Tregony (UK Parliament constituency)

Tregony
Former Borough constituency for the House of Commons
1562–1832
Number of members	Two

Tregony was a rotten borough in Cornwall which was represented in the Model Parliament of 1295, and returned two Members of Parliament to the English and later British Parliament continuously from 1562^[1] to 1832, when it was abolished by the Great Reform Act.

History

The borough consisted of the town of Tregony. Like most of the Cornish boroughs enfranchised or re-enfranchised during the Tudor period, it was a settlement of little importance or wealth even to begin with, and was not incorporated as a municipal borough until sixty years after it began to return members to Parliament in 1563.

Tregony was a potwalloper borough, meaning that every (male) householder with a separate fireplace on which a pot could be boiled was entitled to vote. The apparently democratic nature of this arrangement was a delusion in a borough as small and poor as Tregony, where the residents could not afford to defy their landlord and, indeed, regarded their vote as a means of income. Many of the houses in the borough were built purely for political purposes, and the borough itself was bought and sold for its political value on numerous occasions. In the 1760s, Viscount Falmouth (head of the Boscawen family) controlled the nomination to one of the two seats and William Trevanion the other; later the Earl of Darlington controlled both seats, together with others in Cornwall, but by the time of the Great Reform Act the patronage had been transferred again, to James Adam Gordon.

In 1831, the borough had a population of 1,127, and 234 houses. Nevertheless, because of the wide franchise it had a comparatively large electorate for the time, between 260 and 300 voters.

Members of Parliament

MPs 1559–1629

Parliament	First member	Second member
Parliament of 1558/9	Peter Osborne	Adrian Poynings
Parliament of 1563–1567	Edward Ameredith	Giles Laurence
Parliament of 1571	Sir Edward Hastings	Robert Dormer
Parliament of 1572–1581	William Knollys	Peter Wentworth
Parliament of 1584–1585	Sir John St Leger	Richard Grafton
Parliament of 1586–1587	Richard Trevanion	Oliver Carminowe
Parliament of 1588–1589	Richard Penkevill	Christopher Walker
Parliament of 1593	John Snow	Arnold Oldisworth
Parliament of 1597–1598	Sir Edward Denny	Henry Birde
Parliament of 1601	Lewis Darte	Thomas Trevor
Parliament of 1604–1611	Henry Pomeroy	Richard Garveigh
Addled Parliament (1614)	William Hakewill	Thomas Malet
Parliament of 1621–1622
Happy Parliament (1624–1625)	Peter Specott	Ambrose Manaton
Useless Parliament (1625)	Sir Henry Carey	Sebastian Goode
Parliament of 1625–1626	Thomas Carey	Sir Robert Killigrew
Parliament of 1628–1629	Francis Rous	Sir John Arundell
No Parliament summoned 1629–1640

