Callington had never been formally incorporated. The manor was owned by the Rolles of Heanton Satchville. At the court leet held by their steward, new freemen were admitted to exercise the franchise, and a mayor, who acted as returning officer, was elected annually. The Rolles were not resident in the neighbourhood at this period, and their interest was often successfully challenged by a local family, the Corytons of Newton Ferrers.Gilbert, Paroch. Hist. Cornw. i. 168.
The full name of this constituency was Bossiney, Trevenna and Tintagel; rather confusingly, the charter under which the franchise was claimed had been granted to the last of these communities, and for municipal purposes the borough continued to be known as Tintagel, though decay was so far advanced that the corporation had few functions except at elections. The dominant interest had been inherited from the Henders by the Robartes family of Lanhydrock, apart from Botreaux Castle, which went to an Exeter family, the Cottons.
One seat at Bodmin was controlled throughout the period by the Robartes family, who resided at Lanhydrock, two-and-a-half miles away, and owned considerable property in the town; the other was usually at the disposal of the corporation, consisting of 12 aldermen and 24 common councilmen. Patron and electorate were moderate Presbyterians in 1660 and 1661; but the choice of Nicholas Glyn of Cardinham at every subsequent election suggests that the evolution of the younger generation of the Robartes family towards the Tory and Anglican position was followed in the corporation.J.
For centuries the lordship of Tregony had belonged to the Pomeroys, a Devon family. Hugh Pomeroy died in 1565 and was succeeded by an 11 year-old son, also Hugh, who became the ward of a local gentleman. Other neighbouring families included the Penkevells, who were later to acquire Tregony by marriage, and the Trevanions.Vis. Devon, ed. Vivian, 607; Vis. Cornw. (Harl. Soc. ix), 177, 240; CPR, 1558-60, p. 272; Wards 9/138, f.
Truro, a stannary town, was one of the more prosperous parliamentary boroughs in Cornwall. In 1589, when a charter of incorporation was received, government was vested in the mayor and 24 capital burgesses, four of whom were to be aldermen. Parliamentary election appears always to have been made by the mayor and burgesses.G. R. Lewis, The Stannaries, 126; Weinbaum, Charters, 18.
It is not known how St. Mawes came to return Members for the 1563 Parliament. Oliver Carminowe and Edmund Sexton, along with MPs from five other boroughs, were requested (22 Jan. 1563) to produce letters patent justifying their presence in the House. Whether they did or not is unknown.SP 12/27 no. 23; CJ, i. 63. Possibly the 2nd Earl of Bedford had a hand in the matter. He was certainly behind the return of Oliver Carminowe, one of his servants, to the 1563 Parliament.
Quite how St. Germans came to send MPs to Parliament has not been ascertained. A small market town, once the seat of the diocese of Cornwall, it had come into the hands of John Eliot, who in 1577 was succeeded as lord of the manor by his nephew Richard. The borough was not incorporated and its portreeve had a hand in choosing the Members. This official, appointed from the local family of Kekewick, was chosen annually at the court leet.
‘Of mean plight’, St. Ives was governed in this period by a portreeve and 12 other councilmen. The portreeve was chosen by a wider body of 24 burgesses. First enfranchised in 1558, probably through the agency of the 2nd Earl of Bedford, St. Ives, until the last Parliament of the reign, returned only outsiders, with the sole exception of John Newman (1571), and he, though resident in the borough, was a local official who may have owed his return to a patron. Bedford was responsible for the return of (at least) both the 1559 Members, one in 1572 (Thomas Randolph) and John Harington I (1563).
The borough of Penryn, together with the manor of Penryn Foreign, belonged to the bishops of Exeter. The leading family of the district, the Killigrews of Arwennack, had a lease of Penryn Foreign and a disputed lease of the fee farm of the borough. There was a portreeve and burgesses, but the borough was not incorporated until the reign of James I. Judging by the surviving Elizabethan returns, elections were conducted by the portreeve, in the presence of up to a dozen burgesses.
Lostwithiel was the administrative centre of the duchy of Cornwall. Its privileges were confirmed in 1565 and a charter of incorporation granted in 1608. William Kendall (1571) was the only known Elizabethan MP who was a local man.
