Soc. lxiii), 20-22. Tregonan was also engaged as a feoffee of the estates in Cornwall belonging to the prominent families of Prideaux and Bodrugan, and those in Oxfordshire and the West Country belonging to John Basset, esquire. It was again as a trustee that he made presentations to the churches of Landewednack (in 1429 and 1433) and St. Stephen in Brannel (in 1432). Among his co-feoffees named in a conveyance completed in 1431 was Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick. Otto took on the executorship of the will of Benedict Canterbury, the rector of Camborne, and in 1426 he stood proxy at Clyst at the institution of Canterbury’s successor, his own kinsman, Serle Tregonan. He attended the shire elections held at Lostwithiel in 1423, 1427 and 1433.CCR, 1422-9, pp. 201, 202, 372; Reg. Lacy, 9; ibid. ed. Hingeston-Randolph, i. 87, 121, 149, 157; Cornw. Feet of Fines (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc. 1950), 975, 991; C219/13/2, 5, 14/4.

The name of Tregonan’s wife is not known, but she and her children were included in a licence, granted in 1432 by Bishop Lacy of Exeter, enabling him to have his own oratory in any suitable place in Cornwall. Although he had sat on the bench for no more than seven years, his service on other kinds of royal commissions and ultimately in the office of coroner, extended over almost a quarter of a century. He died, while holding the coronership, shortly before 17 Mar. 1439.Reg. Lacy (Canterbury and York Soc. lx), 241; CCR, 1435-41, p. 201.