MPs 1640–1832

Year		First member	First party		Second member	Second party
April 1640 [2]		John St Aubyn			Sir John Arundell
November 1640		Sir Richard Vyvyan	Royalist		John Polwhele	Royalist
January 1644	Vyvyan and Polwhele disabled from sitting - both seats vacant
1647		John Carew			Sir Thomas Trevor
December 1648				Trevor excluded in Pride's Purge - seat vacant
1653	Tregony was unrepresented in the Barebones Parliament and the First and Second Parliaments of the Protectorate
January 1659		John Thomas			Edward Boscawen
May 1659	Not represented in the restored Rump
April 1660		Sir John Temple			Edward Boscawen [3]
October 1660					Sir Peter Courtney
1661		Hugh Boscawen			Thomas Herle
February 1679					Robert Boscawen
April 1679					John Tanner
August 1679					Charles Trevanion
1685		Charles Porter
January 1689		Charles Boscawen			Hugh Fortescue
April 1689		Robert Harley	Whig
1690		Sir John Tremayne	Whig
1694		The Earl of Kildare
1695		Francis Robartes			James Montagu
1698					Philip Meadowes
1701					Hugh Fortescue
1702		Hugh Boscawen	Whig		Joseph Sawle
1705		John Trevanion [4]			Sir Philip Meadowes
1708		Anthony Nicoll			Thomas Herne
October 1710		Viscount Rialton			John Trevanion
December 1710					George Robinson
April 1713		Edward Southwell
September 1713		Sir Edmund Prideaux			James Craggs
1720		Charles Talbot
March 1721					Daniel Pulteney	Whig
November 1721					John Merrill
1722		James Cooke
1727		Thomas Smith			John Goddard
1729		Matthew Ducie Moreton
1734		Henry Penton
February 1737					Sir Robert Cowan
March 1737					Joseph Gulston
1741					Thomas Watts
1742					George Cooke
1747		William Trevanion[5]			Claudius Amyand
1754					John Fuller
1761					Abraham Hume
1767		Thomas Pownall
1768					Hon. John Grey
1774		Hon. George Lane Parker			Alexander Leith[6]
1780		John Stephenson			John Dawes
1784		Lloyd Kenyon[7]			Robert Kingsmill
1788		Hon. Hugh Seymour Conway
1790		John Stephenson			Matthew Montagu
1794		Hon. Robert Stewart	Whig
1796		Sir Lionel Copley			John Nicholls
1802		Marquess of Blandford	Tory		Charles Cockerell
1804		George Woodford Thellusson	Tory
1806		Godfrey Wentworth Wentworth	Whig		James O'Callaghan	Whig
1808		William Gore-Langton	Whig
1812		Alexander Cray Grant	Tory		William Holmes	Tory
1818		Viscount Barnard	Whig		James O'Callaghan	Whig
1826[8]		Stephen Lushington	Whig		James Brougham	Whig
1830		James Adam Gordon	Tory		James Mackillop	Tory
1831		Lt Colonel Charles Arbuthnot	Tory
1832		James Adam Gordon	Tory
1832	Constituency abolished

Notes

1. The writs for election were issued in 1562, so the constituency can be considered as having been established in that year, although Parliament did not meet until 12 January 1562/3, and is therefore generally called the Parliament of 1563 in New Style reckoning
2. Browne Willis lists Nicholas Borlace and Charles Trevanion as Members, but this is contradicted by other sources.
3. Boscawen was also elected for Truro, which he chose to represent, and did not sit again for Tregony.
4. This John Trevanion was NOT John Trevanion, the Civil War hero, who died in 1643.
5. William Trevanion died 1767 according to 'General history: Gentry', Magna Britannia: volume 3: Cornwall (1814), pp. XCVIII-CXVIII. Date accessed: 21 May 2008.
6. Created a baronet as Sir Alexander Leith, November 1775.
7. Created a baronet as Sir Lloyd Kenyon, July 1784.
8. At the 1826 election the Returning Officer made a double return, naming Lushington and Brougham, who had received the most votes, but also the two Tory candidates, James Adam Gordon and James Mackillop. The Committee decided that Lushington and Brougham had been duly elected.

References

• D Brunton & D H Pennington, Members of the Long Parliament (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954)
• Cobbett's Parliamentary history of England, from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the year 1803 (London: Thomas Hansard, 1808)
• Lewis Namier, "The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III" (2nd edition - London: St Martin's Press, 1961)
• W D Pink, 'The Parliamentary History of Tregony', The Western Antiquary, Volume VI, Part V (1886), 117-121
• J Holladay Philbin, "Parliamentary Representation 1832 - England and Wales" (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965)
• Henry Stooks Smith, "The Parliaments of England from 1715 to 1847" (2nd edition, edited by FWS Craig - Chichester: Parliamentary Reference Publications, 1973)
• Willis, Browne (1750). Notitia Parliamentaria, Part II: A Series or Lists of the Representatives in the several Parliaments held from the Reformation 1541, to the Restoration 1660 ... London. p. 1.
• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "T" (part 2)