Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 57.djvu/185

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Trelawny
179
Trelawny

the honour of knighthood, and was alive in 1406–7 (8 Henry IV). The son John succeeded to the family estates in Cornwall and was elected M.P. for that county in 1413–14, and again in 1421. In the latter parliament another John Trelawny, possibly his son, sat for Liskeard. Sir John fought at Agincourt, and received from Henry V at Gisors a pension of 20l. a year, which was confirmed by Henry VI. He added to his arms three oak or laurel leaves. Under the figure of Henry V which was formerly over the great gate at Launceston was the inscription:

He that will do ought for me,
Let him love well Sir John Tirlawnee.

Sir John was alive in 1423–4 (2 Henry VI). He married Agnes, daughter of Robert Tregodeck, and left two sons, Richard and John. Richard was M.P. for Liskeard in 1421–2 and 1423–4, and died in 1449, leaving daughters only. Sir Hugh Courtenay, ancestor of Henry, marquis of Exeter, who was attainted under Henry VIII, made a grant of lands, 6 Oct. 1437, to one John Trelawny and his heirs, at a yearly rent of twelve pence and suit to his court twice a year. The beneficiary seems to have been Sir John Trelawny's second son, John, who succeeded to the estates on the death of his elder brother without male issue; he was M.P. for Truro in 1448–9, and was sheriff of Cornwall in 1461–2. He was direct ancestor of Sir Jonathan Trelawny [q. v.]

[Betham's Baronetage of England, i. 324–5; Official Return of Members of Parliament; Burke's Peerage and Baronage; Boase and Courtney's Bibliotheca Cornubiensis, ii. 768; Thirtieth Report of the Deputy-keeper of the Records, 1868–9, App. p. 188.]

J. A. T.

TRELAWNY, Sir JONATHAN (1650–1721), third Baronet, bishop successively of Bristol, Exeter, and Winchester, third son of Sir Jonathan, second baronet, by Mary, daughter of Sir Edward Seymour, second baronet, of Berry Pomeroy, Devonshire, was born at Pelynt, Cornwall, on 24 March 1650 (Cassan, Lives of the Bishops of Winchester, ii. 196). His grandfather, Sir John Trelawny (1592–1665), first baronet, opposed the election of Sir John Eliot to parliament for Cornwall in 1627–8, and was, on that ground, committed to the Tower of London by order of the House of Commons on 13 May 1628. He was released by the king on 26 June, and created a baronet on 1 July. Sir Jonathan's father (1624–1685) was sequestered, imprisoned, and ruined for loyalty, during the civil war. The bishop's younger brother, Charles [q. v.], is separately noticed.

In 1663 Jonathan went to Westminster school, was elected to Oxford, and matriculated from Christ Church on 11 Dec. 1668. He became student the following year, graduated B.A. on 22 June 1672, and M.A. on 29 April 1675. Ordained deacon on 4 Sept. 1673, he took priest's orders on 24 Dec. 1676, and obtained from his relatives the livings of St. Ive (12 Dec. 1677 to 1689) and Southill (4 Oct. 1677). The death of his elder brother in 1680 left him heir to the baronetcy, ‘yet he stuck to his holy orders and continued in his function’ (Wood). He was resident at Oxford during that autumn (1681), but the Cornish baronet there, who was described as likely to be soon in Bedlam, was apparently Trelawny's father, if 1685 be accepted as the date at which Jonathan succeeded to the baronetcy (Prideaux, Letters, ed. Thompson, Camd. Soc. p. 94 n.; Bibliotheca Cornubiensis). He was one of the benefactors by whom Wren's Tom tower at Christ Church was mainly built (June 1681–November 1682), and his arms were carved among the rest on the stone roof of the gatehouse (Wood, History and Antiquities, 1786, pp. 449–51). On the discovery of the Rye House plot in 1683, Trelawny drew up an address in the name of the corporation of East Looe congratulating the king and the Duke of York on their escape (Trelawne MSS.; Trelawny Papers, Camd. Soc. ed. Cooper, 1853).

In the expectation that Monmouth would land in the west, James, in June 1685, sent Sir Jonathan down to Cornwall, where he arrived after the duke had landed. Finding the deputy-lieutenants, with one exception (Rashleigh), unwilling to call out the militia, he signed all commissions, and despatched Rashleigh to inspect each regiment and to station them at the most important points. He held himself ready to follow Monmouth's march (Trelawny Papers, Camd. Soc. document No. 4). In the ‘Tribe of Levi,’ a doggerel against the seven bishops, Trelawny figures as fighting Joshua, the son of Nun:

    … a spiritual dragoon
    Glutted with blood, a really Christian Turk,
    Scarcely outdone by Jeffreys or by Kirke

(London, 1691, in Strickland's Lives of the Seven Bishops).

‘Trelawny will be a bishop somewhere,’ wrote his college friend, Humphrey Prideaux, from Oxford on 9 July 1685, three days after Sedgemoor, ‘it's supposed at Bristol’ (Letters, p. 142). Trelawny begged Lord-treasurer Rochester to contrive the substitution of Exeter for Bristol, on the ground that the see of Bristol was too unremunerative to enable