[Office] MP Bodmin, Bodmin, Cornwall

Bodmin, a stannary town whose Saturday

market was described by Leland as ‘like a fair for the confluence of

people’, but which was included in the Act of 1540 for the

re-edification of towns westward (32 Hen. VIII, c.19), had returned

Members to the Parliament of 1295. Until the dissolution of Bodmin

priory in September 1538 the prior was lord of the borough; successive

medieval charters were granted to the prior, convent and ‘their’

burgesses, but the mayor and townsmen often quarrelled with the priors

about their rights. One of these disputes, in 1523, concerned the choice

and payment of Members. The ‘testimonial’ drawn up on 14 April, the day

before the opening of Parliament, stated that burgesses of Bodmin be

the King’s free burgesses, and no man else’s; for at all times that it

shall please the King’s highness to call his court of Parliament that

then the mayor and the burgesses, in the town hall, shall choose two

burgesses for the King’s Parliament of the burgesses of the town, at the

mayor and burgesses’ charge and cost, and thereof no penny at the

prior’s charge; this we ... do know, this hath been used out of time

that no mind is. The term ‘burgesses’ as used here is ambiguous. The

preamble to the charter of incorporation granted in 1563 states that

municipal government had been ‘within time of memory’ by a mayor and 36

burgesses. Whether the division into a Twelve and Twenty-Four laid down

in the charter was in force before 1563 is not known, nor is it certain

whether the ‘burgesses’ said to have elected to Parliament were merely

the governing body or all the freemen. The municipal records for the

period which were scrutinized by John Maclean in the 19th century are no

longer extant.5

Elections

were held on the arrival of a precept from the sheriff of Cornwall.

Five indentures survive for the period, all in Latin and in a uniform

style with the sheriff as the first party and the mayor (named) and the

community of burgesses as the second. Several are headed ‘made at

Bodmin’. The Members, although not all townsmen, are often described as

‘worthy and discreet burgesses of the borough’. In September 1553 the

second name, that of Thomas Mildmay, has been inserted in a different

hand, as have the names of both John Courtenay and Ralph Michell a year

later. On the indenture for 1555, nearly half of which has been torn or

eaten away, the names of both Members have been added, probably in the

original hand but in different ink. No argument for external patronage

can be built on this, since the mayor’s name has been inserted in the

same way.6

Although

the names of the Members returned to six Parliaments between 1510 and

1558 are lost, those of 16 are known for the remaining ten. Of these

Henry Chiverton, John and Gilbert Flamank, Ralph Michell and Thomas

Trott were all either townsmen or property-owners there, while Courtenay

lived in the locality. Neither of the Treffrys possessed any

residential qualification but they had influential kinsmen in the town

in the Luccombe family. Of those with no known links with the town, John

Caplyn and Mildmay presumably owed their return to their official

positions in the duchy. Humphrey Cavell and Ralph Cholmley were

connected with Chiverton, Courtenay or Sir John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford, and Sir Walter Hungerford and John Norris with James Bassett

of Umberleigh in Devon, whose mother had been a Grenville; Cavell was a

Cornishman domiciled some seven miles from the town and Hungerford had

several manors in the county. John Sulyard presumably owed his

replacement of Thomas Prideaux, who of the three boroughs for which he

was returned early in 1554 chose to sit for Newport iuxta Launceston, to

his brother-in-law the Privy Councillor Sir Henry Bedingfield,

probably acting through the agency of the Earl of Bedford. Bodmin may

have been one of the towns which retained the legal services of John

Williams but his return in 1555 was almost certainly the work of the

Edgecombe family, perhaps exercising the patronage of Francis Russell,

2nd Earl of Bedford, during his absence abroad. The 1st Earl could have

played a part in the return of Chiverton and the younger Thomas Treffry

in 1545 as the long postponed election was not held until after his

visit to the town, but the influence which passed to his son the 2nd

Earl was limited, as was that of the duchy. The prior of Bodmin seems to

have had no influence. For the outsiders returned a seat for the town

was usually no more than a step in their parliamentary careers; apart

from Hungerford and Sulyard they sat at other times for Cornish

constituencies.

The money given towards the expenses of John Flamank and Trott in 1515 is the last known trace of wages being paid by the town.